SKINNING BEAR

I learned to dissect animals in my high school physiology class, where a dead cat changed form over the space of eight long months, reeking of formaldehyde. I wouldn't graduate if I didn't take the class, and it was one of the most important in my life. A decade later, traveling with Sun Bear, an Indian medicine man who rescued road kills, I wasn't put off by the idea, or the smells, or the sorting through injured flesh. After that journey I came to rest in a mountain town, Seeley Lake, Montana, for a few years of relatively quiet living. Hunting and trapping occupied most of the male residents, and I continued skinning: deer, elk, beaver, whatever presented itself.

It wasn't hard to find me if someone wanted something skinned. I worked days in the local cafe, and in a town of 300 word got around. One autumn, John, an old fellow, tracked me down to say he had a bear hanging in his shed. "I had to shoot it, the dogs treed it. If you don't skin it, I'm just hauling it to the dump."

I didn't believe for a minute that he had to kill it, but the chance for a bear hide couldn't be passed up."I get the skin, and you promise to eat the meat. Is it a deal?" Sun Bear trained me well: nothing goes to waste, even if parts of it end up as food for coyotes, and the six-leggeds, eventually.

I gasped when I first saw her hanging from the rafters, and I felt the tears well up. But tears and hunters don't mix, so I turned to get my knives. John left shortly, and I began my prayers to this being who was my height, had lived a good life, obviously, and was at my mercy. I called in the Medicine Bears to guide my hands, to honor her several years of roaming the Mission and Swan Mountain Ranges, smudged her with sage and started in.

John had supplied a step ladder, and before the first cut, I buried my head in her shoulder, finally getting to inhale the smell of bear. Then I began the hard work of skinning an animal I'd never touched before. She was near ready for hibernation, her pure white fat layer rolled off easily. I imagined exquisite pie crusts and set some aside for later. The process isn't all that different from one critter to the next, but how to preserve her claws? What about her nose? They were new territory. Without a taxidermist tutor, I did the best I could. No holes in the hide, lots to scrape off later. The hours slipped by with my face about a foot from her raw body.

Finally I stepped away to take a fresh breath. Another gasp arose, and the tears poured down full force. There was a human hanging there, right down to the fingers and opposable thumbs. I felt my bond to her and to all bears flowing through me, like spring runoff soaking into a parched creekbed. The Medicine Bears I had called in surrounded us, witnessing my transformation. I would carry Bear Medicine for the rest of my life, for the healing of my kind, and the wilderness we call home.

PUMPKIN SOUP

Last night I laid my head thankfully on the pillow, secure in the thought that Montana was a "blue" state. But chauffeuring my grandson to school this morning the radio shattered my smugness: red, by 3%. Returning home I scanned an article by a noted Sufi writer that encouraged meditation during commuter drives. It wasn't really meditation; his mind was not truly moving in the realm of sacred stillness. He was repeating his sacred phrases. I thought of Marx' proclamation that religion is the opiate of the people. Is becoming at one with commuting continuing the lifestyle that deeply deprives the planet and most of it's people of basic needs? I wandered around the kitchen wondering what I might prepare ahead for dinner tonight and spied the pumpkin soup recipe under the refrigerator magnet. I vowed if the pumpkin on the front porch was still good, I'd make soup. Reviewing the directions, in bold I read "30 minutes prep time." Not true, I noted. The first instruction was to roast pumpkins (after cutting and seeding of course) for 40 minutes. The pumpkin was in excellent shape, and standing at the sink separating the slippery seeds from the pulp, I mused on the purity of my task. Nothing to do but this, no where to hurry to, only saving the life force of a locally grown pumpkin. Some of the seeds would dry at the windowsill, ready for planting next year. Some would be salted and roasted, ready for grandsons looking for snacks. No tricks, no scams, no surprises. And tonight? Pumpkin soup and garlic bread with fresh greens salad.

MATRIX

The startling fact my husband and I discovered well into our marriage, was that each of us had moved every two years our whole lives. But by the time this dawned on us, we had already moved three times, all within the same small city. I think this is the "greener on the other side" syndrome, and when I added up the number of years I had accumulated, tacking a month on either side of every move, it turned out six of my precious years on earth had been spent moving.

We bought a house. We've been here eight years, in a community of about 20,000, in a valley of 50,000 that nestles up to the Bitterroot Mountains in Montana. The beauty is spectacular. This morning, for example, the fresh snow stands out starkly against the blue/green/black of the pine covered 6,000 ft. shoulders. There's a bank of cumulus clouds rising over the mountains, the early exchange of thermals, and shortly we'll feel a chill as the night air moves through the valley.

We are nestled, as surely as flotsam and jetsam lands in the brush along the Bitterroot River in the spring. And we're rooted (which is how more brush grows in a dry year). Honestly, we might have sprung loose and headed north to Nelson, B.C., discouraged with our country's national choices. But our kids returned, one from Arizona and the other from Alabama, and that's all it took.

But it's more than family that feeds us here. And more than the natural beauty and proximity of hiking trails and hot springs. It's also being known, being witnessed by friends, neighbors, clerks, bank tellers, even the guy that changes my oil. It's eating eggs from the chickens I see from the highway, and watching my vegetables grow on the CSA farm we subscribe too. And knowing there's a bunch of folks who've been here over a generation growing organic products I can trade with.

When I first came to Montana in 1973 I sought out a place called Crystal Park. It's on another stunning highway east of here. I dug quartz crystals: amythest, smokey and clear. I studied how they were usually nestrd into each other, clustered, growing ever so slowly beside and simultaneously away from each other. That's how I feel on our one acre surrounded by fir, spruce and pine, only a mile away from Main Street, with our address in the phonebook, and our burial plans filed at the local mortuary.

What does it mean to be witness for one another? I recall my Nana, Gertrude, who had lived in her village in upperstate New York for over 50 years. A freak accident took place in front of her house, and the young daughter of dear friends was killed instantly. Gert said she stayed home for over two weeks. But when she did go into the village to do her errands, she experienced the strength and incredible love of every person she met without stopping for conversation. She said that morning healed her more than anything else. Her neighbors felt her pain, and offered her silent support beyond sympathy cards and phone calls.

The exchange taking place on a daily level between ourselves and our neighbors can't be minimized. A woman who attends my yoga class (at a Community Center across the street) made a laughing comment a few weeks ago: "I walk by your place to get here and I just love your yard, Star." Now let me tell you, my yard is an ever changing mosaic of new projects, cars, wood piles and gardens. Her comment led me to feel my aching back and endless task lists aren't just for me. Neither is the journey through the grocery store, nor the trip to the library. We are growing from each other, feeding each other, and in that invisable network, we are building our community and our planet.

I'm hoping your matrix serves you well. The sun is warming my frosty bushes, and my heart feels full to be here and now. Star