Small lives
Nearly a thousand miles from home, in a cottage on the cool shores of Lake Huron, I sit on the deck barefoot, the only time of year I will go barefoot, the only time I will bare my legs, and read Kipling and Saki and De Maupassant as I listen to the sound of the gentle waves lapping at clean sandy beaches.
As I read, squirrels chatter in the evergreens overhead, jays swoop down to pick peanuts out of the jar on the table, (set there for that purpose) rabbits hop across my naked toes, and chipmunks run up to sit at my feet and beg. Groundhogs and skunks partol in the late evening, and the occasional bear raids a garbage dump= garbage cans, outdoors, are locked up here, as securely as gun safes.
I will feed the chipmunks out of hand, They will come and eat peanuts off my shoes (I don’t trust them quite to differentiate between unshelled peanuts and my gnarly toes) and I have begun to recognize individuals.
The fat one, capable of enclosing three peanut hulls in his mouth, the hairs on his bushy tail all tipped in black. We call him greedy gus, he’s absconded with the lions share of the peanuts and keeps coming back for more.
The tiny one with the bite scars on his head, the not so proud tail with tufts removed from it, we call Arthur. He’s fast and scrappy, but he keeps a weather eye out for Gus. Arthur ranges further than Gus, his storehouse in a stand of evergreens down the road and across, he will come and get one peanut and hustle off to his little place, dodging cars and pedestrians and the occasional red tailed hawk. Arthur is trusting, perhaps far too trusting, and will take peanuts from your hand before scampering away. If Gus should happen to see him he freezes, and gus makes his intentions clear by standing on his hindquarters and stamping his feet in annoyance. The chase is on, then, and in a few seconds Gus returns to lay claim to his share of the bounty.
In another place I would trap and relocate the chipmunks, chide the jays, shoot the squirrels and eat them. Bears would be trapped and relocated, skunks chased off, groundhogs pegged out to the sides of barns as a warning.
Not so much here. This is their home, we, only brief visitors. Owned cabins on leased land, this being Indian terroitory, the land of my wive’s ancestors. The small lives here are as valid as mine own, perhaps more so, and I would not interfere except to
contribute to their nest-feathering with raw peanuts and sunflower seeds.
In other places, I am the hunter, careful to ask permission for the lives I take for sustenance. Careful as I can be to take those lives swiftly and painlessly. Aware that their survival depends as much on the climate as it does on my careful husbandry of the resources. I have been allowed to hunt many times on private land, a great honor for any hunter, and a tribute to my care and desire not to wrack or damage, to leave the places I hunt better than before, and not better for hunters but for the wildlife they seek.
I myself came to this place desirous of a break from the hunt, a respite from being the hunter or the hunted or the bearer of arms.
I hope to come again, year on year, to sit in communion with the nature we must, as humans, always invade, and I trust that my ongoing respect for the land will earn me that right.
