Squirrel Hunts and Pie Chomps

Another sunny day in Candy Kitchen.

Harvest Festival was Saturday!

After so long, Max was finally picked as a pie judge (a highly coveted position indeed) for the pie contest this year. He ate almost a whole pie. The winning pie, apple-strawberry-raspberry, got auctioned off for fifty bucks. Shevy bid on a massive zucchini in the vegetable auction (it won largest veggie, I think) and won it for four dollars. It was quite fun! Max rolled into the pick-up as we left, belching and moaning with the enormity of his position, made official with the "Judge" ribbon in gold lettering.

We're almost finished remodeling the kitchen in Max and Shevy's mobile home. We put up the last of the ceiling yesterday. Now all we have to do is paint, install the woodstove and lay the flooring for the living room.

Lots of rains have come through and since the cats and dogs are all gone, mice and squirrels have taken to rummaging in my pantry for midnight snacks. I have had virtually no sleep. Yesterday morning I found a bold, fat squirrel kicking back in the pantry. I shooed it, and as it walked out the door like it owned the place, the girth of it even caught Max's eyes. He cried out in alarm, "There it is! There it is! Oh, my God, it's huge!" He barely escaped with his life as the enormous squirrel threw it's weight out the door rudely, barreling past Max like a barbarian.

Upon closer inspection of the empty glass milk bottle sitting on the floor of the pantry, I found a fairly fresh, organic free-range mouse...

It's high time to adopt kittens.

Whirlwind Through the West

Shevy and I drove Northwest last week all the way to Portland from Candy Kitchen, just for long enough to pick up my things. We had been scattered with remodeling the trailer, moving and Shevy's school in Gallup. We hadn't had a full nights rest in a while. We pretty much left without too much thought, not packing a tent, for example, or enough food. Shevy had been craving summer sausage for a good while, so that was packed with some cheese, peanut butter and a loaf of honey bread I had made the night before.

The weather was pleasant enough, but on our heels was the remnants of the storm Jimena. North of Gallup until Colorado is all desolate desert. Shiprock looms out of the sea of dust like a primeval castle of Gods. Past Mesa Verde and Canyon of the Ancients is a more lush string of little pioneer towns. Monticello, Utah was under construction and smelled heavily of asphalt. Somewhere along this route was an amazing anti-meth mural.

On the way to Moab, we stopped near Church Rock to make lunch and check if the rear axle was leaking too much gear oil out of the right seal. A cop had stopped someone across the highway. We sliced some sausage and cheese to snack on. Pulling out back on the highway, Shevy forgot to signal and so the cop pulled us over. Neither of us had showered in no one knows how long and I hadn't brushed my teeth in a few days. The cop came up on my side, even though Shevy was driving, I suppose because of the narrow shoulder. I was very conscious of how I must have smelled. The cop asked Shevy to step into his patrol car to talk. They talked a good while and I wanted a cigarette for the first time in weeks. The cop came back up to my window and said he smelled weed. He asked if we had smoked weed in the car. The look on my face must have been incredulous to the point of disrespect. I laughed, probably rolled my eyes, said no, then held up the large summer sausage and asked, "You sure it's not the sausage?" He actually laughed. No, he had smelled that too. Shevy had consented to a search, since he knew there was nothing in the car and it would take less time than refusing, so the cop asked me to step out of the vehicle and the asked if there was anything in my pockets. I said no, but felt that I did have something, something that looked very much like a pipe from the outside. "Yes, I have this," I said, brandishing my pee tube. "What's that?" A little roughness to his tone there. "A pee tube." I held it to my crotch and stuck my pelvis out like I was peeing. I laughed hard on the inside, probably letting surface a smirk, and stood aside while he half-heartedly searched the car. He let us go with a just a warning. I laughed almost to Salt Lake City over the fact that in one interaction I waved two phallic objects at a cop.

Utah is gorgeous, full of carved red sandstone, forests and rivers. We reached Salt Lake City after dark and I cried through it, as I always do. Something about the place makes me feel so sad. Maybe it has to do with the world's largest open pit mine there? Energetically, the place is like the Swamp of Sadness for me. We put on power metal and trucked almost all the way to Boise before fatigue was overtaking me. We pulled over in a rest stop and slept in the bed of the truck until dawn.

We reached the Oregon rainforest in the afternoon. I felt strong nostalgia and longing for this place that has become such a deep part of my heart as the rain came down into the green black of the mossy forest.

I had missed my friends so much! They are all so wonderful! We had good times eating, watching movies, drinking beer at the bluffs and playing music. Thank you all for being so wonderful, helping me store my things (Ro, Spence and Casey, thank you so very much!) and sharing. I can hardly wait to come back in the summer.

Shevy and I packed my things. We only stayed two nights and one full day. I didn't want to leave so fast, but things had to be done back home. That and I'm nearly broke now and (stars above!) the city is expensive. We whirled in and whirled out and I hardly had time to even think about the fact that I was, in essence, finally moving away from the city. I had mixed feelings because I have such good friends here and there are still things I feel are unfinished here. But I will return to visit, and soon.

On the trip back we slept under the trees in Dry Canyon, Utah in the open air, since we didn't have a tent. All day I was dreading all the possibilities: condensation on my sleeping bag, campsites being full, sounds, bears, etcetera, thinking it was going to be a terrible rest. It was the best night of sleep I've had in weeks. It was cozy, dry, quiet and we were the only ones in the whole campground. Another lesson in letting assumptions go. The rest of the drive went smoothly. We watched hawks soar through mesas and bighorn sheep walk over the mountains.

The rain from Jimena flooded Ramah but Candy Kitchen was just a little damp. It's been raining since I returned and last night was an amazing lightning storm of molten gold sunset with purple lightning bolts zapping through deep ocean blue clouds.

Yesterday, Shevy and Max went to an Albuquerque flea market for a wood burning stove. They brought home a beautiful little Vermont Castings for only 500 bucks! Also, Mike and Dean gifted me a gas spitting 4X4 Subaru that backfires every time I down shift. It's so fun to drive! I was looking forward to mudding and this morning I got the chance, sliding from one side of the road to the other, coming to rest in the driveway like a drifting boat. Fantastic!

The chickens have been laying again, the wolves howling often and the birds are bringing a symphony of fall. I made two batches of wheat tortillas from scratch and pulled up the dog fence by hand. My hands are bruised and sore, but it was a good feeling to use my body until exhaustion.

I'm looking forward to the winter: wood chopping, more afternoons with the pot of tea, my Underwood and Oxford dictionary. I can feel the Halloween chill starting in the air and can almost taste the breads baked inside the little snow submarine under Zuni stars.

I left the city, finally, after so long.

An Unearthed Appreciation for Water

Today I took a luxurious two minute shower, turning off the water while scrubbing with soap.

It was much needed after scraping mold and rat poo from the vintage trailer we are remodeling.

The other day we loaded around 150 gallons of water into the water tank, bucket by bucket by bucket, hand hoisted. That's not the usual routine, but we didn't have the water pump.

I thank the ground and the rain for every drop. And thanks to the monkey who invented pumps. It sure does take a hell of a lot longer to move water without them.

Settling in for the Season

August 2009 011
Originally uploaded by Billy von Raven

Yes, the time has come to land for the winter. After much deliberation and procrastination, I have decided to stay here in Candy Kitchen, New Mexico. I will be coming to Portland for one weekend only to get my books and musical instruments. My brothers have been so kind to hand me their beautiful 1950 Spartan trailer they are living in now. We are moving to a larger piece of land on a hill. They have just bought a fifty foot mobile home and our autumn project will be restoring it.

The winter here is like some place in Narnia: snowy, starry and frigid. I'm very excited to spend it here, making books and drawing. I will be keeping in touch through mail primarily, because the land we are moving to will not have electricity and I no longer have a cell phone. There is very little reception out here anyways.

Seeing the Milky Way every night keeps me sane and joyful. When told my dear friend Amanda the other night about the stars, I finally understood myself, in saying it out loud, that much of my survival of childhood depended on sneaking outside at night just to look at the stars and know that there was something bigger out there, something expansive and beyond all the pettiness and cruelty, the confusion and claustrophobia. Something without judgment, something that merely is, without definition and pretense. The stars are my mother and father.

Today I walked through the oak grove in the sun, through the red rocks and barrel cactus and let myself delight in being now, without being caught in ideas about what I should be doing and producing or the future. Just living. It is so beautiful that it hurts.

El Morro, Atsinna, Dragonflies and Thunder

This morning we climbed El Morro, which means 'the bluff' or 'the headland', a bulwark of red and white sandstone standing against the sapphire sky. At the top was a partially excavated Zuni pueblo, called Atsinna.



A Zuni ranger popped out from under the half-buried first floor and greeted us. He told us that over a thousand of his people once lived there and that they travelled first from the Grand Canyon and went all through the West. Each time they moved, it is because they were given a message by the Sun or the Moon. He spoke of the Red-Gold and Turquoise Dragonflies as spiritual messengers. We stood in the middle of the world, he said, what the White Man calls the Continental Divide, the saddle in the North. Other rangers, he explained, would tell people to stay away from this, don't touch that, don't sit on the ruins, but not him, he invites, beckons people to join and listen. He said sometimes people came and told him they were one-quarter Navajo or one-eighth Lakota and that they would ask him what he was. He shook his head. "We are all mixed." He pressed his firm, flat hand against his heart. "It is here that matters." He told us he was restoring the pueblo because now that it has been excavated they must repair it frequently to keep it from eroding. Grandmother, Grandfather or Sister is here in these rooms, watching and laughing, he says, they can see me but I can't see them. They knew of this time now, when the world would become heavy, too heavy for the gods to hold, because there would be too many people. There would be a great time of scarcity and sometimes the future is sad, but he would continue to teach people, tell the children the stories of his Grandmothers, all the children, regardless of their skin, because this is what he must do. He talked to us a long while and finally said he must end his break.

We thanked him and ventured down and around the box canyon. We were thirsty and hot. A pool under the bluffs harbored bees and dragonflies, just past the petroglyphs of rams, hands and snakes. In a very short while after coming down from the ancient Atsinna, in time for us to take shelter at Inscription Rock Cafe, the monsoon poured down cool rain and hail on the desert.

After a Monsoon at Dusk

The silence is deep enough that you can hear the plants grow and the heart leave footsteps in silt. The pinesap and sagebrush fill the air. A lone crow or dove whoo calls and breaks. The white-jade of sage reaches in delicate tendrils above the dark green. Little bulbs of flowers rise like drops in shocks of white, yellow, lavender, orange and red. The blond grasses shoot out of dark roots and hold rain like pearls. Sounds envelop you in the silence, such that the pack of wolves seems to be in the sunset instead of in the purple darkening East. The soil grows alive in hillocks of fungus, moss and succulents. Pine sprigs hold droplets underneath, gleaming spiders' eyes in the last grey of twilight. Night falls like feathery down.

A Funeral of Birds

My brother Shevy picked me up from Zuni in the midst of ominous clouds, but the rain didn't break as we drove up into Candy Kitchen through the green pines and red sandstone. When we pulled into their acre under the piñons, I noticed a dying baby swallow in the bed of the truck. She had fallen out of a nest, perhaps, in Zuni where they darted around the eaves of the roofs. She was severely stunned and too young to make it without her mother. She opened her black eyes and beak a few times weakly, sometimes sputtering and spasming. I didn't have the courage to kill her and when I tried to set her in a tree, she would seize violently until she started to fall. Knowing the kitten was prowling, I set her at the foot of a tree. The kitten would have a play at hunting.

I felt regret at not having the courage to kill the bird. Max consoled me, "The kitten got hunting practice. Babies killing babies."




I was not consoled. I had never taken an animal's life myself and had wished I had, to spare her the minutes of kitten torture before she died.

The next afternoon, some of our neighbors spontaneously visited all at once and convened in the driveway. The UPS truck pulled in randomly at the same time to deliver Shevy's chainmail supplies. The dogs barked briefly, but without enough urgency to warn us of the coyote passing across the road with a red young chicken in its mouth. We marveled at how close it got at such a leisurely pace, as if flaunting the kill. Shevy and Max don't have guns and the coyote disappeared in the pines to the South. After a check of the chicken houses, we determined it was our neighbor's chicken.

Young Mike, who lives down the road, had a violent, rapist rooster to kill for a neighbor and Shevy and Max had been thinking of taking their rooster Spud as well, as he's been pecking the hens quite rudely. We decided to meet here to harvest the birds the next evening.

Shevy had to work that afternoon so Max and I distracted ourselves with projects. We built a deck in front of the trailer, put a loaf in the bread machine and cleaned up the kitchen.






In addition to the rapist, there was another hen who has been eating eggs, so she was also collected. Mike and I drove them ceremoniously in a banged-up hearse he and Genevieve had just fixed up. As we drove back to Shevy and Max's, he told me it had carried 27 bodies. A good number.

I was the only one who had been a part of chicken harvest, plucking and eviscerating, but none of us had killed our own meat before. We dallied, preparing nachos and listening to metal. The trailer filled with the ring and sheen of sharpening knives. Mike brought a knife his grandfather had made by hand. That was to be the knife we would use to take the birds. We were children who had not yet shed blood, so we had to steel our nerves for the kill. We decided to ritually carry the raping and baby-eating birds out of the hearse. Mike donned an executioner hood made from a Navajo Pride flour bag with eye holes cut. Shevy hooked his chainmail belt on with a cut-off Punisher skull tee. Max wrapped a cloak about his shoulders. With the Darth Vader theme playing out of the trailer, Max and Shevy marched the chickens around back and Mike came up in the hood, carrying a sword. It was unplanned and we laughed nervously. Shevy tried to open the cage and pull the cock out, but he protested in a flurry of squawks and feathers. We suspended the ritual, growing nervous now, and prepared for the actual harvest. The chickens knew their fate and that this was only ritual.




We had waited long enough. Dusk was coming. Shevy and Max decided to save Spud for another day as it was getting late and we already had two to butcher.

We cut a hole out of the corner of the executioner hood to turn it into a kill bag. A table was set with a cutting board and construction plastic. Max covered the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket with earth to catch the blood and feathers. I knew it was up to me to start it, having had the most experience. My voice was beginning to shake but I opened the cage and grasped the rooster firmly from the back. It let out a bloodcurdling scream, which scared Max off to the the pop-up at the back of the land. I whispered to it as we put it into the bag.

I was thankful Mike was courageous enough, without speaking, to take his grandfather's knife first. I held the rooster and, after a few starts and fits from the bird, Mike slit its throat. Dots of dark velvet blood hit his face. We breathed in the evening, Shevy above us, Mike holding his head and I his body. This was opening us all to the doorway in which all flesh eaters of our ancestors passed through. Shevy was in a trance, eyes open, concentrating on calming the bird as he crossed over into the spirit world. Mike and I spoke of meat eating, awareness, a few laughs broke the fear.

The vat of water was still on the flame, so we bled out the cock and went on the the hen. It was my turn to handle the knife. The hen was calm. I looked her in the eye and massaged her throat, then drew the knife through her neck. The cut wasn't very deep but she didn't protest much and ruby blood spilled downward. I drew the blade across again to hasten her death and apologized to her out loud. My nerves nearly gave and sadness welled in my eyes, but my intent grew hard and clear like the knife. Mike and I held her until she bled out and the last shudder of life left her. I went into the trailer to ask Max to bring the water. I dunked the birds and began to show Mike how to clean them, starting with the rooster. (I will leave out the details of evisceration, but for those who haven't done it and are interested, the best site I've seen so far is the blog on How to Butcher a Chicken.)

Dark came upon us and it was Mike's turn to clean the hen. The coyotes began to howl and I looked Mike in the eyes and laughed. Shevy brought out a lantern. Their crops were full of grain, since the neighbors who sent them to us didn't know to fast the chickens before harvest. It was messy and we were inexperienced. The hen had a fully formed egg with a soft proto-shell and yolks at various stages and sizes clinging to the back of her ribcage. We stood mesmerized before her. Since she had been eating her own eggs and the eggs of her friends, her liver was yellow and she was mostly bright yellow fat.

It was well after dark when we finished. Mike and Shevy went to bury the bucket of blood, guts and feathers out West behind the land for the coyotes: an offering of sorts to let our chickens alone. Max and I cleaned up the site. He dumped the vat of fatty, bloody water on the turnips. As wolves howled from the Sanctuary to the East, we washed up at the water tank on the shed deck, the grey water going into the blood bucket to rinse it. Shevy then dumped the bucket away to the North. He came back with a quartz crystal spear he found there and placed it on the table where we slaughtered.

Mike bid us farewell and we sat in the trailer for a while, mostly silent, until almost midnight. Shevy said to me, "You don't look so good."

I hesitated. "I'm processing...that was my first kill."

He nodded. "Oh, I didn't know."

We eventually shuffled off to bed, warning each other we might be kept up by coyotes. Half-asleep, continually I reminded myself we cleaned everything up. Through the night, I heard wolves and coyotes yipping and howling and kept smelling wafts of bird fat and death.

In the morning I awoke with a heavy humility. I had looked a soul in the eyes and took its life. For the first time in this body, I felt a sense of adulthood. I placed the quartz under the piñon pine where we spilled the birds blood. Sunday we will feast on chicken and dumplings, BBQ chicken and greens, and give thanks again.