I have not read Gibson’s book, but the ideas certainly resonate.

Your comment is beautifully put, Ingrid. And I believe it is right on the mark. It is easy to identify particular practices—like hunting, fishing, photography, or logging—and see doing or not-doing them as definitive of deeper commonality and difference. But I think that’s misleading.

As you put it, “how worshipfully we handle this earth is probably a more binding tie than how we realize our place in that sacred circle.” For some years, I viewed and lived in the world in a Jain-like way. Now, I see and live in a more animist-hunter-like way. The perspectives and experiences are different, but are also similar in important ways.

I, like you, want to see a raising of the standard of conduct among modern hunters; this is very much what Eric and his colleagues at Orion are up to. We need more respect and reverence for animals and earth. We need it across the board—from hunters and non-hunters, city dwellers and country dwellers, loggers and farmers. And, as Holly said, the feelings of respect and reverence that are already present among hunters need to be expressed more clearly, especially in ways that non-hunters can relate to and understand.

I haven’t been in California in nearly a decade. When next I’m there, I hope I have the opportunity to meet you and Holly both.

I’d enjoy meeting you as well. Right now, we’re prepping for a move, in and around other logistics. As much as we love our little Bay Area hovel, we learned the hard way that we can’t properly accommodate animals-in-rehab in our apartment. So, about the time I’ll be free, you’ll be heading back to school. But that wouldn’t necessarily preclude a get together sometime, a mutual convenience sort of thing.

I’ll send you my stats. Through your blog, the best way?

Around Northern California, the best wildlife photography coincides with hunting season. When our fall and winter migrants return, it’s a visual splendor, as I’m sure you know from being out in the wetlands and woods.

Jean, nice to make your acquaintance. I know what you mean about trying things out in a public forum. I’ve taken some verbal beatings for my views, and it can feel awfully precarious to step into the flame zone, not knowing how much grace people will show in the face of a philosophical counterpoint.

Bye, Tovar (she says, leaving a wake of tangents and hijacked threads . . .)

Ingrid, I did not respond to all the things I should have in your replies. Please forgive, I am still working on some of this in my own mind and am a little afraid to try things out on a public forum.

Thank you and until we meet again,
Jean

Amen, Ingrid. While I have heard one animal rights group in particular searching for common ground in a way that strikes me as manipulative, I believe what you have said here is pure.

I think this is where many of us hunting writers can do the most good: Writing about how we feel about hunting creates a sense of acceptance for these feelings. As I’ve said before (probably here, can’t remember), I’ve written many things about hunting only to find veterans saying, “That’s how I feel too, but I’ve never been able to put it into words.” I think we also deal with the unwritten code among men to look tough, no matter how they feel. And then of course there are the morons who really just don’t care.

Ingrid, I’d love to meet you, maybe spend a day with you watching your wildlife photography, or rescue work. If you’re up for that, let me know: I have two-and-a-half months of summer break left, and only half of it is scheduled to death.

I ruminated quite a bit on our exchange here, and something came to me last night — while I couldn’t sleep, for all of the graphic images coming out of the Gulf. In addition to the disaster’s inherent horror, seeing the oiled birds brings up a number of feelings related to the oiled animals I’ve personally worked with. But that’s for a therapist’s couch, not you guys.

Anyway, have any of you read James William Gibson’s book, “A Reenchanted World”? The premise is that through modernity, we’ve moved from a world that had a level of enchantment — animism, nature spirits, human-animal language — to a disconnected, Cartesian and soulless existence, one that’s allowed humans to exploit rather than live in symbiosis with our environment.

This is obviously not a new idea — and the book, for its strengths, is a bit like a thesis: a reenactment of citations. But I recalled one area where he talks of ancient hunting rituals, and the agreements many of the ancients made with the earth — that in exchange for the privilege to hunt, they made a promise to do so in a sacred way, to care for the forests and the waters, to treat the earth as a living brother/mother/sister. And, when hunting, to recognize the animal as us, not a disembodied, disconnected being but rather a spirit with the same spirit energy as us.

He relays an anecdote by a hunter who’d been in WWII, and who, when killing a bear, heard it scream for the first time. Then when skinning the bear, saw not a bear’s carcass but the body of a woman. The Gibson writes “without its fur, the bear appeared human. It was the veteran’s last bear hunt.”

He does not write this in an anti-hunting context, but rather to illustrate a contrast between what he calls a modern idea of hunting for domination versus hunting by ancient rite, where “if a hunter acted in harmony with the land and its animals, then he might be rewarded with an opportunity to participate in that exchange.”

Remembering that passage is what led to a new thought — about what ties some of us here together, in spite of our differing views on hunting. I think a hunter who holds the earth sacred has more in common with me, an environmentalist who holds the earth sacred . . . than I would have in common with a non-hunter who cares nothing for the earth, or than you would have in common with a hunter who treats hunting as an act of sport without the spiritual obligation.

Therein lies the rub — the point to which I keep coming back. I see too much of the disrespect and so little of the reverential acts of earth worship. To me, the responsibility of engaging in nature in such a way that lives are taken demands the sacred in us. And I would hold recreational outdoors people like myself to the same standard as I hold hunters.

I have written at my own blog, about the frustration I’ve experienced with photographers who don’t understand their own place in the order of photographing wildlife. And actually, wildlife photographers do have an internally implemented standard of practice which is one of the reasons I feel qualified to comment at all about raising the standard of conduct by hunters as well. In wildlife photography, if it’s discovered that you baited an animal or disturbed a nestling or any other such violation of fairness and adherence to a nature photography code, you won’t lose your camera, but your work will fall in esteem. And it should, from my POV. There’s an internal policing of sorts which is along the lines of what I’m asking of the hunting establishment.

Anyway, for what that’s worth, I thought the commonality of how worshipfully we handle this earth is probably a more binding tie than how we realize our place in that sacred circle.

By the way, Tovar, I didn’t comment on but liked very much your description of the traditional hunting ethics surrounding the dignity of the “animal person.” I realize it’s a precarious intellectual endeavor to idolize any culture or tradition, based on the great disparity even among those traditions, some of which were quite cruel, too. But I do appreciate the respect inherent in the type of thinking you portrayed in that comment.

My own affiliation is with age-old traditions like the Jains, whose idea of respect translates toward not inflicting deliberate harm. Even those of us modern people professing to be connected with nature — some hunters, some mountain bikers, some recreational outdoors people, some nature photographers (ahem) — are so far from real connection with the nature and animals in our midst, those traditional concepts seem positively ideal by comparison.