The Companionship of the Hunt

Sitting in my treestand this evening, on opening day of Vermont's rifle season, I tried to think of a time when I had felt lonely while hunting.  While I often hunt solo, I could not recall a single instance of loneliness.  

​Yesterday, Vermont's governor announced a "social lockdown": as Covid is spiking here, we shall continue going to work and school, but may not gather with anyone outside our households, not even a masked outdoor walk with a neighbor.  I'm lucky to live in a homestead of three adults (not to mention the goats, dogs, and chickens), but I still felt some deep loneliness and isolation during lockdown last spring, since I'd been accustomed to exchanging hugs, smiles, and affectionate words with a wide variety of friends throughout my community every week.  A pandemic is a hard time for those of us who are not "coupled" in the traditional sense.

But today it occurred to me that I have never felt lonely while hunting.  I've contemplated many things while sitting in the woods, including my own heartbreaks and disappointments, but that is not the same as the embodied sensation of being lonely.  Hunting not only gets me outside, where the trees and squirrels and weather patterns clamor for my attention and engagement, but it adds the act of courtship.  When I hunt, my posture is one of prayer, one of questing, one of calling out to the Deer Spirit to send a willing buck my way.  I make offerings.  I prepare carefully.  I "dress up" for my beloved, in a big marshmallow blob of wool, down, camouflage, and hunter orange.  I know I may only get one chance.

While my personal hunting practice is usually solo, in non-pandemic years I also guide.  When I guide another person in the hunt, we don't talk much.  We are in a parallel silent courtship of the same beloved, each calling out with our spirits in the way that feels right to us.  We collaborate, and in questing together without words, we come to know deep things about each other.  You don't know how much you understand without words until you put them aside.  But while we keep each other company, each of us is primarily in relationship with the elusive deer that we are seeking together.

This year has brought layer upon layer of struggle, stress, and grief.  For many of us, it has made us feel alone many times over.  Learning how not to feel alone may be one of the most important "survival skills" of our time.  So I invite you, in the next few days:  go hunting.  Seek that which is elusive and filled with mystery.  Whether you bring a rifle or a camera or just your observant senses doesn't matter.  Spend a day, hour, or week in quest and courtship.  Perhaps you'll find, as I have, that you can't feel lonely when you are devoted to the patient search for grace.  In the search itself lies our wholeness.  I think we'll need every bit of our wholeness to navigate the times ahead.

Exploring survival strategies in a crisis

It is late March of 2020.  As the gravity of the worldwide COVID-19 outbreak directs many of us into home isolation, and anxiety about the stalling economy grows stronger, I've suddenly gotten a LOT of inquiries about people who want to buy their first gun and learn how to shoot it.

Although I was raised in a pacifist family, I own several rifles and a shotgun.  I hunt for food, and I teach others to use firearms safely for that purpose.  I honor the right of people to defend themselves, and that guns can sometimes be the equalizer that allows a marginalized person to protect their body and and their family.

I also don't think most people should buy their first gun right now.  And let me be clear:  I'm a queer, white, educated, assigned-female person who has experienced virtually no interpersonal violence in my life.  Most of the people I know who are asking about guns are of a similar demographic.  I offer these ideas to anyone who finds them helpful, and do not intend to tell more marginalized people than myself how thew should respond to their circumstances.

Learning from Psychology and History

Let's look at human psychology: studies show that after a big disaster, the most common human response is empathy and helpfulness, including towards strangers. This is very different from the riots, theft, and violence that many of us are taught to imagine.  Studies show this compassion rises quickly, peaks after one week, and then drops off sharply (1).  Yet that does not mean violence is the next stage.

Let's look at history.  During the Great Depression in the 1930s, overall health and longevity rose noticeably across the population of the US.  One cause of death that did rise was suicide, which showed a direct relationship with unemployment (2).  We know from gun death statistics that suicide is the number one cause of death by guns:  in 2017 in the US, six out of ten gun deaths were suicides(3).  That means that if you keep a gun in your home, it's far more likely that you or someone in your family will be harmed by an accident or suicide than it is that you'll need to use the gun in self-defense.  Also, if you are not trained in using your gun, you likely won't be effective in defending yourself.  In-person training isn't advisable as we try to slow this pandemic, and the idea of people learning to shoot purely from online resources frightens me... especially when those people's critical thinking capacity is reduced by a constant state of fear and anxiety.  We humans get pretty stupid when we're afraid.

I do believe guns are a great tool for acquiring meat.  For some people, in some circumstances, they can offer an empowering path towards strength and self-protection.  Personally, I choose to only own rifles and shotguns, because handguns were designed to shoot humans and that's not something I intend to do.  I keep all my guns locked up, with additional trigger locks on each firearm, and ammo stored separately.  None of my guns are stored in my home.  I've made a vow to myself that if I'm feeling really low and start thinking about self harm, I'll tell a friend and ask them to keep my gun-lock keys until I'm feeling better.  I have actually taken this step before, many years ago after a bad breakup.  It was very humbling, but I trust myself to do it again if I need to.

While individual circumstances vary, I don't recommend that most people become first-time gun owners right now.  But what can you do instead?  Well, a basic hunting rifle and ammo would have cost you between $400 and $2500.  So that's a pretty nice budget to work with as we plan our non-gun survival strategies.  What tools will we need?

First Alternative:  Plant a Big Garden

My first suggestion is to plant a Corona Victory Garden.  This is a brand-new movement that encourages anyone with access to fertile land to plant an extra-large garden this year so they can share that bounty with people in need.  There is good evidence that gardening actually REDUCES depression(4), so it seems logical it could also help mitigate the tendency for suicide that accompanies an economic depression.  Also, gardening begets community!  When people help each other in their gardens and give away their bumper crops, it strengthens the system of mutual aid among their friends and neighbors.  If the world really goes to pieces, your ammo will eventually run out.  The goodwill of your neighbors is a renewable resource that tends to strengthen in tough times, and it could be far more important to your survival.  Think of how many seeds you could buy with the money you would have spent on a gun!  If you do not have access to fertile land, you could invest in a CSA share instead.

Second Alternative:  Make a Go Bag

My second suggestion is to make yourself a Go Bag and a Survival Cache.  First, a little background: many of us have anxiety about people coming for our resources, and being harmed or left with nothing.  These fears are vividly narrated in books like Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy.  These kinds of fears are inevitable in any society based on inequality of resources: the Haves must always guard against the Have-Nots, usually with military force.  The history of colonization gives us a stark rendering of this scenario, from the Middle Passage to the Trail of Tears, and many other acts of theft and genocide.  Much of this violence continues today, in forms like the Prison Industrial Complex (a.k.a. modern slave labor) and the continual breach of treaties with Indigenous People that has recently been very visible in the movements to defend Standing Rock and the Wet'suwet'en Nation against pipelines (a.k.a. modern land theft & degradation).  Such violence and theft was also practice in Europe, especially during the witch trials in the middle ages.

Since these fears are so deeply rooted in ancestral trauma, I think we need to first honor them by LISTENING TO THEM, and then do the healing work needed to unlearn them.  That work is long and follows its own timeline.  In the meantime, honor these ancestral fears by making sure you'll have what you need.

A Go Bag or Bug Out Bag is a small backpack that contains the things you need for basic survival for a few days to a week.  A Survival Cache is a sealed bucket of survival tools buried or hidden in a place that you've memorized and can reach on foot from your home.  Some good things to include in them are:

• Matches, lighters, or other fire-making tools
• Dry tinder for kindling fires (cottonballs soaked in vaseline are commonly recommended, but dry birchbark works just as well).
• A sturdy survival knife.  I recommend the Mora Companion (especially the version with a built-in fire steel).
• Lots of paracord.  You can't have too much.
• A lightweight cooking pot with a lid.  You can use this to cook food and boil water.
• A week's supply of rice and lentils (I eat about 1.25 cups per day when I am active).
• A generous amount of salt.
• A sturdy water bottle
• A dropper bottle of plain chlorine bleach.  To purify one liter of water, add two drops of bleach and wait 40 minutes.
• An emergency blanket
• A small tarp
• A poncho or other rain-gear
• A warm hat
• A small first aid kit that includes good blister are supplies
• Some cash in a waterproof baggie
• A flashlight & batteries (or a hand-crank flashlight)

Extra goodies that could be great to have:

• A knife sharpener
• An ax or hatchet
• A shelf-stable source of fat (maybe crisco?).  Lack of fat in your diet is what you will begin to feel first.
• Leather work gloves
• Extra thick wool socks
• A sleeping bag
• A radio (especially a hand-crank radio -- often these have a flashlight and a phone charger incorporated)
• A compass
• Relevant medications for your circumstances, such as Doxycyline for Lyme Disease (you'll need a prescription)
• Good hiking boots (if you're likely to not already be wearing them).

In a true crisis, imagine being on the run with just a gun, versus being on the run with all these incredible tools.  In which scenario do you feel most empowered?

Lastly, the most important resource you can have in your Go Bag is your skills.  Do you know how to build an emergency shelter to stay warm and dry?  If not, google "debris hut."  Are you skilled at making a fire in wet weather?  If not, practice.  Can you navigate by the sun and stars?  If not, read The Natural Navigator by Tristan Gooley.  Do you know the edible plants in your region?  If not, find someone who can teach you.  Are you skilled in making decisions and solving conflicts in a small group?  Explore consensus decision-making and restorative/transformative justice.

Third Alternative: Archery

You know what I do keep in my home?  My hunting bow & broadhead arrows.  Since modern compound hunting bows do not need to be stored un-strung, it is always ready to go if the need for self-protection should arise.  It also give me hours of calm mediative archery practice, and could help me acquire some wild meat in a pinch.  Archery takes even more practice than firearms to become accurate, but it's dang intimidating -- if you walked into someone's home and they were pointing at you with a fully drawn bow and arrow and yelling, would you stick around?  As an added benefit, bows are not generally a workable tool for serious self-harm.  Children tend not to be strong enough to draw an adult hunting bow, so accidents involving children are less likely.

Conclusion
What part of yourself do you want to feed?  Do you want to feed the part that fears your fellow humans and assumes bad intentions, or the part that believes in compassion and mutual aid?  Do you want to build your capacity to fend people off, or the capacity to tend your neighbor?  

We can move on all fronts at once.  If you do decide to buy a gun, I hope you'll implement these other strategies as well.  Let's move forward in the direction of our dreams: a world where resources are distributed fairly, justice is a daily reality, and we can stop fearing each other.



About the Author:  Murphy Robinson is a hunting and archery instructor and the founder of Mountainsong Expeditions.  They are also a Street Medic and decolonization activist.  They live on a mountainside in Vermont.

SOURCES
(1)https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-science-behind-behavior/201709/how-long-does-public-empathy-last-after-natural-disaster
​(2)https://www.pnas.org/content/106/41/17290
(3)https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/
(4)​https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/13/green-therapy-gardening-helping-fight-depression

What can we do as Street Medics?  How can we offer support at a time when the number one recommendation is to stay home to slow the spread of this pandemic?  I've been grappling with these questions, and here is what I've found.

1. Spread the Calm.  One of the prime directives of the street medic movement is to "Spread the Calm."  Panic causes poor decision making and people get hurt unnecessarily, and this is just as true in a global pandemic as it is on the front lines of action.  The rest of list suggests some ways to spread the calm.
   
2. Instead of focusing on anxiety, pivot towards helpful action.  Here is a list of Vermont mutual aid information.  If you are outside Vermont, find out what is happening in your own community.
3. Know the Symptoms so you can support people who wonder if they may have COVID-19.  They are:
   1. Fever
   2. Dry cough
   3. Shortness of breath
   4. Sore throat.                                                 
      
   5. In only 4% of cases is there a runny nose present, and those are probably instances of secondary infection. 
      
   6. If you have these symptoms, CALL your doctor (do not visit the office in person) and they will direct you to a testing clinic and call ahead to tell the clinic you are coming.  While access to COVID-19 testing access in the US has been inconsistent, you can definitely get tested for influenza and strep throat, which is useful for a process of elimination.  You should seek to get tested even if your infection is mild, because that helps public health officials trace your contacts and monitor them proactively.
4. Know how long the Cornonavirus germs survives on surfaces:  about three days on hard surfaces, and less than a day on cardboard and fabric.  Accurate information on this can be found in this New York Times article (March 17, 2020).  Spreading this information can help calm fears about the spread of the virus on surfaces.
5. Boost your immune system however you can.  It's possible to have an asymptomatic or mild infection if your immune system is strong, which means you are freeing up hospital beds for those with more severe infections.  Get rest, breathe fresh air, exercise, stay hydrated, and eat healthy food.  You can also utilize herbs that boost the immune system:
   1. My friend Vincent wrote a really helpful guide to Peace of Mind for Cornonavirsu:  Herbal Support For Viral Infections, with advice about immune boosting herbs as well. 
   2. Guido Mase, founder of the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism, offered this EXCELLENT webinar on herbal responses for COVID-19.  It is definitely worth watching.
   3. If you live in the northern forest, you can collect evergreen needles, usnea lichen, and the chaga mushroom directly from the forest for immune support (thanks to Trevanna Grenfell for this reminder!).  Pine needles and chaga are best made into teas, and Usnea is best tinctured.  Chaga is slow-growing and often over-harvested, so only harvest in moderation and only where it is locally abundant.
6. Art, poetry, and music raise our spirits, and keeping up morale is key to any prolonged struggle (I learned that first-hand at Standing Rock!).  Here are a few pieces that have been inspiring me:
   1. Wash Your Hands poem by Dori Midnight
   2. Italian citizens in Siena singing to each other from their windows along an abandoned street.
   3. The "What to do in a Pandemic" animal art series by Ricardo Levins Morales
7. Wash your hands frequently (for at least 20 seconds).  Hand-washing with soap is WAY more effective than sanitizing gels.  Model the new "elbow bump" greeting instead of hugs and handshakes.
8. For balanced, trustworthy, and easy-to-understand daily updates on the Coronavirus situation in the USA, check out the new NPR podcast Coronavirus Daily.

I'll continue to update this post with new helpful information and links as I come across them.  Please share widely.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Murphy Robinson has been a street medic instructor since 2010.  They have offered medic support for Occupy Wall Street, Shut Down VT Yankee, Standing Rock, and Montpelier's May Day Parade.  They have also been a practicing Wilderness First Responder since 2006, with first-hand experience caring for injured and ill patients on backcountry expeditions.  Murphy offers Street Medic trainings in Vermont and wherever else they are invited to teach.

Sources of Medical Information used above:

• "The Daily" Podcast, March 13 episode: "Learning to live with the Coronavirus" (an interview with science reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr.)
• Belluck, Pam. "What Does Coronavirus do to the Body?" New York Times, March 12, 2020.
• Health Bulletin email from Tree of Life Medicine in Montpelier, Vermont (March 10, 2020).

​
Photo by 🇨🇭 Claudio Schwarz | @purzlbaum on Unsplash

Oct 20, 2019:  22 miles, from Island Pond to West Charleston, VT, on the Clyde River

I launched my canoe with my friend Tierney this morning, full of excitement.  Our goal was to paddle all 32 miles of the Clyde River in Northern Vermont today, which would mark my official completion of the 700-mile Northern Forest Canoe Trail!  The journey has been a checkered patchwork of love and tears, beauty and hardship, and finishing it felt like a bit deal.  We launched in the pinkish dawn sunlight, mist still hanging in curtains over Island Pond.  This sweet little river wound through cattails, beaver marsh, and groves of silver maple and cedar trees.  The water levels were high from the past week of rain, making it much easier to push the canoe over the occasional beaver dam.  We talked and talked, as old friends will when they haven't seen each other for a few years, and the hours slid slyly by.  We had lunch after the first portage around Great Falls dam, with 21 miles already under out belts.

I always like to joke that Murphy's Law applies doubly to me:  If something can go wrong, it will!  That's one reason I tend to be so religious about things like always wearing my lifejacket and tying my gear securely into the canoe in case we capsize.  As we ate lunch I skimmed quickly through what the guidebook had to say about the river ahead, but only paid it half of my attention, since chatting with Tierney was so much more fun.  There was a mention of a few ledge drops that should only be attempted by expert paddlers, but the notation on the map didn't mention any such hazard, so I figured we could just follow the portage signs and they'd steer us in the right direction.

We jumped back into the canoe and paddled across Charleston Pond.  When we got to the dam the portage trail had no sign marking it, but the path was clear enough.  We loaded the canoe on the portage wheels and set off, and soon started seeing signs marking the portage trail at the intersections of the small roads we were wheeling along.  An arrow very clearly pointed us down a dirt driveway that accessed a small power plant.  Just where to put the canoe back in the river wasn't signed, but we scouted all the options and chose to put in just above a class II rapid.  After that the river seemed to flatten out, although we could not see too far around the a sharp bend in the watercourse, and the steep bank discouraged us from scouting further.  It seemed logical that the hazardous rapids mentioned in the guidebook were the ones above our put-in spot -- they sure looked like something only expert paddlers should attempt!

We launched back on the river and did a great job following the line we'd planned through the class II rapid, whooping with excitement as the very swift water carried us around the sharp bend in the river.  Then we stopped whooping:  ahead was a drop in the river far too steep for our watercraft, growling its watery roar at us, and we had no time to steer our craft to shore.  "Go Left!"  I shouted, "The left side looks better!"  But none of it looked good.  There was nowhere to go but down that ledge drop, and it was upon us in a moment.  We slid down the first stair-step of the ledge and only took on a small wave over the bow as we nose-dived towards the next part of the drop.  I'm not exactly sure what happened next, except that I was very quickly in the water, with the cold of the river on a 45-degree day seeping through all my clothes.  The canoe was overturned, and Tierney was stuck underneath it.  I let go of my paddle (which you are not supposed to do) and saw it shooting down the river's current as I tried to turn the canoe upright.  The force of the water on the hull was extreme, and I suddenly realized the whole canoe might push me over and sweep over me down the river.  I got out of it's way, all of us floating down the river and bumping into rocks as this kaliedescope pattern of canoe-and-human shifted before my eyes.  The force of the rushing water kept sweeping my feet out from under me, and I flung myself clear of the barreling canoe, floating downstream feet-first for a moment to gather my wits.  I was cold, but not paralyzingly cold.  The bank of the river wasn't far, but my abilty to steer my floating journey seemed poor.  My paddle was clearly gone forever.

Tierney managed to flip the canoe, and suddenly was on her feet in a shallow spot in the middle of the river, wrangling the canoe towards shore like some sort of badass aquatic cowboy.  I stood up on the slippery rocks and tried to help her, but every time I tried to take a step my feet were swept out from under me.  Noticing for the first time that there was ANOTHER ledge drop below us on the river and fast approaching, I decided to focus on getting myself to shore.  Tierney miraculously got the canoe to the bank, we dumped the water out of it, and hauled it up onto dry land.

"Are you okay?"  I asked.

"Yeah.  I thought I was going to die for a minute there, but I'm okay.  I'm really glad I was wearing my lifejacket.  You?"

"I'm fine.  Well, I guess this is the part where we hitchhike back to our car." I said sheepishly.

"Really?  You don't want to keep going?"  Tierney asked, genuinely surprised.

"Well, I wish we could, but we don't have any paddles!"  I pointed out.  Tierney had been so busy focusing on a)not dying, and b) rescuing the canoe that she hadn't even noticed our paddles were gone.  Examining the canoe, I saw that the wooden gunwales were busted in three places, and the tough Royalex hull had a three-inch tear in it where the gunwales had broken.  It's really hard to damage a Royalex hull, so that felt like it gave us some serious bragging rights!  It should all be repairable, but that craft will have a battle scar forever.

Addendum (Nov 6, 2019):
​

I'm closing in on my thrupaddle goals!  Here are my journals of nearly 100 more miles of paddling on the NFCT in Vermont and Quebec.  The final journal about the Clyde River section will be added to this post in late October or Early November.

Here are my journals from the Maine and New Hampshire sections of the NFCT, which I canoed with many different friends (and some of it solo).  Enjoy the tales!

In part one of this series we examined the nature of cultural appropriation, and in part two we explored how the capitalist context we live in limits our ability to share ideas freely, and can even inhibit our ability to ethically act upon knowledge and guidance we receive directly from our plant allies.  In this third part of the series, we’ll look at some helpful questions for the constantly evolving process of navigating these tricky waters in a good way.
This teaching I received about cultural appropriation was from my friend Jude, who is a white pagan priestess of Jewish descent.  She told me that facing cultural appropriation is not about learning one clear set of rules and sticking to it, because nobody agrees on what those rules should be, and often each situation is unique.  Facing cultural appropriation is always going to be an ongoing conversation and self-inquiry about what you are doing, who it is impacting, and what is ethical. The three sets of questions she recommends asking are:

1. Am I sharing the accurate origin of the practices I am using when I practice them around others?  Am I giving credit and citing my sources? Did I actually learn them from a credible source? Do I need to do more research?
2. Am I in active and meaningful relationship with members of the culture that developed these practices?  Who will give me feedback if I am using them incorrectly?
3. Am I engaging in reciprocity by supporting the survival of that culture through activism, volunteering, monetary donations, or other means?  Is this an ongoing practice for me?

If your answer is no to any of these questions, you are probably not using the practices in a way that is respectful.  Because of the power dynamics inherent in colonization, you may feel like your practices are honoring the culture they came from, but they may actually be having a harmful impact.  The line between cultural exchange and cultural appropriation takes effort to discern honestly. Remember that your impact is more important than your intent.
    A complimentary insight that I received was from Darcy Ottey, a white woman who has spent most of her life leading land-based youth rite of passage experiences.  Darcy was one of my teachers in a class called “Before We Were White: Ceremony and Ancestral Recovery for Anti-Racist Action,” taught through an organization called White Awake.  Darcy has spent years uncovering the history and practices of her ancestors in Eastern Europe, and she gave me an eloquent understanding of cultural exchange. She explained that cultural exchange is possible only when both parties arrive at the table with gifts to share.  When a white person with no understanding of their own lineage goes to a pow-wow and comes home with lots of sage sticks to burn and native chants to sing, that is not cultural exchange, because the transmission of culture only goes one way. You cannot participate in exchange if you are a beggar with nothing to give, that is just cultural taking.  Once you have put in the hard work to research your own ancestral earth-based traditions, you come to the table with something to share. When an indigenous person offers to show you one of their practices, you can offer to share one of your ancestral traditions in return, and that is an actual exchange. It’s the difference between arriving at the potluck with a big hot casserole to share and arriving starving with only an empty bowl.
    Now, reconstructing the practices of your indigenous European ancestors is a whole lot harder than finding someone (indigenous or not) who is happy to teach you some version of North American earth-based traditions.  That is because traditional place-based European cultures have been repressed since the rise of the Roman Empire and violently enforced Christianity. Our practices have been suppressed for over two thousand years, so the trail of breadcrumbs is scanty.  However, there are many people, both in Europe and around the world, who are reconstructing these traditions from the scraps of lore and archeological evidence that have come down to us. If you are prepared to do your homework, much can be discovered. Learning about relatively intact earth-based spiritual practices from non-european cultures can help give us the skills of pattern-recognition we need to comb through our own ancestral traditions and see what is hiding in plain sight.  This is different from taking indigenous North American practices and pasting Europeans words or deities on top of the Native ones. What I’m talking about is familiarizing yourself with the spiritual technologies that seem to be universal to our species so that you can recognize their unique manifestation in your ancestral culture as you do your research.
    In the final part of this series, I’ll share an explanded checklist of questions to ask yourself about any cultural practices you are using that might be culturally appropriative, and share some key recommended reading for deepening your understanding of this topic.

Read part four of this series HERE.