Zoro's Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods

The Pacifist and the Hunter

THE PACIFIST AND THE HUNTER Every good hunter is uneasy in the depths of his conscience. JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET Alone far in the wilds and mountains, I hunt. . . WALT WHITMAN "Song of Myself" 'hen I cameinto the woods to live a self-sufficient life, I thought of myself as a pacifist. I had lived for thirty years without killing, intentionally, another living thing other than ants, spiders, and a few snakes—which were actsof unconsciousness during my youth. Years later, I became a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War and went on to protest nonviolently against that war.Allthis wasbased on my belief in the kind of pacifism that was exhibited by Gandhi—who, interestingly enough, got his ideas on civil disobedience and nonviolence from reading Emerson and Thoreau. I came to the woods fairly naive and as a virgin where knowledge of living off the land was concerned . While being one of the gentlest and most thoughtful of people, Zoro smiledat me asIespoused my pacifist idealsand deliveredmyanimal rights monologue during one of our earliest encounters. Ihaven't forgotten his silent sarcasm concerning my self-possessed prattle, and it wasn't long after that conversation that I was confronted face to face with my own idealistic beliefs. As I stared down the barrel of my twenty-gauge shotgun at a rogue squirrel who had been pillaging my fruit crop that year and was threatening to laywaste to another apple from my old limbertwig apple tree, my pacifistic worldviewchanged forever. With a single squeeze of the trigger, I lost my virginity as a member of the benevolent race.While it was one of the harder things IVe ever had to do, it was done with full knowledge that it was the right thing to do, in that there really was no reasonablealternative to save my fruit. 78 QjilVt/hei I was faced with the same choice a short time later, when the raccoons threatened to plunder my sweet corn. I had tried everything from scarecrows to pie tins banging in the breeze, to urinating in the rows, to voodoo . . . but nothing worked. Even Havahart traps were only a temporary deterrent to the predations of the coons and other scavenging animals like woodchucks, skunks, chipmunks, squirrels, and mice, as all of these critters always find their way back home. The only thing left to do was to shoot. Something I do now without shame yet with reluctant aim and a certain reverence, as I still am not comfortable with the taking of life. But sometimes necessity takes precedence over theology or philosophy The whole question of owning and using a gun to kill other living things, while it's not much of an issue here in my community of born-and-bred mountain folks with long histories of self-sufficiency, is nevertheless an emotional issue in the outside world. First, there are animal rights groups and supporters, who embrace an inflexible ethic of thou shalt not kill anything, anywhere, anytime. That is, if it's an animal. Hypocritically, these same people may have opposite views on issues such as the death penalty, waging war, and killing human beings. And then there are religious groups such as the Quakers in this country and the Jains in India—both of whom embrace their own particular doctrine of pacifism. While the Quakers believe in a deep pacifism that forbids not only participation in war but also the resolution of human conflict by means of any sort of violence, the Jains take their pacifistic stance even further, by outlawing aggression or violence toward any living thing, be it insect, animal, or human. While this may be good food for intellectual or spiritual debate in the meetinghouse or temple, I defy the practitioners of these faiths to defend their crops from raccoons with their peaceful ethic, lest they find themselves being offered up, unwillingly, to the gods of malnutrition as a sacrifice. While in principle I agree with the tenets of pacifism (asstrategy, for example, of social nonviolent protest and for purposes of commonsense negotiations of disagreements among individuals, groups, or governments), in reality, after having lived the kind of life I have for these past few years, I have come to see the argument as little 79 I THE PACIFIST AND THE HUNTER more than an indulgence perpetrated by those who have the luxury of not having to fight for their survival. Few...