The Hunt

I posted this picture before, I believe, but I'm posting it again. It was taken last Thanksgiving. Mr. Moon had recently gotten that bow and had set up a deer stand and a target in the yard and was practicing. Isn't he beautiful, that man of mine?

Every year when it begins to get cool, Mr. Moon's thoughts turn to the woods and he longs to be there. He yearns to be there, sitting silently in the predawn morning, waiting to hear the chuff of the deer, watching wild turkeys come in, watching the light fill the day beneath the trees, listening, looking, feeling the cold air on his skin.

I, of course, a sometimes vegetarian and a woman who does not want to leave her warm bed for anything before dawn, except perhaps a flight to Cozumel, have a hard time understanding this yearning of his. This need to get up and go into the woods and wait for the right shot. I have no idea what he feels when he hunts but I know it is powerful. I know how I feel at certain times of the year when the air feels just so, the light shines just so, the length of the days is just so. Perhaps what I feel is that I have to get in the dirt and plant or that I want to be in Mexico or that I wish to be by the water. But I'm not certain that I feel anything as strongly as his need to be in the woods, quiet and waiting.

Well. Perhaps the writing. Maybe that is as strong- my need to capture the words.

When the children were young and his need to be in the woods overcame him and he planned a trip to hunt, I was, quite frankly, resentful. He was working ten, twelve hours a day, six days a week and god knows he deserved to allow himself that time. But I was raising four children and had no time at all to get away, and I look back at that now and I realize how hard I was working and I am compassionate to that young woman I was with her resentment. It was not just the time away from us, it was also the fact that he did not choose to spend that time with ME. I couldn't understand it because if I got time to go off without the children, I would want to spend it with HIM.

I didn't understand.

I still don't, really. But as I have gotten older and am more sure of his love in every way, I understand that his need has nothing to do with me at all. It is something very primal in him and so strong that I cannot resent it. I can't begrudge him the time away and I have learned how delicious deer meat is and I have seen over and over again his delight when I cook it well. It makes him love me more.

Last night I had cooked two backstraps, which are the tenderest part of the deer. They are so lean that I have to put a few strips of bacon in there to give them some fat. I could use olive oil and sometimes I do, but I had the bacon, I used it. I put them in the crock pot and I covered them in garlic and onions and potatoes and carrots and I made up a broth of this and that and I covered them up and let them simmer until they were all done and I made a loaf of bread and realized I had forgotten to pick salad until it was already dark and so I just opened a can of green beans- so what? - and it was good. And he was happy and he washed the dishes.

He's already gone this morning to spread the dirt around in Lily's yard where he dug it up to lay the sewer line and this afternoon he's going to come home and get ready to up to Georgia where he hunts sometimes and he's going to spend the night so he can hunt this evening and then again tomorrow morning. It used to be I would have begrudged him that time but now I don't. He's the hardest working man I know or have ever known except perhaps for his own daddy who is the one who took him to the woods when he was a boy and there you have it. When his daddy was growing up, poor as poor can be in Tennessee, they had to have that meat. Hunting was not a sport, it was a way to keep the family alive. And I think that in Mr. Moon's soul, that belief is still there, even if it is not logical (and what is logical about me sitting here on a fall morning, typing this story, these words?) and that every time he takes careful aim and shoots and a deer falls, he feels he's done something as real as real- he has provided meat for his family.

He is respectful of the animal. He doesn't shoot unless he has a clean shot, he humps that beast out of the woods, he and Jason cut it up and package it. And then I cook it and he is satisfied in some very deep way.

Chili Colorado with venison, venison tamales, white bean chili with ground venison, venison meatloaf, simmered venison with vegetables, barbequed venison, venison cube steak with gravy and mashed potatoes, venison sausage for breakfast or in a pot of beans, venison stew, vegetable and venison soup....I take the meat he brings home and I turn it into meals that sustain us, that nurture us. I respect the meat, too.

I am no longer a vegetarian. If I had to kill my own meat, I would be. I know that. And if given the choice of giving up meat for the rest of my life or beans, I would give up the meat. Luckily, I don't have to do those things, make those choices. But it feels so much more correct, so much more honest, to cook and eat the meat that Mr. Moon brings home from the woods. He has taught me so much about life, this man. I have said before and I will say it again- I don't even know if I would still be here if I hadn't met him, he hadn't fallen in love with me, taken my hand and said, "Let's be a family."

And so when he goes this afternoon to Georgia, I will send him off with a kiss and a tupperware container of leftovers from last night's supper that he will eat in the woods and I will stay here and do whatever it is that I do. Write, knit, make my own supper. Perhaps a bean and vegetable soup (it's going to be cold) with deer sausage. I don't mind being alone. I love and need that time.

And I love and need him. It's as simple as that. Some things are not logical in today's world but that doesn't mean they aren't true. We can try to analyze them, we can analyze them to death and not find the truth of the simplicity of our needs and I choose not to do that. I choose to just realize the truth of the matter and love the man who taught me this.

We fall in love. We do not talk ourselves into it. Next Sunday Mr. Moon and I will have been married twenty-five years. I find it fitting that he married me in hunting season. That year, 1984, he hunted me and he slayed me with his love and goodness.
His aim was true.

It still is.