Stranger in a Strange Land

Reading Wendell Berry's collected stories, That Distant Land, is like viewing a geologic record of American culture---or maybe its medical record from birth to an early death. Berry writes the history of fictional farming town Port William, Kentucky, from the 1880s forward. Whether his period representations are accurate, I don't have the credentials to know, but as a reader I am utterly enveloped and convinced. Berry's people share purpose and understanding with their animals; they share fate and responsibility and allegiance to their land. That these bonds break apart sometime after World War II and the subsequent marriage of corporations to politicians is Berry's signature theme. Reading him in a suburb, circa 2005, is an exquisitely sad experience.

My view of Berry's message is that we live among the broken pieces of a gift. In its original form, the gift was beautiful and complicated, unquestionably handmade from natural materials. Today it's merely the sum of its parts, some of which were lost in the breaking. My two girls break their toys as a matter of course; some of them I can fix and some aren't worth the effort. Berry's world, which is ours if we want it, is one immanently worth fixing.

A young woman from Steve Bodio country moved this summer to New Orleans. She is twenty-three and works nights selling cigarettes and alcohol for a national distributor. Business is good, and she plans to spend the money on medical school, enrolling this Fall at Tulane. I met her yesterday at my house, pursuing another of her interests, falconry.

Back home in New Mexico, her friends all flew hawks and ran sighthounds---Steve's kind of people, and mine. She grew to like that life and wants to stay with it, though the hunting here is so different as to be another sport entirely. We looked at books and pictures and trimmed my hawk's beak while she held him in her lap. Taking a small gamble, I made half a hawk trap (useless, as is) with the understanding that she bring it back to me complete.

How this young woman, so new here and to her future, wants to be a falconer is an interesting and maybe a hopeful thing. While I'm reading Berry again, it is impossible not to see the pieces and imagine how some might be joined.

UPDATE:

Steve writes: "I am sending a photo of her friends with a lurcher pup I bred that you might add: modern folks looking to old traditions (well, one of them at least was actually raised in them, a 3rd generation lurcherman). They look dangerous, but the big guy on the right is a biologist and the one with the shades has a psychology degree, a security business, and is going to be a Border Patrol agent. They are not just 'my kind of people,' they're my friends."

(Note: The "PETA" t-shirt pictured actually says, "People for the Eating of Tasty Animals."