Gratitude

After several freezing, late afternoons by my lonesome

You are reading False Choices. Today, just a short note of gratitude to the year behind us and a thank you in advance to all of you for the year ahead! If you are new here we’d be honored if you subscribe to our free substack and receive our weekly posts in your email inbox:

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You wait and wait, and then, as if they dropped from the sky, silently like shooting stars, they are there. You forgot how large they are; ahh, but to see them again up close, you remember how they smell and how warm they are when you dress them in the field.

Again you wait, you study which one will you take and wait until they are lined up properly, their full side facing you. You carefully take aim, lowering the bow so slowly, arousing no suspicions. They are already tentative, somehow they know you are afoot. When you have the arrowhead pointed at the front shoulder, looking for a lung shot, you release the safety and find the trigger with your right index finger. Gone! Done.

A deep breath or two, and now the work begins. You drag the animal to a place near the forest edge. A coyote yelps in the distance. Do they know now, after so many years, that the whistle of the arrow means the midnight buffet will feed the whole pack?

It’s growing dark. The work must be done with a head lamp on. It’s been a year since the last field dress, you try to remember the process, step by step. But it’s over soon enough. The animal hangs in the barn, waiting for the next steps; the butchery, the marinade of ancho and guajillo chiles and roasted garlic, cumin and coriander; the canning in the pressure cooker; the division of the steaks into breakfast size portions; the smoking and drying of the jerky.

Your small reward this Sunday is two runny poached eggs, venison steak, toast and strong coffee. Your heart says thank you. You have done your job; to harvest a deer from a herd grown 7 times too large. You are the latest in a long chain of bipedal hunters who have brought home a deer on these lands, ever since they crossed the Bering Straights from Asia to the New World. Be thankful and enjoy your breakfast.

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I’m also so thankful for the all the readers of this publication. I’ve really enjoyed writing again, after a long period of technical writing, in my own voice. False Choices has evolved since I first started it. You will see regularly published short stories and film and book reviews, these days. If you want current events, politics or social commentary there are many, many substacks that fill the need.

I’ve had a bit of success in the short fiction area, which gives me cause for hope, and with so many new readers I thought I would share that two of my short stories took Top in Fiction honors: