Sedentary Travelogue #8: Maxwell's Farewell

Hello all! Some info about my recent doings and then a journal entry below.

I moved into my tent a little while back, and it's really a great space. I'm nestled down in a grove of trees, under a giant old oak. It's branches hang around my tent and though I've got trees around, from the front deck of tent platform I can look up and see lots of stars and the moon. And out my western window, I have a marvelous view of the sunset through a few trees on the prairie. Quite idyllic. It's a big tent too, so I have a card table and chair set up in side. Out front I dug a hole and stuck in a few dead branches that had fallen from the tree in earlier years. I've hung a wrought iron lantern off of them, and even though i don't light it often, it makes a nice "front yard".

Last week we had crews going out all day to load up strawbales into a pick-up and trailer, haul them back here and load them up maybe 20 feet high into the large machine shed here. It's hot work since you have to wear long sleeves and jeans, but the breeze has been nice and we jump in the pond after every load to cool off. The whole thing reminds me of the once-a-year bale-hauling parties we'd have at Andy's in high school. But this time the bales are for our house walls. Skyhouse (the income sharing group that I'm a part of here) is starting construction on a two story 6 bedroom strawbale house this summer. There are also two new families that have moved here that are starting strawbale houses this summer as well -- so we need a lot of bales!

On the foraging front, we're just coming out of black raspberry season and the bigger, yummier blackberries should be ripe in about a week. I've also finally gotten around to something I've been meaning to do for years: roasting chicory root. I love chicory coffee, and the it's a common coffee additive in New Orleans and Europe. The flavor is rich and yummy. So I went out and dug up a bunch of the root last week. Since I wanted a slow, low, but steady roast, and I certainly didn't want to use the oven the whole time. It's too hot. So I busted out our solar cooker. No one's been using it much yet this summer, but it's great. It's an insulated box, painted black inside, with a window top. It sits on a stand (an odd phrase that...) that allows it to rotate an shift it's angle to the sun. A fan of mirrors stretches out from the glass top to help focus sunlight into the interior. So the roots have sat in there for the past few days, roasting at a nice 200 - 300 degrees. I haven't yet ground them up and sampled them, but I'm eager to do so. Chicory is such a common weed, that if this is successful, it should be easy to harvest enough for yummy coffee all winter. I'm not yet sure if it matters whether the roots are first or second year roots, or whether they really should be harvested in the fall instead or anything like that. But I'll just keep experimenting and find out.

-- I took a break from writing this (a break of several days) and have now tried the chicory coffee. Hurray! It's delicious! Tastes quite similar to the high quality chicory root I've bought in stores before.

I'm sorry I haven't been writing more to you all directly, but life just keeps being really busy. Know that you're in my thoughts and heart.

I was writing in my journal about the most significant thing that's happened to me in the past few days and so I thought I'd just reprint that here:

July 19
Monday morning
At the dining room table

Yesterday I shot a gun for the first time in my life. I shot the gun to kill an animal that I love. Maxwell, the stray who arrived here last Fall and won everyone's heart with his abundance of affection, had been sick since his arrival. Feline leukemia is a painful disease and the cat usually suffers a lot before dying. We knew he was sick, but he wasn't diagnose until mid-winter. Just in the last week he grew obviously very ill. He had stopped even drinking, his hind legs became paralyzed, and he would pitifully drag himself across the yard for shelter when it rained until someone noticed and helped move him. Quite a few of us were looking after him, but as time wore on it became more obvious that he was in pretty steady pain. Still, I would be startled every now and then when I would squat down by the lilac bush in the front yard which he mostly stayed under and see his front half sitting up, looking alert, and gazing across the fields. I'm a firm believer in not assigning human motivations or emotions to other animals. Even so, it was hard to escape a sense of pride coming from him.

Finally, I had been left as the person to make the decision about whether and when to help Maxwell die. I am usually a proponent of letting nature take its course with an animal's death. While I believe in the "right to die", animals have no way of communicating their approval to us. I felt Maxwell's disease warrented a mercy killing. Still, I held out longer than others might have in order to be sure. Also because I wasn't convinced of a good method. Putting him through the trauma of a car ride and vet's office seemed inappropriate. Yet the violence of a gun seemed ... well, violent, even if it was instantaneous.

By Saturday night and Sunday morning a number of people had expressed that he seemed to be in horrible shape and it was time to let him go. Fortunately, he had disappeared overnight and I figured he had pulled himself off to somewhere private to die in peace. But during a break in our Sunday meeting, a siz year old visitor brought him over and plopped him down. I carried him over to the lilac bush and during the meeting everyone agreed that it was time.

John Kirk [one of our new members] offered to do it with me assisting. After thinking about it a bit, I decided that I wanted to actually shoot the gun. I have long felt comfortable with death, and have felt that if I had to I could kill an animal. But yesterday it occurred to me that I never actually had. And if I could make the decision to kill an animal, then I should be able to follow through with the deed. Even more than that, I made the decision (with the rest of my family) to let my father die. It was an easily made decision, and slightly different in that we were simply removing the hospital's impediments to his death as opposed to directly causing it. The net result was the same of course.

Ethical questions around death have long been with me. I clearly remember a day when I was seven and weeding the family garden with a hoe. I entered a large debate in my mind about whether it was okay to kill those plants. And I told myself that it was a necessary part of making it possible for other plants to grow.

. . .

It was a hot, humid July afternoon. We haven't had a real rain in over 2 weeks. I put Maxwell in a box with a folded sheet at the bottom. He smelled bad and moving him clearly hurt him, but his eyes still looked very alert. I was just wearing cut-offs and as John and I walked out the long winding mowed path out into the field beyond the cabins, my bare feet kept landing on pricker plants. I made sure to just keep walking normally however, in order to avoid jostling Maxwell.

We headed out to a large oak tree at the edge of our property which is in the middle of the prairie grasses. We put Maxwell down in a nice grass lined hollow at the base of the tree. John showed me how to use the gun and pull the trigger with no bullets to get a feel for it. We then just sat with Maxwell for a while, helping him feel loved and get acclimated to this new spot.

After the fact and after John and I held each other and cried a bit sharing that intimate moment, we walked back down the path. We were startled when a bird flew up to a flower top less than ten feet in front of us, sang for about 20 seconds, then flew away. I'm not one to believe in communications from the after life since I don't believe in one, yet it inevitably had the pleasant feel of a message. As we walked on I ws thankful for the gift, a reminder that songs are still sung even as one falls forever silent.

But later that evening I was feeling the loss. While I feel comfortable with death, it is still hard and I respect that. I was standing at the sink with a cup of water when I started crying. Various people were about, going on with a normal day, so I set out for my tent. The land here is riddled with red-wing blackbirds. You can't help butsee them around every day. I know the chirp they give as a warning sign when an intruder enters their territory since we walk by their perches all the time. But all the ever do is chirp their stocatto note until you pass. As I hurried down the road, tears to the sunset, one of these blackbirds let loose a great clatter and started dive bombing my head. I hurried on past its tree and wondered as it fretted back up into a branch. Then, crossing the field to my tent, the same thing happened again. I didn't know what conclusion to draw, but the experience was unsettling.

This morning, with the sun still shining a mellow color, I checked up on Maxwell's body. Though the spirit was gone, the form was familiar and it pleased me to see him again. Turning around, I saw the hills and valleys rolling forth before me, insects leaping, birds coasting and perching, trees undulating. Death is the only certainty in life, and I accept that. It is good to know it closely, from time to time, and to be reminded in my own life of this daily fact.