I want to go turkey hunting. Once and once only. My guy doesn't understand it, I don't think he wants to, sometimes. My yen for hunting is religious, not for the reason he thinks hunting is so great. I don't find it either relaxing or rewarding to go out and shoot an animal and then make jerky and sausage out of it. I'm too lazy and my carnivorous habits are firmly grounded on beef.

Ahimsa is something foreign around here. We're in the Bible Belt, where we're stewards of the animals and the earth, or so god says. We like our cow and our pig. We like our chicken fried. It's commendable to practice ahimsa with our fellow humans, but you're one of those weirdo tree-huggers and you're looked on with dire suspicion if you spread that to all living things. Ahimsa, restrain or nonviolence, the practice of doing no harm, is difficult. Some yogis say that you can only practice ahimsa if you're vegan. Using dairy products, particularly mass-marketed stuff, exploits animals in ways that make them suffer, never mind eating meat at all. On the other end of the spectrum, other yogis say that you can use animal products, including meat, so long as the animal doesn't suffer in its life or its death. It's been difficult, but I've converted my guy to the idea of free-range animals butchered locally by a guy who is as humane about killing animals as it's possible to be.

I'm not sure if it's possible to appropriately be a Buddhist that believes in ahimsa and an omnivore at the same time. It might just be that I'm too selfish to give up a lifestyle that's ingrained from birth and would include a lot of conflict with others in the household that do not believe the way I do. That's partly why I want to hunt a turkey.

I've never killed anything personally, except mosquitoes that I didn't miss. Our method of getting food is to go to a store and have it wrapped up in packages. I never see the blood. I never see the live animal. How can I ultimately understand what the cost of being a carnivore is if I can't truly connect the steak to the cow? Intellectually, that's no problem, but emotionally, in the id, it's different. I do not exist for free. I am not separate from the world I live in. My home takes up space where deer, buffalo, coyotes, rabbits, and many other animals used to roam, but can't now. My water is piped in from springs that have been subverted entirely for human use. My food and my clothes come from large tracts of farmland that used to be prairie grasses full of prairie dogs instead of neat rows and center pivot irrigation. I've been separate from my biome, like most people are, both emotionally and intellectually for most of my life. I see myself as separate, not a part of. Most people do. The "wild" is a place to visit, go camping, and then leave. We want mown lawns and bears we can pet when we feed them.

I want to re-enter my biome with my id, my spirit, not just my intellect. I know that I'm a part of the earth, but I don't know that I'm a part of the earth. The most visceral understanding of my place in the earth is with food. My food has, so far, taught my viscera that it comes in packages and has great slogans. It's taught me that I'm elevated above an animal because I have a debit card and my fruit is available out of season. This is not the truth. I am an animal. When I face the turkey with my bow and arrow, I will teach my viscera what my place in my biome is, that I am just as dependent on my biome as my biome is on me. We cannot be separated, because doing so destroys the earth. This will be the only hunt I ever go on.