A blood-streaked tragedy on cloud-colored snow, the stunning, almost-regal figure falls, spiraling to the ground from the safety of his damp branch, pierced by an arrow three times the creature's girth. For a TV show. The hunt is a legal one, and the bird will be consumed to assure another day of survival for the hunter. I am livid; the archer chooses to be in harms way, invalidating the sacred creed, it's okay if you kill to survive. Unconscionable. But, complicitly, I watch the show and so participate in the tragedy.
Have you ever watched a grouse being dismantled, feathered and filleted, and then fried on a stick?
Sometimes, I watch people competing on a popular survival-based TV series to see who can survive the longest. I pay a streaming service to eavesdrop on their suffering, to watch a weakening man sinking into despair after losing a 30 inch northern pike to a broken line. Or to listen to the saddest moans of a brilliantly resourceful middle aged forager, dragging her starving body through a blinding storm to check on the cache of berries she has buried; instead, she finds mold and deterioration where she expects to harvest handfuls of bright, red, frozen treats.
It's always a treacherous situation unless you're the guy or girl who gets the sweet spot, right on the lake with all the fish, or unless your camp is rich with grouse. I've seen a lot of grouse prepared for the fire, and it's pretty disgusting.
It's cruel when people with proven adventure skills are dropped into a remote parcel of space where survival is almost impossible. And when I say dropped, I mean it. Left alone on a beach with their backpack, a few supplies, and an emergency medical kit, they quickly prepare to wait out the winter for as long as they can. Doomed, the hungry competitors don't really survive the winter; the “winner” just outlasts the “losers.” Beefed up hunters and gatherers arrive at their top weights, and leave starving. Skeletons. I've seen people eat bark, clogging their bowels so they've had to go home twisted up in agony. I've seen a guy catch a musk ox, and go hungry for lack of fat.
And then there are those who, in the still-warm days of fall, believe they can survive through the winter on the bounty of fish they're catching, only to realize within a couple of weeks the fish have disappeared, or have gone to the depths for the winter. I'm not an outdoorsy person. I mean, I like walking and hiking, and traipsing through the woods alongside a creek. But, I would have no idea how to create a sheltered environment to survive the cold weeks of winter. I'm fascinated with the people who do know how, or who think they know how and don't, and the women who are incredible badasses, determined to make their way, even in this world, independently. I'm always rooting for women to win the $100,000, and as far as I know it would be a first in these contests, regardless of how courageous and resourceful they are.
Recently, I became deeply frustrated watching a rerun in which a brilliant hunter/fisherman chooses to focus primarily on preparing, smoking, and storing the fish he was catching, for a rainy day, more or less. It was a relief to see him stringing four to six ounce fillets to dry at his camp. He had a warm, relaxed way about him, calm even, and I had started to envision him winning the big prize at the end. He's ahead of the game, he's disciplined, and he's pacing himself.
The thing is, he didn't recognize just how dangerously hungry he'd been, day after rainy day, until he was starving. Hunkered in with a storehouse of fish. Saving up. Anticipating that he would need it more later, he neglected giving his body the very minimum of what it needed for his brain to function, and for his heart to keep beating.
Here in Colorado, I see neighborhood squirrels, stuffing their jowls with nuts, and baby apples they find naturally behind our home. They gnaw the apples apart on the spot, but often stash more resilient goods away, judiciously hiding their extra nuts and bird seeds under the mulch in the backyard beds. My husband and I have found them, outside of our windows, frantically searching through the mulch. Being a teller of tales, I have imagined a squirrel coming to his end in the backyard because he buried all of his findings, saving and saving, until he dies because he doesn't remember where the goods are buried.
And since we're having a conversation about food and hunger, I suppose I'll admit that I had a specific type of hunger that tugged at me for decades. And I suppose it's still with me, a deep sense of urgency around manipulating my body. As a child, it was easy to recognize that Beverly Hills women were obsessed with how they looked; I understood, beauty would be a necessary aspect of my survival. I tried to figure it out in a way that wouldn't kill me, and I wasn't brave enough to be too extreme, but I went back and forth with severe dieting and then out of control unhealthy eating, as if I was hooked up to a metronome. Back and forth, at semi regular intervals. Those kinds of coping strategies aren’t forgotten, but they can lose their power with a conscious practice in place.
The guy who never benefitted from the smoked fish hanging in his shelter continued to waste away until the medical cops (employed by the TV show) arrived suddenly and dragged him off of his mountain; because he had lost so much weight, they thought he was going to die. And I never benefited from my training/hunger cycle, nor did I benefit from my numbing/binging cycle. No balance, no win.
But just in the nick of time, lightning struck just this last Sunday when I remembered where I had buried some of my nuts and seeds, squirreled into the backyard.
I went on a walk.
Alone, with earbuds on so nobody would talk to me, and with no music playing. I knew I needed that walk, but I wasn't 100% clear why it felt so urgent. As I passed the time, walking, feeling and listening, I came to understand that the urgency, the intense non-debatable insistence that I had to walk alone that day and maybe every day from now on, was because my lack of sustenance was becoming threatening. Wasting away with a storehouse of food.
I used to say that I needed alone time to be restored, like any proper introvert. Today, I realize it's not about restoration. It's about understanding what we need as individuals to keep our feet on the path, and to fill our own cups. The goal isn't socking away something for later. It's about receiving what life has to offer with verve, here and now, savoring and swallowing every bit of what you need before you run out. Before you begin to faint from the emptiness. I wonder if being dropped, unprepared and untrained, onto the beach of an un-survivable relationship in my twenties has brought me to this watershed moment in which I write the words, in shouty letters as if I’m wailing into a bottomless pit, WAKE UP! YOU MAY BE STARVING." Impossible situations may teach us how to keep breathing, but not necessarily how to survive. Or when to leave.
I wonder how that particular survivor returned to his life, the one who stored his food instead of eating it. Did he recover? Or, like me, has he built his life around coping strategies that don’t put food on the table? (Not here, not now, anyway.)
I hope he's eating his fill of fish everyday, storing up all of the fat and protein inside his body, for its pleasure and benefits.
I hope I can remember to take all that I need to live now, and for the love of God, stop saving up for later.
I hope I can fill my own plate, and remember where the treasures are buried.
I'm turning the corner now from a neighborhood park near my house. It's Sunday, and the popular paths are filled with dogs, bikes, and couples who make this walk their daily routine. I wore sensible shoes today. I feel like I'm walking on clouds, so the usual grind of my feet on the pavement feels lighter, like the path is floored with gymnastic mats, the really puffy ones that have springboards underneath. My feet and ankles are happy, and my toes are stretching out, inside of my shoes. Happy feet, happy toes. I've slowed my pace and have scored all the heart points my fit app tells me that I need for today. That's silly. I know I need more, but I'm slowing down, and it feels right.
Sometimes it surprises me when the trees seem to be talking to each other, a benefit of the light breeze that's barely noticeable on this spring morning…63 degrees and barely a cloud in the sky. Sometimes, I think the air smells beautiful, but upon review, I want to say it's more about the pleasant way it fills up my nose, and drops down into my core. I've often said breath, slow, deep, conscious breath is like drinking water. Filling, physically satisfying. The other gifts go above and beyond: frogs near the creek bog singing, sweet hints of Russian Olive blossoms and early lilac blooms, and soothing rhythms of my body moving in tandem with the Earth's revolutions. Awake.
(From Sunday’s voice recorded walking journal.)
Thank you for visiting Least Famous. You are appreciated. And comments are my favorite.
Hi Laury,
This is so beautifully written. It has given me so many things to think about. To not wait, to not hold back to savor what we need. Gorgeous thank you
I’m happy that you have happy feet happy toes and a wonderful spring in your step.
Laury, I love everything you write, but this one screams with talent. You have such a gift for expressing feelings accurately that most of us “writers” will never attain.