The Hunt
Lightning Pinkcloud dreamed of hunting her whole life. Living in this culture where you eat what others’ killed. Where death is behind closed doors with bright lights and cold air, concealed in coffins, keeping us from the dirt, the substrate of life on this planet.
Lightning wants to die with the wind blowing on her face, hands gripping the dirt, grinding into her fingernails, and she feels the last few pulses of fist-making in this body. Her bare feet touching the earth. Every sensation sacred. Every breath divine.
A fly buzzing and itching her skin…welcome. It’s all part of this life. Complete surrender. Nothing is annoying. Pain is beauty. Because whittled down, it’s all its own singular sensation.
The idea of putting something “out of its misery” is the humane thing to do might just fully define what humanity is capable of. Stealing the last moments of sensation and breath, emphasizing the fear of pain; misunderstanding its constant in this world. What if an animal wants to feel the last moments of its precious and short life. We’ve seen animals get hurt and keep going. We are the wimps here. We have taken the animal out of us. We separate it and pretend that we are the most important species on this planet.
Mother Earth has no favorites. Or maybe she does. I mean, look at the patterns on the tiger, the cougar, the bobcat, the softness of chinchilla ears, tropical birds feathers…and then look at us. They might just be her favorites to make them so jaw-droppingly beautiful. Are we jealous?
Lightning is pondering all of these things for a reason.
The Hunter.
He took her into his kingdom. Carved out a space for her. And started teaching her. The sounds. The smells. The ways.
The sound of an arrow hitting the soft spot of an animal. There’s a specific sound, he said. “Ffffooooonk.”
The whistle of a cow elk. The bugle of a bull elk. The cry of a calf elk.
He could make them all in his throat. And they would answer back.
He walked through the land like his own kind of forest creature. Self-assured, swift, and steady. Taking everything in all at once. The wind. The tracks. The rocks that were out of place. He could read the land like a Southern Baptist reads scripture. Each step, he contemplated the movement of the animals. He knew which direction they were going. He knew how big and how many.
He took her out shooting to make sure. She shot seven rounds. Her cluster told him all he needed to know.
They went out that evening, rode mountain bikes through the rocky roads, rifles strapped to their backs.
Stalked the rocks and hunkered down into a juniper tree. They lay waiting. Watching the sky turn. Hearing the Townsend’s solitaire chirping its last goodbyes to the sun.
Too dark to shoot. Time to return.
Up hours before the sun. Back to the same juniper tree. Watching sunrise. Praying for elk. Nothing.
That evening, they hike to the top of the ridge. He tells her not to go higher. She wants to go higher. He listens and follows her intuition. They settle into a new juniper tree. On the ground. Smells and birds and the sunset so alive. He says he doesn’t meditate. But this is nothing short of it.
She sets her rifle up and the sight aimed up the hill. The sun sets completely, and a bugle is heard in the short distance. The Hunter calls back and is answered.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, the toad, the bull elk, the wide horns, with the proud chest, walks right into her sight, heart set directly on the crosshairs.
He’s a studmuffin. Deep in the rut. Bugling. Lightning has 400,000 chances to shoot this majestic spirit of the forest. Finger lightly on the trigger, she asks the animal/ the universe/God/and herself all at the same time. The answer “no” moves her finger quietly off the trigger as she smiles in relief that she doesn’t have to bear the weight of that responsibility.
He prances proudly back and forth for 15 long minutes in front of them, though he doesn’t know they are there.
Then his harem of cows walks into the scene. Heads lowered, eating grass.
“I have a shot,” Lightning whispers.
“Take the shot,” The Hunter whispers back with a smile of someone in their element.
”What if it’s a baby?”
“Take the shot,” he says.
She shoots. She smiles. She forgot how loud a gun is without ear protection.
The cow elk scatter.
She watches the bull elk. He looks for the source of this sound.
He walks over to the felled animal. Moans and starts and gallops.
If Lightning believed that animals had feelings, which she does, she’d think this was a moan of grief.
He stays. For 10 minutes. Looking for Lightning. Ready to stomple her for killing one of his favorites, she imagines.
She’s proud and smiling and heartbroken. She’s part of the circle of life. For once, she has taken responsibility for the precious protein that enters her body. Willing to take a life to keep hers going. And taking responsibility for this fact, unlike all the trips to the meat counter at the grocery store.
She is so calm. The Hunter has never seen anyone this calm.
They stand with their stiff limbs that haven’t moved for over an hour. They walk over to the elk lying on the ground. She pets the soft fur. She says, “I’m sorry,” to the bull elk who likely fathered it. She thanks the bull elk. She thanks life itself.
He teaches her to gut it. They hike it back through the dark.
They awake in the morning next to each other.
The Hunter asks Lightning, “So how do you want to die?”