Here in Vermont, as in other places where crunchy Americans congregate, the 14th Dalai Lama is a popular guy. Folks like Cath and me who shop at community food co-ops and farmers’ markets—and are often vegetarian—tend to think of him as a wise and compassionate teacher. For many, it comes as a shock to learn … Read more
Eighteen years ago, I had no doubt: hunting was wrong. Not that I made big distinctions among kinds of violence. I abhorred the idea of industrial meat operations, and thought little about the alternatives. Why split hairs? A murdered animal was a murdered animal. Hunting, however, did seem especially gratuitous. We no longer needed to … Read more
When Cath and I moved to our home here in the hills on the eastern side of the Winooski Valley, there was one group of people I wanted to keep off our few acres: hunters. Anywhere you stood on our land—or fired a rifle—you were within a few hundred yards of our house. In most … Read more
A philosopher I am not. Not in the academic sense, at least. My formal education in the subject consists of a single undergraduate class—“Reason and Argument”—which left me impressed by the contortions through which the human animal is willing to put its gray matter. So, some fifteen months ago, when I saw a “call for … Read more
Two years ago, it was small. Just a glimmer of an idea. Nothing more than a flicker of movement, caught out of the corner of my mind’s eye. Bold one moment, it would dash into full view like a blustery red squirrel. Furtive the next moment, it would skitter off into the mental underbrush. (I … Read more
The photographs, projected onto a screen in front of the room, were astonishing. A bobcat crouching in thick cover. A cougar staring intently, its head dusted in snow. A black bear on its hind feet, marking a white birch. And the words that went with them—spoken by wildlife biologist, conservationist, photographer, and tracker Sue Morse—were … Read more
Last summer, when a mother bear and three cubs raided our apple trees at dawn, Cath and I watched, spellbound. Some broken branches and a few dozen apples were no great loss—nothing compared to the privilege of watching bruins in our front yard. In winter, when red squirrels pilfered sunflower seeds from the bird feeders, … Read more