What happens when an identity outlives its original purpose?
The Walmart Meal Plan consists of $.79 mustard, a loaf of bread, pre-sliced cold cuts & cheese, a Monster Energy drink, yogurt, and Lu Petit Ecolier cookies.
The shadow of the wind turbine on I-80 swoops past the pickup truck like a plane, but instead of disappearing into the horizon of the setting sun, it loops back around and over us again. Iowa is a bosom of green that’s welcoming with hospitality; the kind of place that has interstate rest stops with water spigots and educational displays about grassland health.
Deeper into South Dakota, that vibe changes both physically and ideologically. Deer eyes light up the roadside, but there are too many; it’s a volume and density of lightning bugs on the roadside, immense numbers of them.
I live inside systems that hide death, labor, land, and dependence from me. Hunting does not solve this contradiction, but makes it impossible to ignore.
I fished because the three of us could do it and the activity occupied our time. A perfect activity for fragmented focus and time. That was 15 years ago. Now, two young adults, the time is different. Activities assume different meaning.
A consequence of parenting is that the life you constructed around being needed begins dismantling itself.
Two weeks ago, the reel’s drag whines as the shark pulses north. A hazy sunset on one side of the dunes, blue sky on the other; it’s grey.
July 1: I notice a Black Hills buffalo and it seems wilder than the one we saw in the Badlands. Both live a bizarre existence of management. Near one of the Black Hills herds, I drive the truck through puddles of manured-mud to a pocket of national forest. Here, the buffalo’s relatives graze freely, and I’m unable to tell whose shit I’m seeing on the trail we’re running on.
The marvels of our West creep towards sadness. Horizontal moon-like landscapes and a lake in western South Dakota look quaint on the map, but a mini-city emerges anywhere a National Park is established. There’s an emphasis on the things I generally dislike: lines, waiting, lack of general decency, disrespect for nature, and worshipping of phones. Taking photos no human will ever likely look at again.
Once you remove the “Park,” gas station, and Welcome Center, the freedom reigns. Most of the natural features are on adjacent federal lands, but without the infrastructure for convenience most of us expect.
What does it mean to be a good animal in a culture built around pretending we are not animals?
