The tracks of the deer left Bottom Wood Lake Road to follow the diagonal rows through the apple orchard. I followed his trail for a while, a buck by the large, sharp, cloven hooves. What a life! Fresh fruit and grass to eat all night, a snug bed to spend the day close to his larder, I envied him. He pays no taxes, has few predators, complete freedom, and a full belly most days. It doesn’t get any better than that. Too bad not enough of us do the same, otherwise the children of the world, and their children, would not have to bear the cost of our gluttony and greed, living on a planet awash in human waste.
Can we learn self-reliance instead of taking the easy trail, believing the lies of politicians, bankers and priests? Can we throw away the security blanket of conformism and live with one home-made? Some of us do, but it will take many more to force real change on the governments, businesses and churches who have stolen from all of us since lawyers learned to talk. Or will the laws of violence rule again, as in Egypt, when the have-nots decide they they have had enough of the old ways, and must take what they need to survive? It is only a matter of time, and probably a very short one. The people who trade self-reliance for dependence will fall by the wayside, ignored by the ones who used and discarded them.
There are far too many of us. Only China, the only real superpower by virtue of its large population, has any kind of policy. One family, one child. Democratic governments need as many voters to tax as possible to fund their retirements, businesses need ever more consumers to maintain growth, and churches need to convince as many people as possible into exchanging the possibility of eternal life for financial contributions to their particular religion. These kinds of people cannot change. To do so would be to admit their lives have been wasted and wrong, or even worse, that they just didn’t care. Most would claim they were just following orders, a common excuse for allowing child abuse, genocide, racism and war.
Kevin O’Leary of the Lang and O’Leary Exchange had an excellent idea, facetious maybe, but still worth considering. Fire every second civil servant. The savings by that act would eliminate our debt by the same people that created it, with overtaxation and business bailouts to pay for politician’s retirements and repaying the businesses and religions that got them elected. The carefully orchestrated interview with our fearless leader, Big Steve Harper,by Peter Mansbridge, and the immediate release of taxpayer funded smear campaigns of the other parties tells me Harper knows it is safe to call an election. He has scammed Layton and Ignatieff into taking responsibility for not trashing the long gun registry, our ongoing “Billion Dollar Boondoggle,” a retirement home for police chiefs who followed their political masters’ orders. The civil servants would know what it was like to be down-sized or sacrificed for management profits.Smart Steve does not have to keep the promise that got him elected, and the Liberals and NDP lose votes from anyone savvy enough to realize the silly incompetence of their leaders. It looks like a Harper landslide to me! He has received his marching orders from Obama and wasted sixteen billion dollars on fighter planes from the USA. Even helicopters would have been more use to the taxpayers for rescue and relief efforts than single purpose jets.Our troops will keep dying protecting American mineral and oil interests overseas, from bullets and bombs sold to the Taliban by the CIA, on the training fields of Afghanistan. Dictators will continue to flourish on American military aid until their countrymen say “Enough!”, and watch the police and politicians run away to their hiding places, leaving everyone to fend for themselves.
The trail of the deer leads north out of the orchard, uphill, where I cannot follow today. I wish him well. Perhaps, someday, I will go live as he does, a hunter-gatherer once more. I’ll watch from the hill as our children riot, and burn the symbols of our failures to heed history,as they are in Egypt and Tunisia. A deer never craps in his own bed. We always have. Because of that, the poisons we put in our water and food and our medicine for profit ideology is changing our genetic make-up and creating a huge imbalance in the male-female percentage of populations. If it is not too late already, only one group of people can save us all, and that is you, ladies.Men are far too stupid and selfish to control their appetites, especially the young. All we want is food, sex, sleep and feeling important. That is the way we were made by Mother Nature,in a time and place where all animals did the same, and the way we were taught to be by teachers and parents who knew no better themselves. Get a job, support a family, buy a big house, drive nice cars, the one who dies with the most toys wins! It sure sounded good to me, until I realized there were too many people on the planet to make that any more than a pipe dream for fools. Now I have a small garden in my front yard, to supplement the fine produce from our local farmers. I hunt and fish our hills and waters to supplement the delicious grass fed bison and organic chickens and free range turkeys from Sundowner Deli. I promise you, readers, if I can do it, so can you. The members of the Oceola Fish and Game Club are ready and eager to help you learn and decide if maintaining our Canadian hunting traditions is for you. It may not be, and there is no shame in that, only more self-awareness for you, and perhaps, an appreciation for the natural world where all live together in life, freedom and death.
I can never imagine, ladies, the strength and resolve this will take you to save our world and our plants and animals from the foolishness and folly of man. Ignoring the hormones raging through your bodies and the constant yearning to reproduce, your courage and determination to make a better place for your children is the only way to stop them from living and dying in a poisonous fog, or a nuclear holocaust, until, finally, Mother Nature sweeps us away, and Earth returns to the ones that can live and prosper together.