The Labrinth of the Sacred

Remember this: What I write now is my perspective on this at the moment. My ideals on differing situations, pondering or conclusions are not set in stone but change given the circumstance. What may be true here could be completely different elsewhere depending on perspective, frame of mind, input, and what I exchange but is left as ‘open-ended’. It’s not meant to brain wash you but give you something to think about and help you. Just think ‘messages’.

 
I was the chauffeur for my mother Wednesday. She had an appointment at a specialist in North Charleston. I told her that if I were to drive her I wanted to make a side trip to this place called Mepkin Abbey. It’s a sect of Trappist monks living in Monck’s Corner. Due to my pass history of working for a resort hotel I usually take care to plan even a road trip well. I want to enjoy myself but not be rushed. I also thought my mother could do with getting out somewhere that wasn’t stressful and enjoy a walk. That was my stab at being daughterly. I try the same thing with my dad but it always turns into an epic fail. The Abbey was only twenty minutes from the doctor’s office although it was really off the beaten path down this long country highway. She agreed with it but she is not one to want to do anything adventurous unless it is with other people. Not me. I do not have a viable relationship with her regardless of all the things I have done to help her. It has always been that way. I figured the time and left where we would have two hours to gawk or get lost driving then be found again.
On the way up to the Abbey I was driving along listening to the radio and thinking about landscapes. It’s odd how you can be listening to music and it mirrors your train of thought. I had been on this discovery mission about sacredness, life, and what the universe is trying to tell me. I was listening to Stairway to Heaven and Dust in the Wind. Then Hotel California came on the radio twice. I had to think of what the songs were about and if there was some way that I could weave them into Angelia’s Cosmology as it pertained to my personal universe. I was pretty calm because my mother had put the seat back to fall asleep. Dust in the Wind was about the circle of life. Stairway to Heaven was about greed on society. Hotel California is about hedonism, self-destruction, and greed.
I pondered how greed, self-destruction and hedonism (which is pleasure being the only intrinsically good) had affected my life thus far. I do not consider myself a greedy person unless chocolate is handy. I have had lots of money and very little money while learning to live on air; feast or famine. I have been abandoned by several people for material things. After a while that messes with your self-esteem because a kitchen knife has more value than you do and they sale them all the time at Wal-Mart. It’s worse when it comes from people that you think should value you but don’t. It would seem that it is other peoples’ greed for money, land, and any possession they can steal, hoard, or plot to gain. It’s a sad note to report that when the choice is between a speck of dirt and your own flesh and blood; the speck of dirt wins because it’s more important. It’s so important that the land monger would pull a Moses and walk their child up to the rock on the mountain and sacrifice them under the knife so they can retain it all for the greater good. That would sound like madness but there are people that live by those beliefs. When you have parents that consider the existence of their children as ‘options’ or ‘other options’ you really have to wonder exactly how secure are you in this life? How can you form any close bond with a human being that is not blood if your very blood relatives see you as expendable? You then start grading your own value because everything has strings attached. There is no unconditional love. Everything comes with legal fine print (or a price tag to which some sale their souls) that will burn you in the next couple of lives.
I pondered self-destruction. I am probably guilty of this because I feel some days like I did a great wrong in life. Surely all the muck you get comes from deserving it but that is not always the case. A lot of people don’t deserve it for good or bad but who is the judge and jury on that one? One to which I can’t remember and feel like I do not deserve certain things so it’s like rotating self-punishment for failures. In my family you only present the emotion that makes others feel good. Any emotion contrary to that is to be suppressed, internalized until it becomes much like a poison or a cancer. You either have to vomit it out, cut it out, or die from it. If you die you will be completely eradicated from the family memory. . I have found myself at times tearing things that I build down because I am frustrated with how things are going and decide to start over rather than pick a spot and work from there. Salvaging workable information is probably better than pouring gas on the pile and striking a match to watch it burn.
I passed through Andrews which was a sleepy little town with one red light and a very pastel green church on the corner of the center of town. I was driving down this corridor of green pine trees towards Charleston where a couple of the towns were really not very scenic. I got closer to one of the parts of Francis Marion Forest which cut through a town called Macedonia. I saw a sign that said Macedonia Home of the Foxes. I laughed to myself because as the fox is a shape-shifter showed up on the sign. I assumed I was on the right path and train of thought. I finally got on the road to the abbey. It was about a fifteen minute drive which will end you at the gates leading up a long gravel drive lined with oak trees probably from early man. Old oak trees do lend a certain amount of creepiness or loneliness to a landscape but they are still beautiful. I got out and took a couple of photos where a sign with a monk on it pointed to the reception area. I drove up the drive and parked in the visitor center/store parking lot. We went inside to look around. There was all manner of religious paraphernalia with ceramic pots, soaps, and cooking spices. The abbey is self-sufficient by selling artisan products. The back part of the store which leads to the church was closed. After buying some soap my mother was sitting on a bench. She kept making comments about leaving. I wondered at this. I informed her that we were two hours early but not to worry. We got in the SUV. I decided to drive down this white sandy lane at the angry insistence of my mother that I was doing wrong, going to get caught, and should be ashamed of myself. She told me I was not supposed to go back there because it was off limits. I gave her the crazy eye then drove right back there. This little road leads to the garden section of the property. I went all the way to the back. The garden had a few religious sculptures but not a lot. It was also only landscaped with evergreens or medium sized trees and shrubs. I came to a stop and got out. I started walking around taking pictures when I looked back at the vehicle to see my mother sitting there. I walked back and asked her didn’t she want to get out the SUV and walk around. She bluntly told me no. She then saw a couple sitting on a bench and declared there was people back there like we were intruding on them or they were the abbey police. I told her it was a place to walk around. She still refused so I left her in the SUV. I was well beyond having my feelings hurt by anything she does other than trying to actively get me killed because it ‘amuses her’. I walked down to the water’s edge. The back of the garden is located on Lake Moultrie. Lake Moultrie is also connected to Santee so there are plenty of fish and alligators along with waterfowl. It was a really beautiful day. I figured I would take my time so I spent an hour meandering down by the lake. I did walk by this one reservoir pond that had a sign warning about the alligators. I could hear in the trees something moving around. It got me to thinking of things that are unseen but there. An elderly man came up to sit on a bench. He pulled out a book and began to read. The couple disappeared over the hill. As I walked along I began to think of paths. This place had a lot of paths. Some paths lead upward along a non-linear walkway. Other paths lead upstairs to another ‘floor’ even though they might only be just a set of stone steps that seemed to be there more for looks rather than leading to anywhere important.
At one point I was annoyed with my mother because I had tried to do her a nice turn to only be snubbed. She didn’t want to spend time with me or walk around. I realized that here was a beautiful sacred place where one could enjoy the day, spend time working out issues or aligning one’s self for the better, and getting something from a minuscule moment. I then realized I was just a tool to drive her to a doctor’s office. She had absolutely no interest in me or the place. I had to accept that. It was like rejection. I felt rejection. This might fall under the category of questions people ask when they say, “Why doesn’t that person want to be with me?” You don’t get an answer. Even though it bothered me I didn’t dwell on it because it would only put me in a foul mood. I finished up and walked back to the SUV. She was sitting there. I got in and she was pushing for us to leave. I turned around to head out then just to be funny I asked her, “Are you afraid to get out on consecrated ground because you have Satan in you?” She gave me an angry look. She said, “I walked on the ground when I got out at the store.” I eye balled her seriously, “Open the door, remove that croc on your foot and touch it with a bare toe. Or are you afraid you’ll burst into flames?” She huffed at me like a bantam chicken. I laughed and said seriously, “Satan.” My mother then goes on this twenty minute verbal tirade on how I was trying to convert her to religion when she didn’t want any, didn’t believe in God, and that she had joined the Church of Lord Calvert at work. I shook my head. Before we had left the house I told her that getting out of the house would do her some good. She needed to be doing something to preoccupy her mind off of revenge or vengeful thoughts and acts.
We stopped in to get a bite then went to the appointment which she inadvertently made me miss the exit by declaring that we weren’t supposed to be going to Savannah. I told her I was but missed it in the argument. I then circled like a buzzard until I got back on the right road. We stayed at the doctor’s office for a while, she got seen, and we left to get her home because she had to work. On the way home out of the blue she tells me that she doesn’t want me driving her to the next appointment. I didn’t say a word. I guess she really thought I was trying to pull an intervention and convert her to a higher power. I think she needs something .What? I don’t know but something.
I was just glad to be home.
I remember picking up a pamphlet in the abbey store that explained the place. There was one part in it that I thought was worth note. It mentioned a labyrinth. A labyrinth is a path that is one way. It leads in to a place and that same path leads you right back out. Just to be clear a maze has alternating paths with decisions that can lead you to multiple places depending on which one you choose. The outcome will be more randomized.
I googled the cultural meanings of labyrinths to find it could be a clear definable path to go with one entrance, a form of pilgrimage, to contain benevolent spirits, or to morph into a contemplative state by distraction. I did think of how a labyrinth reminded me of a medicine wheel that one sees outside. It too has an entry way that leads into the sacred area where you can ‘get right with the sacred’.
This concept of a labyrinth also reminded me of a story my philosophy teacher once told his class about his spiritual beliefs. It would seem that Professor Blackwell was a pastor that worked in the military. He had gone to seminary which was the cause of questioning his beliefs. He finished there but then fell into this atheist funk years later. He said he was dead against it but after examining all the major religions he wasn’t satisfied that any of them were the one true religion. He then found himself right back at the beginning where he started from with his religious beliefs.
When you are at a starting point to any endeavor you would probably be more inclined to believe you are following a maze but if you find yourself back where you started then you were in a labyrinth. You were never lost to start with it just seemed that way because all you had to do was back track to find your way out. If you feel you are lost then stop where you are. Assess your situation, find your bearings and listen to your intuition. You can guide yourself if you believe enough in yourself to find it in you to be the person you are and not the one the world is trying to traumatize into a mold that wasn’t you to start with. You can also try to warp yourself in a feeble attempt at becoming a desired component for other people’s consumption. That will only lead to your unhappiness because it is not you then again maybe it is you and you’re just finding your way. The interpretation is left up to you. If it makes you feel happy then you’re on your way. Then again sometimes you have to hit rock bottom be completely miserable before things can change for the better. If it does not then find your way back out onto another path that is the right one for you.

Written by: W Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Imagining Wildlife Abundance.

Remember this:  Always keep this in mind. We are always competing with wildlife. We are always competing with each other.

I like to compare and contrast.  I also like to read old books because no harm ever came from reading a book. This gives me a better sense of the topics and subtopics I tend to meditate on.  Various points in time especially because you can evaluate the specifically different events on a timeline and see just how much in denial or ‘the dark’ you possibly could be living.

I have recently become enamored with this mental vision of life on the North American continent before immigrants started their Exodus from Europe and other places, even if it was based on general curiosity, greed, religious persecution, or being exiled based on law-breaking.

Most of the books I have been reading are accounts from the 1700s or the 1800s. My readings are filled with articulated journalists that wrote honest non-biased (?) accounts of that particular moment in time.

In the current century, much of these honest commentaries are tossed to the wayside because certain ethnic groups complained competing ethnic group were writing a history for them that wasn’t true. What are people to do? Say we know nothing then make a story/history up for the sake of using another fabrication to uplift a group? A lie is a lie no matter who tells it or for what reason.

You are probably wondering what exactly does this have to do with hunting. If you have done any online observation of the coverage on hunter’s guilt in regards to old timers shooting buffalo or over-killing species to the point of decimation: it’s kind of along those lines.

My curiosity is the amount of game that was actually available because I can’t seem to picture this number in my head based on the reports in old documentation. Really it is mind-blowing when you compare it to recent numbers and the wordage on explaining the current population of species as ‘healthy’.

I was reading an account on the passenger pigeon from Charles Mann’s book, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.  After reading the passages on the passenger pigeon you could easily visualize a snippet from Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds. In summary it stated how the passenger pigeon was so plentiful the people living at the time would hold hunting parties to kill them and feast.  To quote Mann’s text it is stated, “In Haudenosaunee lore, the birds represented nature’s generosity, a species literally selected by the spirit world to nourish humankind.” (Mann p. 355) Given there could have been some revolving environment or ecological disturbance that made the conditions right for the passenger pigeon to populate in large numbers it does make one think. If the passenger pigeon could grow in number with lack of human habitation encroaching on their environment, what about the other species of huntable animal? 

I read on where it was stated the number of passenger pigeons actually exploded after the immigrants came. I then thought, maybe it was because there were a wider variety of agricultural goods such as whole grains like wheat, barley, oats, and other vegetables. Hence the change in the passenger pigeon diet and the readily available seeds increased the numbers excluding breeding season trends. I looked for accounts of a passenger pigeon ‘mass extinction’. Something to the magnitude of bird littering the ground dead would make even the discerning Pilgrim carving his Thanksgiving turkey take notice. I found none unless my researching skills are lacking or the information is locked away in some weathered disintegrating journal.

The passenger pigeon’s story ends with that bird species becoming extinct. There lingers a very questionable belief that indigenous people and immigrants didn’t hunt them to extinction. The last bird died in 1941. Here you have a huntable bird that went from being bountiful to being a poster child (as is the bison) for generational hunting guilt that happened many years ago.

I was still imagining ‘wilderness abundance’ as it was called. In the ongoing drama of life, where does man stand on the stage of the natural world versus his fellow players?

That place man stands is one of subtle competition even from the employ of managers of limited aspects of Nature. Man cannot control a hurricane or a tornado but man can control X amount of acres and what lives or grows on that acreage.

In times past, indigenous people or immigrants competed for food (both plant and animal) on the natural landscape with wild game. One would have to imagine the Scales of Life. Man hunted wildlife to eat them but lowered the number of competitors for natural growing food. There was also agricultural based food.

Agriculture was in the New World. Corn was one of the main cash crops for ancient man. Indigenous farmers probably practiced the same habit of discouraging wildlife from eating the crops they hoped to store for the winter.

I see this now where farmers will kill off a herd of deer to safeguard their harvest with the mentality that there are deer elsewhere for people to hunt.

With this view of human competition with wildlife for food, because space was not an issue, it would seem how did it play in with my visualization of wildlife abundance?

As to my original obsession with herd numbers I read that the naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton tossed out these estimated numbers:

·         60,000,000 Bison

·         40,000,000 Pronghorn

·         10,000,000 Elk

·         10,000,000 Mule Deer

·         2,000,000 Mountain Sheep

Can you imagine standing on a slope glassing for something respectable to shoot at and seeing that many of one species in one place? How would you feel if you didn’t have to walk around for a whole week, then go home empty handed with no luck, no money, and no meat to eat? Could you imagine what a hunter, from back then, would do or say if he were to come to the present time and have to live the way we do? He would probably have a nervous breakdown and think he was in a hell that didn’t exist yet. What would this hunter of old say if he were forced to watch a hunting show on television?  I can only laugh with the thought he would sit on a rock to cry, then kill himself from disappointment and grief but that is being dramatic.

If a hunter from today went back in time, I am sure they would have to take a diaper. If that hunter saw 40,000,000 pronghorn, he would lose all bodily function and make a mess of himself where he stood.

I watch the Sportsman Channel for one show, otherwise I am not watching. You can surf the channel there to peruse a pronghorn show. I watched one where the hunter sat in an outbuilding near a watering hole. He only saw 2-3 pronghorns but finally killed one returning to drink. How do you think that hunter would feel if he were sitting in his little outhouse with 10,000 pronghorn running around him? That would probably kill the fun of it because you would think which one do I chose. Again you could be thinking, “Oh my God. There are so many I can kill a bushel and a peck. It wouldn’t matter.”

Mann throughout his book, lobbies the fact the early North American continent was a series of manipulated landscapes by indigenous people for the management of wildlife habitat with respect to their mutual benefit. Even though agriculture was somewhat different from European farming, the management of wildlife away from farming locations seemed to be a trend by archaeological data.

Here you might have specific wild game the indigenous people would hunt locally to discourage competition with wild game that would eat their crops. They would kill off local populations and encourage those same populations further away to propagate. Given the concept of space and time, these wildlife populations would not be very far away due to the concern of meat waste, time or effort. When a person is trying to survive you take all aspects into consideration.

I then tried to wrap my mind around the concept of human populations, industry, and civilization.

Everyone knows prior to Columbus and his sailing ship of jollies, other people had indeed traveled to North America. DeSoto and his merry men documents vast amounts of indigenous people, cities, but not vast herds of animals. A different explorer documents large numbers of wild game but no people.

Both spread European diseases. I read in one account that the indigenous people held mass burnings to stop the spread by eliminating the dead body instead of performing ritual burial or rite.

If the indigenous hunter was no longer on the landscape then the prey he chased would explode in mass numbers such as the bison. The concept here is because of much earlier European contact, the spread of disease, and the effect of indigenous death on hunting herds made them increase. When the following wave of immigrants boated over viola: you have epic populations to stand in awe of because there was no one to curtail them.

Comparing the introduction of European agriculture that possibly made the passenger pigeon populations explode, killing off the indigenous culture made other huntable species increase as well. Life is always a delicate balance and you never know what is going to turn the tide or tip the scale. Truly Life does hang in a delicate balance.

Throughout reading the passages the writer reiterates the idea that because of the lack of wild game bone remnants left in indigenous homestead the actually number of specie populations were questionable. Where there really that many? If so where was the evidence?

Back to the concept of human populations, industry, and civilization, hunters look back on these events as reminders on what not to do.

In respect to governmental agencies reporting herd numbers as healthy, if you went by previous herd numbers or observations documented in history you would think current information to be anorexic if not misleading as a positive thing. Given this information is based on space and division of limited numbers across that space with regard to competition.

I also took into consideration how much of the information documented from antiquity could be a good salesmen spreading the word to inspire adventurous travel for the contemplation of making a fortune. If the antiquated adventurer who is really in the business of making money, finds a spot to start a fabulous new life for all at his behest, would he not spin that story with the most positive description he could muster? Later when people show up in droves then have to eat their friends/family on the Donner Pass that would-be instigator is long gone. I have read many accounts of non-descript historical women, who thought they were coming to a new life only to become depressed because it wasn’t what it was made out to be.

In closing, my thoughts linger in my mind on a place that is void of man-made structures, property lines, human ownership and vast landscapes with wildlife inhabiting places yet unburdened by man’s footstep, presence, or influence in number.

Can you imagine that kind of wilderness abundance?

Could North America ever return to that ideal? The lone archaic hunter standing on a slope high above a massive herd wondering where was he going to start and not worrying about his impact in the greater scheme of things.

As I reflect it would be nice to be just a regular person with that same hope.

Written by: Angelia Y Larrimore

~Courtesy of AOFH~

Sources Cited:
Mann, Charles. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. New York, NY: Random House LLC, (2006).pp. 355. Print.