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Walking Home

The constellation Orion, driving lessons, 143.5 miles

Sunbeams

In New England they once thought blackbirds useless, and mischievous to the corn. They made efforts to destroy them. The consequence was, the blackbirds were diminished; but a kind of worm, which devoured their grass, and which the blackbirds used to feed on, increased prodigiously; then, finding their loss in grass much greater than their saving in corn, they wished again for their blackbirds.

Benjamin Franklin

The Bird At The Window

My mother’s pet pigeon, Birdy-Bird, is sitting outside the kitchen window on the ledge, pecking on the glass: tick-TICK-tick, tick-TICK-tick, tick-TICK-tick. This is his way of communicating that he wants to be let in. Now.

Last Catch

The people pictured on these pages are some of the last floating-trap fishermen in Rhode Island. Floating traps — a system of large nets anchored to the ocean floor near the shore — date back to pre-Roman times and have been used in North America since the arrival of the Europeans. Fish swimming along the shoreline get funneled by the nets into a trap at one end, and the fishermen arrive each morning to scoop them out.

The Good Hunter

David Petersen On The Ethics Of Killing Animals For Food

My point is that, in our culture, in order to even entertain the idea of an ethical predator, the observer must approach the subject with an open mind. Ethical hunting is predicated on dignity and respect: Dignity in our private thoughts and public words as well as in our actions afield when, as hunter Aldo Leopold pointed out, nobody is watching us. And respect, not only for the animals we hunt, their habitats, and the greater natural world, but also for ourselves as hunters and human animals. Carry those two blessed burdens in your heart, and you will do no moral wrong as a predator.