is narrating the Discovery Channel show “Human Planet”. I’m watching the “Arctic” segment.

It isn’t any secret to me how the Inuit or Sami or Inupiat or Yupik live. I have spent a little time north, a very little time far north, but mostly I have been fascinated by the culture for a very long time.

Living that close to the bone means living at the most basic level- In order for you to live, something else must die. As a hunter, I respect this, and understand it. I also know that it is a very critical part of our ancestry, and the further we get away from it, the worse our lives seem to be. The woman who thinks that steak she just bought grew on that little styrofoam tray is the culmination of years of the sanitization of our lives by people who want everything to be neat and clean and ordered. But life is not neat and clean and ordered- even the laws we create, that seek to impose order on our lives, as often as not cause more trouble than they’re worth. While I firmly believe in the rule of Law, as opposed to the rule of kings, or men, I most strongly believe in the rule of very little damned law.

The Law the northern peoples live by is simpler- and to my way of thinking, better. Kill that your family may eat. Love your family and your dogs (or reindeer). Your dogs and your skills are your children’s birthright. Don’t kill more than you can eat.

This kind of life is hard. I mean, I despise snow, and cold weather. But they have never known anything else.

Modern northern people have become accustomed to junk foods. Where the “Human Planet” people found the people to film, who knows. I’m glad they did. I hope it wasn’t too hard, because it means there are people still keeping that way of life alive.

The information is sketchy and tainted with “modernized” northern people, but it seems that the diet devoid of vegetables and nuts and fruits, consisting solely of fish and fat, is, for those peoples, extremely healthy. Some of those old groups have managed to add electricity and television and frame houses and modern plumbing- and still not become “modern”, still live the old ways.

I like this show, about the Arctic, my fascination fulfilled by the images and the narrative. I like watching hunters hunt, and the blood of the butchering of the animals makes them, in small ways, my brothers in blood. At the same time, I fear that some of the people who will see this are the wrackers, the people who will see the landscape and park themself in it, cut trees for better sattelite reception, adapt the environment to them, instead of adapting themselves to the environment. They “Civilize” the wilderness, to the detriment of everyone. I can see a damned crusade of these morons trying to stop the seal.shark, and whale killing, heedless of the fact that it has gone on for centuries before they came along to have their sensibilities offended.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could take those people who live that close to the bone and transport them to the city, and make the city “Less” civilized”? Get people who live in highrises used to seeing hunters taking down and eating deer in city parks. smell the ripe aroma of meat being jerked. How comical would it be to see people aghast at people wearing clothes not from Kohls trapping and eating rats?

I’m all about flush toilets. I’m also all about using technology to make life better. I like sleeping in a warm bed, and i prefer to live where I can do so every night. But I like seeing prey and predator close to my home, and I wish I was more integrated to the natural environment, and less to the artificial one.