Tool users

Just when I start in bitching about this place, I'm reminded of its splendor, its historicity and its connectedness. Only out here, away from people, we are able to connect with that which is primal. Back in these small, closely and fiercely guarded enclaves of humanity, we might remind ourselves of the battle the human life used to be. Sometimes, at dusk, when I turn my head from the television, look out over the expanse of my parent's concrete patio, past the DirectTV dish onto their landscaped lawn devoid of native plants, I think I see someone. This someone is almost like me, though probably a little hairier, pulling himself onto two legs and striding ably across the savanna.

Completely naked of course.

H. Sapiens clothe yourself. He doesn't care.

***

My dad's been hunting all weekend. Hunting seriously for the first time in years. Just him in a tree with a bow. A classicist, my father hunts not with this century's technology, but with a recurve, a recurve bow that has no sights. They call that shooting instinctive. My father shirks modernity in his tree stand with his obsolete bow.

In his tree stand with his bow, my father hunts more or less like the Mongols did when they fashioned that great nomadic empire from a patchwork of lesser, more learned empires.

But, not having many trees in Mongolia, they rode horses. Or maybe, along the way, we got worse at riding horses, so we put ourselves up into trees. Either way, it's human adaptation, another thing of which this countrified existence reminds.

***

My father stopped hunting when he started his business, trading one kind of struggle for another. He'd spent twenty odd years busting his ass at a thankless job. Now, busting his ass at a thankless proprietorship, he works more than ever. He used to say that he gladly worked more because it meant working for himself, being his own boss. At what point does one realize that your new boss, to take a page from the Who, is the same as your old boss? How long after that to realize it's worse because you're under the whip and wielding it at the same time?

Judging by my dad's attitude recently, returning to things he'd given up to satisfy his drive, it takes about 6 years.

And now, upon returning he finds his sight is beginning to fail him. He says it's the darkness. He's become night blind. Up before dawn, he's missed 4 deer in three days. Three deer really, one was foolish enough to come back.

***

Hunting with a bow is intimate. Arrows don't have the range or speed of a bullet, so the deer have to get close. By the time a deer is close enough to kill with that pointy, fletched stick, they're close enough to hear you breathe. They can pinpoint your smell enough to look right at you. They know when you nock your arrow and they certainly know when that implement of death flies past them and hits the ground. To kill a deer with a bow you have to be quieter, more accurate and less pungent than your smelly, sweaty, mucous bag of flesh generally allows.

To mask his human scent, Dad used to hang onto last year's urine. He'd take the piss from the deer he killed and put it in a little spray bottle and store it in the basement. On Friday, not having any piss from last year, he bought some fake stuff. You can only shirk modernity for so long, another thing countrified existence teaches.

***

When you learn to hunt deer with a bow, whoever is teaching you will tell you that you have to aim a few inches below your target because deer instinctively drop when they hear a threatening noise. When you're up in a tree stand you have to aim a few inches lower still, because of the odd trajectory of shooting downhill.

This means that often, when shooting at a deer, you're really shooting at the ground beneath it, an ancient irony destroyed by the advent of black powder and rifled barrels.

That's progress. Progress means life is a little less tricky and a little less interesting.

***

So Dad, in the dark, aimed at the darkened patch of earth he guessed the deer would occupy a 10th of a second after he released his arrow. He released it and put it where the deer should have been. When it struck the ground and the deer ran off, he was left to watch the sun come up and illuminate that arrow, trying not to cough or breath too loud or betray his uniquely human stink. When the sun was fully up and he was about to head back inside, he drew another arrow and took aim at the one in the ground.

And there they were, one, two. He puts two fingers closely together into the opposite palm, the two arrows. and I thought, aw, stink.

Solitude and nightblindness are solipsism and mortality, but only to his overeducated son.

***

With dusk settling in last night, I reflected on this. And, while reflecting, I wrote my name. What a strange thing to do. I, on this freshly fallen shroud of snow, wrote my name for the first time in years.

With urine.

Just like my forbears I wrote my name in urine upon the unsullied December snow. Like a Baumgarten. Like an American. Like H. Sapiens, a relatively hairless bipedal ape. Like a Mongol nomad god-man astride a flaming steed.

Urine. Snow.

Freedom.

Walking in after me, Dad says I spooked his deer.