I spent the weekend in the Deer Woods
MENTORS: I spent the weekend in the Deer Woods with son and grandson. The tundra swans were flying and bugling high above. A barred owl occasionally boomed from deep in the forest. Wild turkeys and grouse and squirrels were about. The November trees reached for the sky. And, of course, there were deer. But much of a deer hunt involves sitting alone and still in a stand, and I love my spot, surrounded by mature oaks and basswoods, with the pines nearby. While the hours passed I thought of important things that happen in the Deer Woods. Stories told, lessons and traditions passed along. I thought of my many mentors, who passed things on to me—respect and ethics and simple decency, how to behave in the woods and on the waters. How to behave in Life in general. I thought about how very grateful and appreciative I am. And I thought about my grandson, and how I hope he is learning things my grandfather passed on to me.
And, because of the time we live in, I thought about others, who seem not to share many of these feelings. I thought about Trump and his MAGA faithful and his minions, Vance and Miller and the rest, heedless of woods and wild places, of gentle people and important traditions, and of so many things I care about. And I wondered, did they not have mentors? Or did they not listen to what they were taught? Did they forget? Or did they actually have mentors who taught them dishonesty? Cruelty? Ignorance? Ingratitude? To care only for themselves, to destroy all that they cannot or will not appreciate or understand?
I thought about being surrounded by truths, in the trees reaching for the light, streams flowing toward the sea, chickadees singing all around, with never a false note or a lie. And I tried to grasp the disconnect. The impossible distance between what I was taught, what I thought many had been taught, and what exists in the halls of power and in great swaths of the population today.
I couldn’t. I could not—cannot—grasp it, make any sense of it. It is beyond me. I cannot imagine what sort of mentors these people had.
If they had any at all