PA Season Finale 11/28/07

The Rites of Autumn

The forecast for opening day of the Pennsylvania whitetail deer season was not good: near-100% chance of rain and temperature in the 50s. There were four of us for the morning hunt, and since Dom III was here, I was not in my usual stand (since it is his stand). Instead, I ended up in the “penthouse,” a tall tree house next to a pine with good command over the furthest field that slopes down to the bottom.. It ended up being a great place to be, since it had a roof. I was in by 6:10, an hour before sunrise. I kicked back in a nice resin patio chair with a cup of black coffee. This was not bad at all. It was warm — I never did zip my jacket up — plenty of room to spread, and the patter of rain on the tin roof. Quite luxurious hunting accommodations.

I followed my usual routine: when it was light enough to see the breech and bolt on my rifle, I snapped in the clip. When it was light enough to see a bit into the field, I chambered a round and checked the safety. Dawn was steely grey with just a light rain.

Before long, from above me out of the treeline where my stand was, a nice-size deer walked into the field. I could see even from 100 yards or so that it was a buck, a glint of white marking the curve of its antlers, though they were none too big for a pretty much full-sized deer, probably a two- or three-year old. He was headed straight across the field to Dom III’s stand (where I so often hunted) and he made either me or Dom and broke into a trot, curving around in front of me toward the sugar road that leads into the bottom. I struggled to frame him in my scope — with my eye first too close and then too far from the reticule — and finally he was in the crosshairs, but he was moving and my position was not all that stable. He paused and turned just before melting into the woods. I shot without much hope of hitting him, and indeed I missed completely.

Another cup of coffee, more rain on and off. A group of five does come in from the same spot as the buck and headed straight across the field, through a little hedgerow and into the oat field in front of Dom’s stand. I watched them curve around and pass right in front of him. He didn’t shoot. I texted him and as I guessed, he was waiting for a buck. Isn’t it odd, these modern-day hunters texting each other from their treetop perches?

More time passing, more rain on and off, and sometime around 8:30 I heard rustling in the leaves to my left, and turned to watch three does come out of the woods into the field. I positioned myself and put the crosshairs on the largest one and tracked her as she took a few steps, turned this way and that, then took a few more steps and turned broadside. I breathed halfway in and squeezed the trigger. They all jumped and she bolted about 20 yards and crashed. A prayer for forgiveness and a prayer of thanksgiving. We will cherish many meals of this gift from heaven.

The evening was somewhat clearer, though still spitting rain off and on, and still warm. This time I was in Dom’s stand; he had gone to my ladder stand just inside the woods at the base of the mountain. I watched two deer come out of the treeline where he was. One went back into the woods at the corner of the field, then came out below me by the pond. He browsed on some twigs, then wandered up and under my stand and then in front of me. He was a little spike buck with two tiny prongs; you would not have been able to tell if he had not been so close. I could have shot him with my bow. He browsed around in the oat field for ten minutes or so, then wandered down to the bottom field, where Dom II shot him.

Dom III and Stevie each also took a deer. It was a long and productive day.

We took two of them over to Pocahontas to a part-time butcher who works with Dom. It was a windy, hilly ride on back roads, and nice to get a bit of time to spend with Dom, catching up.

Back home last night, there was thunder and lightening and the wind really kicked up. This morning, it was hard to go out. The temperature was down in the 30s and the wind was hard. But we went anyhow; back to the penthouse for me. It was cold but not unbearable. The dawn was foggy and dark and the wind was unrelenting. I heard some turkeys and crows and that was it. Three shots in the distance. The only thing stupid enough to be out in this weather was hunters.

It’s sleeting and snowing off and on now, nothing much to speak of, and the wind seems to have died down, but just a bit. All the visiting hunters are gone save me. Hopefully Dom will go out with me when he gets home from work, and I’ll see if I can fill my buck tag.

If You Knew

by Ellen Bass

What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line's crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't say Thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die.

A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.
They'd just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked a half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

From The Human Line
© Copper Canyon Press, 2007
Stolen from The Writer's Almanac
Reprinted without permission

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Each morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all.
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Rumi

Rituals of Thanks

The pumpkin pies are in the oven and the sweet potato soufflé is ready to follow. One for each dinner.

It’s a beautiful time here in Uniontown, my home town. The tiny leaves are long gone off the mimosa out back, leaving a fanned skeleton of many trunks, which now catches the yellow maple leaves falling on top of it, giving it a whole ’nuther round of leaf dropping. It’s nice to have second chances at things.

Yesterday, that glorious warm surprise, I picked the last two figs and ate them in the yard. They weren’t quite ripe, but still a treat.

I’m thankful that at Thanksgiving, I am still enjoying my homegrown tomatoes, and an abundance of gourmet greens. Not much longer now, though, I’m afraid.

My ritual reading of The Bear has also begun, but this year with a twist: I’m reading it out loud to Jake, a little bit at a time, every evening. And that’s a good place to begin my list of thanks:

I’m thankful for Jake, who takes care of me like no one else.
For my wonderful children, and that they are OK, today.
For my wonderful family, my foundation and strength.
For my wonderful dogs, constant and faithful companions.
For all the people I’ve known, all the people I thought I knew but didn’t really, and for the people I don’t know anymore, and all the ones I may come to know.
For the deer that feed my family.
For everything that grows, and all the flowers and fruits.
For forgiveness and patience and understanding, without which I would be dead.
For hunting.
For cars and computers and cell phones and all the other technology that makes my life rich and miserable.
For sun and moon and stars and clouds and fire and water and earth and metal.
For books. For poetry. For prayers.
For all the graces given me, undeserved, and for the rich abundance that is my life.
And for every other thing in the world.

Happy Thanksgiving, all! I thank God for you everyday.

With my love and prayers,

Guilty As Charged

"We resent other people for the things we don't say to them."

— Heard in Florida. There was another father here, a Persian man named Roger. How is that for irony? (This was not his quote.) Older than me, and he seemed somewhat dogmatic in his opinions (but then, I'm sure I do, too). I used all four words of Farsi that I know (no, not the fifth); he did not seem impressed. I hope I'm never tempted to dye my hair.

No end of good cheer...

"Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits."

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Born this day in 1850
Appropriated from The Writer's Almanac

Happy Birthday...

...Fyodor Dostoyevsky! 1821. Maybe someday I'll read 'ya.

Heard at the Pour House

"I am a naked angel, bleeding in the snow..."

(add some minor chords, acoustic bass and guitar)

Health Alert: What Price Beauty?

This, from Dr. Weil:

Some Lipsticks Contain Lead

Lipsticks manufactured in the U.S. and used daily by millions of women contain “surprisingly high” levels of lead, according to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. The consumer advocacy group released test results on Oct. 11 that showed more than half of 33 name-brand red lipsticks tested contained detectible levels of lead, ranging from .03 to .65 parts per million. The group said one-third of the tested lipsticks exceeded the FDA’s 0.1 ppm limit for lead in candy - a standard that was established to protect children from ingesting lead. The FDA has not set a lead limit for lipstick.

Obviously, lipstick is seldom eaten like candy, so it may not be appropriate to hold lipstick makers to the same standard as candy makers. There is, in fact, no evidence that, at these levels, lipstick poses any danger to those who wear it, and I would also like to see independent confirmation of these lead levels from another laboratory.

Nonetheless, lead is a proven neurotoxin, and it is probably better to be safe than sorry. The good news is that these tests, if accurate, indicate it is possible to make lipstick without lead: 39 percent of the lipsticks tested had no detectible levels. For more information, including a list of tested lipsticks, see www.safecosmetics.org.

**********
To check the lotions, potions, and beauty aids you use for safety and toxins, click here and visit

The Environmental Working Group.

They have a great search/database function. You can search by product or brand (they even have Anthony Logistics for men, my fav new products; yes, mostly safe!), and it offers recommendations for safer alternatives to the bad boys (have to change my shampoo). Why wouldn't you pick the safest?

Love Dogs

One night a man was crying, Allah. Allah.
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said, So. I have heard you calling out,
but have you ever gotten any response?

The man had no answer for that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep
where he dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick green foliage.

Why did you stop praising? Because
I've never heard anything back.

This longing you express
is the return message.
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.

There are love dogs no one knows the names of.
Give your life to be one of them.

— Rumi

This explains so much...

Nov. 5, 2007 | A young woman sat on the subway and sobbed. Her mascara-stained cheeks were wet and blotchy. Her eyes were red. Her shoulders shook. She was hopeless, completely forlorn. When I got off the train, I stood on the platform, paralyzed by emotions. Hers. I'd taken them with me. I stood there, tears streaming down my cheeks. But I had no death in the family. No breakup. No terminal diagnosis. And I didn't even know her or why she cried. But the emotional pain, her pain, now my pain, was as real as day.

Recent research in neurobiology would explain my response as the automatic reaction of a kind of brain cells known as mirror neurons. On Nov. 4, neuroscientists announced that mirror neurons had for the first time been directly identified in humans. Previously their existence had only been inferred from primate research and the observation of human brains through fMRIs (functional magnetic resonance imaging).

From a story by Gordy Slack in Salon.com

Read it here.

Ah, so it IS possible...

Gate C22

At gate C22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after
the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like he'd just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,
like she'd been released at last from ICU, snapped
out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down
from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.
She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine
her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish
kisses like the ocean in the early morning,
the way it gathers and swells, sucking
each rock under, swallowing it
again and again. We were all watching —
passengers waiting for the delayed flight
to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,
the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling
sunglasses. We couldn't look away. We could
taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face. When he drew back
and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost
as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,
as your mother must have looked at you, no matter
what happened after — if she beat you or left you or
you're lonely now — you once lay there, the vernix
not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you
as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.
The whole wing of the airport hushed,
all of us trying to slip into that woman's middle-aged body,
her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,
little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

by Ellen Bass, from The Human Line. © Copper Canyon Press, 2007. Reprinted without permission

Lord, It Is Time

Lord, it is time. The summer was very big.
Lay thy shadow on the sundials,
on on the meadows let the winds go loose.

Command the last fruits that they shall be full,
give them another two more southerly days,
press them on to fulfillment and drive
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Who has no house will build him one no more.
Who is alone now, long will so remain,
will wake, read, write long letters
and will in the avenue to and fro
restlessly wander, when the leaves are blowing.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Yes, what he said. No need for anything more from me — except perhaps to note that walking at the cemetery is no longer an option, so the dogs and I are left to wander this avenue, up and down, up and down, as the leaves blow.

Stay tuned, gentle reader, and we'll see what letters post.