I am really enjoying your new book so far. I especially appreciate your shining a light on how Christian imperialism (imported to Turtle Island) demonized certain aspects of nature and keystone species (such as wolves) as part of their separation mentality and anthropocentric/fearful worldview. It shows how we all have a lot of un-learning and ancestral remembering to do.
Thank you, Gavin. Yes, we much unlearning and remembering to do. I always appreciate your feedback and comments here. I look forward to your thoughts once you finish the book or are further along.
As promised I would like to offer some more of my thoughts as I slowly progress into reading further in your new book. I would also like to ask a personal question relevant to said subject matter.
So I am in the chapter that talks about Bambi and Deer culling programs.
This really touched on an old wound for me as not only did I watch Bambi when I was a similar age to the age you were when you watched it (and I had a similar reaction) I was also raised on a conventional orchard and vineyard and expected to do my part in "culling" the starlings and quail (that would nibble on the grapes, cherries and apples my parents were growing to sell for money).
After watching movies like Bambi and Pocahontas I asked my parents "is it true that every animal and tree has a spirit, a name, feels and has it's own personality like we do?", My parents quickly discouraged that line of questioning by saying something like "don't be silly, trees are just plants and animals cannot think and feel, some people imagine they do but that is just feel good nonsense". Being a trusting little kid looking up to my parents (the park rangers turned into new farmers) I assumed they knew how the world works, I tried to accept what they told me, and so when they gave me a gun and told me my job was to kill as many starlings and quails as I could as they were damaging the crops, I wanted to do my part on the farm and so I followed their instructions. Given, how open hearted and sensitive to the suffering of other beings I was, and am to this day, having chosen to kill those birds (until I could not do it anymore without bursting into tears) caused real trauma and pain in my heart that haunts me to this day.
Especially since reading Mozart's Starling and learning how social and intelligent starlings are, how they have their own personality and can learn unique behaviors, and vocalizations, how they indeed do have a spirit, it hurts my heart to think of when I listened to my parents and the industry experts that saw (and see) starlings as an over-populated pest problem.
Now I live in southern Ontario. It is 98% deforested now and used to be dense Carolinian forest with amazing diversity and abundance, with 150 foot super canopy trees and layers of abundance in trees below, with bears, lynx, bobcats, wolves, cougars, and their prey. Humans have slaughtered all the bears, wildcats and wolves now in the name of "progress" and so in the tiny sections of forest that remain, deer are of course, breeding without any natural limits on their populations. I live near a national park (Point Pelee) which is one of the tiny places where the deer still have forest to live in. Once a year the government staff there bring people in to (and sometimes participate in) doing a deer "culling" (deer massacre would be a more accurate description). The park is a long strip of forest with water on all sides so they box in the families of deer and corner them, using drones when there is no leaf cover to hunt them down and shoot them when they have no where to run (until they have a number of deer that is considered "acceptable"). I know people that were part of the cullings and some of the younger men that were encouraged to be part of it by the staff and their hunter parents, described to me similar trauma that I have experienced, and do experience due to my choice to kill the birds in the name of "culling" ('for their own good and the good of the ecosystem/farm').
I also know people that followed their parents into the family line of business at a slaughterhouse locally, their psychological trauma is even more severe.
Given all of that, and given how you described in the book that you chose to eat deer meat from a culling, my question to you is this:
Have you ever killed and "field dressed" (gutted) a deer yourself?
The reason I ask is because given how damaging I know that type of killing can be for those with an open heart and a sensitivity to other being's suffering, I wanted to know your stance on people eating meat from animals that other people had to kill for them (given the fact that in a situation where one person kills and another just eats the meat, it is another person what would have to experience the trauma of killing so that someone that is insulated from said trauma can eat the meat).
I would likely only eat meat in a survival situation, as respectfully, with as much compassion as I could embody and with as much reverence for the animal I would be killing as possible) but it would be a last resort. I would do it to continue living so that I can share my gifts with the world and I would treat that meat as a gift and my having eaten it as having agreed to a sacred agreement with the animal to honor it's life through my actions going forward.
As I stated above, for hundreds of kilometers in all directions around where we live the forest has been chopped down (and the wild life populations decimated) in the name of “progress”, so hunting is not really a viable or ethical option for me either (except for an emergency). Thus, for now, I eat a mostly plant/fungi based diet (trading with an Amish farmer nearby for eggs and dairy occasionally).
Another part of my decision to not eat meat as part of my regular diet is that as I said above, I have known a few guys that worked at slaughterhouses and I witnessed the toll it takes on one’s heart and mind (one of them became an alcoholic and the other transformed into a very angry and depressed person). Perhaps some people can handle that type of work better than others, but these guys were nice people that were enjoyable to be around and the experience of ending life, all day everyday as a day job, being exposed to intermittent instances of suffering and horrible sounds/sights when the process goes wrong, really took a toll on them. They receive relatively poor pay and I have also read the suicide rates of slaughterhouse workers is inordinately high, thus, I do not feel right outsourcing that emotional, mental and physical cost onto other human beings either, so if I was going to eat meat, it would only feel right to me if I was to do the killing my self, as to only burden myself with the emotional trauma of that act so I can eat the meat, and not outsource it onto another.
So those are my thoughts and feelings about the Bambi chapter and I would like to thank you in advance for your time in reading and responding if you feel comfortable.
Thank you so much for this thoughtful comment, Gavin. I've just returned from Scotland where I faciltated a retreat and am catching up on work and communication. I'll reply in more depth as soon as I can but I did write about some of my feelings around that in the Vulture chapter, and how spending time with wolves helped me make peace with eating meat (very ocassionally) again. When I consider my food choices I consider the ecosystem as a whole. When I ate deer in the Highlands it was a much better choice for the ecosystem than getting vegetables shipped in. More soon. 🌱
I appreciate the reply and I look forward to hearing more on your stance on an individual making the choice to eat meat, but having other people kill the animals for them.
BTW, I do not make any judgements in that realm, as I justified to myself why eating meat was good for me until about 7 years ago (despite knowing about how hunting and slaughter houses impact both four legged beings and humans for a number of years before that time frame). I have hunted for small game and been present when larger four legged beings were hunted, killed and "field dressed", and in those instances, I was a meat eater.
So I understand the challenge and I do not claim to have hands that are 'clean of blood' in that regard. I agree that we are all predators (and I apply that to eating other sentient beings such as plants, as well as animals in how I define the word) I was just hoping to learn more about how you view the choice to have other people do the killing for another so they can eat. Thanks.
Hi Gavin, Finally circling back to respond here. This is something I've thought long and deeply about, as well. Like I said, I've been doing my best to eat in relation to the entire ecosystem and think about the impact of having food like avocados shipped from Mexico to MA (that is destroying Monarch butterfly habitat) and eating vegetables or legumes grown in areas that were once forest; which also harms and often kills animals, of course. As far as having people kill animals like deer for me: When I ate venison in the Scottish Highlands, I knew and trusted the person who did so. I also knew that they were culling the deer whether we ate them or not, and thankfully, they were using and honoring the entire animal. So it is complicated. I have not done my own hunting and I know it would be incredibly difficult to do as you say. But I have no illusions as to what I consume and where the plants, animals or fungi came from and I always thank and honor them in my own way before I eat.
I appreciate you taking the time to respond and share your thoughts and personal perspective on this topic.
Thank you for your compassion and thoughts regarding our non-human kin in how you choose your diet.
RE: "eating vegetables or legumes grown in areas that were once forest" Indeed, many well meaning "vegans" do that, which is one of the reasons I published a mostly plant based recipe book that did not just list ingredients (to be bought from a store, which likely sourced them from a monoculture, which was likely once a biodiverse forest before it was clearcut) but instead I provided step by step instructions for the reader to go all the way from a handful of seeds, to a garden harvest, to creating nutrient dense recipes, preserving crops, saving seed and completing the cycle through composting to enrich the living Earth.
I am glad to hear you knew the person that killed the deer you ate, at least in that personal relationship with the one doing the killing, you can gauge how desensitized that individual is to the suffering of animals (and thus, you can estimate whether the continued act of killing and witnessing suffering is likely to traumatize them). Most people just swipe cards at a store and have no idea of the five middle men between them and the person that did the killing of the animal they paid for a piece of flesh from.
That disconnect (and even the disconnect between someone that buys a meat product labelled as "ethically raised" or "humanely killed" etc.) that has never seen what it takes to raise/hunt and kill/process an animal and the person doing the killing, is in my opinion, at the very least, disrespectful and callous with regards to how it impacts other humans (who have to do the killing for them) and if someone is not anthropocentric in their compassion, it is also disrespectful to the being that is being eaten.
Based on how I perceive and engage in the ritual myself, thanking a being for providing sustenance for us (as part of something that resembles the covenant of The Honorable Harvest) is a gesture intended for a living being to sense and connect with. In other words, I see thanking a package of meat from walmart or a tofu burger from a fast food joint as perhaps something that is healthy in a psychological sense for the human being (states of gratitude have measurable biological effects for humans) but as somewhat of a hollow afterthought when it comes to ensuring that the being that is being eaten is able to sense the gratitude and thanks. Though, 99.9999% of humans on Earth now eat something from a grocery store (at least everynow and then) including myself, and in that case, I would say that the gesture of thanks and the effort to measurably give back in some way, is still worth while.
So ya, I think, in our hyper-materialistic, globalized supply chain, ecologically exploited modern world, taking action to get to truly know and understand what impact our food choices have not only on the land and the beings that we are consuming, but also the impact on the humans having to do the killing/farming for us, is of paramount importance.
oh and on a somewhat separate note, I just stumbled across this clip from a film from 1981 and what the character said about people from New York city (that feel compelled to leave but feel drawn to stay) made me think of some of your life experiences that you write about with regards to the love/hate relationship you had with the city:
I will certainly offer more of my thoughts as I get further into the book.
I am curious had you ever read any of Fred Hageneder's writing before you came across that review I just did on his book? I shared that excerpt from your book in there as so much of what he writes about how the Church worked relentlessly to demonize the wild parts of nature made me think of your work. The part he shares about the "sacred groves" of our ancestors in Scotland and how the church worked to change people's perspective from revering trees to looking on them with fear and contempt (the whole tree of forbidden knowledge thing etc) it made me think of your writing on wolves.
Btw I still have some pawpaw seeds for you guys from this year's harvest if you wanna plant some next year. Just private message or email me with a preferred mailing address if you want them and i`ll send em over.
I haven’t read his work but that just gave me chills. I will definitely look him up, thank you. I didn’t see the excerpt from my book! I’ll have to read that post more closely. I’m just catching up after a packed few weeks. Very grateful for you and your work. I’ll message you about the seeds. 🌱
Yes I think you would really resonate with his book that I reviewed in my most recent post especially.
Well that is not surprising! ( about you missing the excerpt from your book that I shared in my review) haha. After all, the review is quite labyrinthian and it meanders like an old river becoming a deep canyon (with waterfalls of thoughts pouring into plunge pools of contemplation) :)
You will find the couple pics I shared from your book about 1/3 of the way down the post.
Ok cool, i`ll throw in some seeds for ideal companion plants for the pawpaw trees for attracting ideal pollinators as well.
Do you guys have Butternut trees down where the forest you and your partner steward is situated?
I was walking in some of the very last old growth (primary) Carolinian forest that exists in Ontario today I found three separate old growth pawpaw groves with trees of all ages reaching up to 50 feet high underneath the Butternut and Shagbark Hickory. The amount of food those three tree species alone are producing in the same square footage in a single season is astounding. Especially the butternut trees, they were over 100 feet tall and raining down protein with a verdant grove of Pawpaw trees underneath. There is so much potential in food forest design, when one looks at it with open eyes it makes modern industrial agriculture look like a sad joke in comparison.
Congratulations. I love this, plants, animals, and most humans. I hope your book reaches the masses as this connection is essential. Thank you for loving all of Her.
I am really enjoying your new book so far. I especially appreciate your shining a light on how Christian imperialism (imported to Turtle Island) demonized certain aspects of nature and keystone species (such as wolves) as part of their separation mentality and anthropocentric/fearful worldview. It shows how we all have a lot of un-learning and ancestral remembering to do.
Thank you, Gavin. Yes, we much unlearning and remembering to do. I always appreciate your feedback and comments here. I look forward to your thoughts once you finish the book or are further along.
As promised I would like to offer some more of my thoughts as I slowly progress into reading further in your new book. I would also like to ask a personal question relevant to said subject matter.
So I am in the chapter that talks about Bambi and Deer culling programs.
This really touched on an old wound for me as not only did I watch Bambi when I was a similar age to the age you were when you watched it (and I had a similar reaction) I was also raised on a conventional orchard and vineyard and expected to do my part in "culling" the starlings and quail (that would nibble on the grapes, cherries and apples my parents were growing to sell for money).
After watching movies like Bambi and Pocahontas I asked my parents "is it true that every animal and tree has a spirit, a name, feels and has it's own personality like we do?", My parents quickly discouraged that line of questioning by saying something like "don't be silly, trees are just plants and animals cannot think and feel, some people imagine they do but that is just feel good nonsense". Being a trusting little kid looking up to my parents (the park rangers turned into new farmers) I assumed they knew how the world works, I tried to accept what they told me, and so when they gave me a gun and told me my job was to kill as many starlings and quails as I could as they were damaging the crops, I wanted to do my part on the farm and so I followed their instructions. Given, how open hearted and sensitive to the suffering of other beings I was, and am to this day, having chosen to kill those birds (until I could not do it anymore without bursting into tears) caused real trauma and pain in my heart that haunts me to this day.
Especially since reading Mozart's Starling and learning how social and intelligent starlings are, how they have their own personality and can learn unique behaviors, and vocalizations, how they indeed do have a spirit, it hurts my heart to think of when I listened to my parents and the industry experts that saw (and see) starlings as an over-populated pest problem.
Now I live in southern Ontario. It is 98% deforested now and used to be dense Carolinian forest with amazing diversity and abundance, with 150 foot super canopy trees and layers of abundance in trees below, with bears, lynx, bobcats, wolves, cougars, and their prey. Humans have slaughtered all the bears, wildcats and wolves now in the name of "progress" and so in the tiny sections of forest that remain, deer are of course, breeding without any natural limits on their populations. I live near a national park (Point Pelee) which is one of the tiny places where the deer still have forest to live in. Once a year the government staff there bring people in to (and sometimes participate in) doing a deer "culling" (deer massacre would be a more accurate description). The park is a long strip of forest with water on all sides so they box in the families of deer and corner them, using drones when there is no leaf cover to hunt them down and shoot them when they have no where to run (until they have a number of deer that is considered "acceptable"). I know people that were part of the cullings and some of the younger men that were encouraged to be part of it by the staff and their hunter parents, described to me similar trauma that I have experienced, and do experience due to my choice to kill the birds in the name of "culling" ('for their own good and the good of the ecosystem/farm').
I also know people that followed their parents into the family line of business at a slaughterhouse locally, their psychological trauma is even more severe.
Given all of that, and given how you described in the book that you chose to eat deer meat from a culling, my question to you is this:
Have you ever killed and "field dressed" (gutted) a deer yourself?
The reason I ask is because given how damaging I know that type of killing can be for those with an open heart and a sensitivity to other being's suffering, I wanted to know your stance on people eating meat from animals that other people had to kill for them (given the fact that in a situation where one person kills and another just eats the meat, it is another person what would have to experience the trauma of killing so that someone that is insulated from said trauma can eat the meat).
I would likely only eat meat in a survival situation, as respectfully, with as much compassion as I could embody and with as much reverence for the animal I would be killing as possible) but it would be a last resort. I would do it to continue living so that I can share my gifts with the world and I would treat that meat as a gift and my having eaten it as having agreed to a sacred agreement with the animal to honor it's life through my actions going forward.
As I stated above, for hundreds of kilometers in all directions around where we live the forest has been chopped down (and the wild life populations decimated) in the name of “progress”, so hunting is not really a viable or ethical option for me either (except for an emergency). Thus, for now, I eat a mostly plant/fungi based diet (trading with an Amish farmer nearby for eggs and dairy occasionally).
Another part of my decision to not eat meat as part of my regular diet is that as I said above, I have known a few guys that worked at slaughterhouses and I witnessed the toll it takes on one’s heart and mind (one of them became an alcoholic and the other transformed into a very angry and depressed person). Perhaps some people can handle that type of work better than others, but these guys were nice people that were enjoyable to be around and the experience of ending life, all day everyday as a day job, being exposed to intermittent instances of suffering and horrible sounds/sights when the process goes wrong, really took a toll on them. They receive relatively poor pay and I have also read the suicide rates of slaughterhouse workers is inordinately high, thus, I do not feel right outsourcing that emotional, mental and physical cost onto other human beings either, so if I was going to eat meat, it would only feel right to me if I was to do the killing my self, as to only burden myself with the emotional trauma of that act so I can eat the meat, and not outsource it onto another.
So those are my thoughts and feelings about the Bambi chapter and I would like to thank you in advance for your time in reading and responding if you feel comfortable.
Thank you so much for this thoughtful comment, Gavin. I've just returned from Scotland where I faciltated a retreat and am catching up on work and communication. I'll reply in more depth as soon as I can but I did write about some of my feelings around that in the Vulture chapter, and how spending time with wolves helped me make peace with eating meat (very ocassionally) again. When I consider my food choices I consider the ecosystem as a whole. When I ate deer in the Highlands it was a much better choice for the ecosystem than getting vegetables shipped in. More soon. 🌱
I appreciate the reply and I look forward to hearing more on your stance on an individual making the choice to eat meat, but having other people kill the animals for them.
BTW, I do not make any judgements in that realm, as I justified to myself why eating meat was good for me until about 7 years ago (despite knowing about how hunting and slaughter houses impact both four legged beings and humans for a number of years before that time frame). I have hunted for small game and been present when larger four legged beings were hunted, killed and "field dressed", and in those instances, I was a meat eater.
So I understand the challenge and I do not claim to have hands that are 'clean of blood' in that regard. I agree that we are all predators (and I apply that to eating other sentient beings such as plants, as well as animals in how I define the word) I was just hoping to learn more about how you view the choice to have other people do the killing for another so they can eat. Thanks.
Hi Gavin, Finally circling back to respond here. This is something I've thought long and deeply about, as well. Like I said, I've been doing my best to eat in relation to the entire ecosystem and think about the impact of having food like avocados shipped from Mexico to MA (that is destroying Monarch butterfly habitat) and eating vegetables or legumes grown in areas that were once forest; which also harms and often kills animals, of course. As far as having people kill animals like deer for me: When I ate venison in the Scottish Highlands, I knew and trusted the person who did so. I also knew that they were culling the deer whether we ate them or not, and thankfully, they were using and honoring the entire animal. So it is complicated. I have not done my own hunting and I know it would be incredibly difficult to do as you say. But I have no illusions as to what I consume and where the plants, animals or fungi came from and I always thank and honor them in my own way before I eat.
I appreciate you taking the time to respond and share your thoughts and personal perspective on this topic.
Thank you for your compassion and thoughts regarding our non-human kin in how you choose your diet.
RE: "eating vegetables or legumes grown in areas that were once forest" Indeed, many well meaning "vegans" do that, which is one of the reasons I published a mostly plant based recipe book that did not just list ingredients (to be bought from a store, which likely sourced them from a monoculture, which was likely once a biodiverse forest before it was clearcut) but instead I provided step by step instructions for the reader to go all the way from a handful of seeds, to a garden harvest, to creating nutrient dense recipes, preserving crops, saving seed and completing the cycle through composting to enrich the living Earth.
I am glad to hear you knew the person that killed the deer you ate, at least in that personal relationship with the one doing the killing, you can gauge how desensitized that individual is to the suffering of animals (and thus, you can estimate whether the continued act of killing and witnessing suffering is likely to traumatize them). Most people just swipe cards at a store and have no idea of the five middle men between them and the person that did the killing of the animal they paid for a piece of flesh from.
That disconnect (and even the disconnect between someone that buys a meat product labelled as "ethically raised" or "humanely killed" etc.) that has never seen what it takes to raise/hunt and kill/process an animal and the person doing the killing, is in my opinion, at the very least, disrespectful and callous with regards to how it impacts other humans (who have to do the killing for them) and if someone is not anthropocentric in their compassion, it is also disrespectful to the being that is being eaten.
Based on how I perceive and engage in the ritual myself, thanking a being for providing sustenance for us (as part of something that resembles the covenant of The Honorable Harvest) is a gesture intended for a living being to sense and connect with. In other words, I see thanking a package of meat from walmart or a tofu burger from a fast food joint as perhaps something that is healthy in a psychological sense for the human being (states of gratitude have measurable biological effects for humans) but as somewhat of a hollow afterthought when it comes to ensuring that the being that is being eaten is able to sense the gratitude and thanks. Though, 99.9999% of humans on Earth now eat something from a grocery store (at least everynow and then) including myself, and in that case, I would say that the gesture of thanks and the effort to measurably give back in some way, is still worth while.
So ya, I think, in our hyper-materialistic, globalized supply chain, ecologically exploited modern world, taking action to get to truly know and understand what impact our food choices have not only on the land and the beings that we are consuming, but also the impact on the humans having to do the killing/farming for us, is of paramount importance.
Thanks again for your time.
oh and on a somewhat separate note, I just stumbled across this clip from a film from 1981 and what the character said about people from New York city (that feel compelled to leave but feel drawn to stay) made me think of some of your life experiences that you write about with regards to the love/hate relationship you had with the city:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJMO0i-xsbc
I will certainly offer more of my thoughts as I get further into the book.
I am curious had you ever read any of Fred Hageneder's writing before you came across that review I just did on his book? I shared that excerpt from your book in there as so much of what he writes about how the Church worked relentlessly to demonize the wild parts of nature made me think of your work. The part he shares about the "sacred groves" of our ancestors in Scotland and how the church worked to change people's perspective from revering trees to looking on them with fear and contempt (the whole tree of forbidden knowledge thing etc) it made me think of your writing on wolves.
Btw I still have some pawpaw seeds for you guys from this year's harvest if you wanna plant some next year. Just private message or email me with a preferred mailing address if you want them and i`ll send em over.
I haven’t read his work but that just gave me chills. I will definitely look him up, thank you. I didn’t see the excerpt from my book! I’ll have to read that post more closely. I’m just catching up after a packed few weeks. Very grateful for you and your work. I’ll message you about the seeds. 🌱
Yes I think you would really resonate with his book that I reviewed in my most recent post especially.
Well that is not surprising! ( about you missing the excerpt from your book that I shared in my review) haha. After all, the review is quite labyrinthian and it meanders like an old river becoming a deep canyon (with waterfalls of thoughts pouring into plunge pools of contemplation) :)
You will find the couple pics I shared from your book about 1/3 of the way down the post.
Ok cool, i`ll throw in some seeds for ideal companion plants for the pawpaw trees for attracting ideal pollinators as well.
Do you guys have Butternut trees down where the forest you and your partner steward is situated?
I was walking in some of the very last old growth (primary) Carolinian forest that exists in Ontario today I found three separate old growth pawpaw groves with trees of all ages reaching up to 50 feet high underneath the Butternut and Shagbark Hickory. The amount of food those three tree species alone are producing in the same square footage in a single season is astounding. Especially the butternut trees, they were over 100 feet tall and raining down protein with a verdant grove of Pawpaw trees underneath. There is so much potential in food forest design, when one looks at it with open eyes it makes modern industrial agriculture look like a sad joke in comparison.
Congratulations. I love this, plants, animals, and most humans. I hope your book reaches the masses as this connection is essential. Thank you for loving all of Her.
Thank you so much, Prajna. I hope so, too! 💚 And yes, I fall more and mroe in love every day. 🌱🍂
Beautiful
the book sounds wonderful! congratulations!!!!
Thank you so much, Karen! 🌱