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THE TWO BOOTS’ STORYTELLING
Contact us:
THE Two Boots’ Storytelling
129 Melbourne Ave. SE
Minneapolis,
Minnesota 55414
Email: tim@twoboots.net
I LOVE THE SINGLE DEER PATH
A Norwegian version translated by the poet Åsmund
Bjornstad was published in Dag
og Tid, on September 11,
2009 in Oslo, Norway,
Condensed from the essay,
originally published in the book,
ECOMAN, New Perspectives on
Masculinity and Nature
Edited by Mark Alister, University Of Virginia
Press, 2004
I love the single deer path
Winding into the wet, tangly night woods
Where nocturnal squirrels,
And whip-poor-wills
Usually fly tree-to-tree.
The Hunter walks from the known
To the
not known,
And water drops
from leaf to leaf.
The humus grows moist,
Still and womanly.
Timothy Young
Hunters walk in
life, and take a life in order to feed life. Or they hunt ritually to express
how meaningful the hunt has been for the continuation of life. To me, now, it
is that simple.
I grew up in a household
of conscientious and disciplined hunters. My dad and uncles taught us to
respectfully hunt rabbits, ducks, pheasants and ruffed grouse. We ate what we hunted or gave the game
to old-timers who relished the meat.
However, when I reached my mid-twenties I quit hunting. Ten years later when my son was born,
I returned to hunting. This story
tells of some of the reasons why I left hunting, and then returned to it.
From my earliest years I
lived with the imagery, and a sensory awareness of meat as food. My father was a meatcutter
in St. Paul. One of my uncles raised cattle on his
farm where I spent many weeks each year with my cousins, and where Dad taught
me to hunt ducks on a back field pothole. My grandfather had been a South Dakota cowboy before he married and moved to St. Paul, and he told
me story after story about being a ranchhand on the
prairie. His brother drove cattle
trucks from South Dakota to the South St. Paul
stockyards, and whenever he stayed overnight with us in “The
Cities” I slept on our family couch. When he had returned to Dakota, my bed
glowed with the rich odors of diesel fuel, animal hair, manure and cattle
feed-- soulful, intimate and unashamed odors.
Because my father worked
in a city supermarket, some of my earliest memories are of meat behind a
glass counter, a sawdust floor, sparkling knives and whirring band saws. The year I began high school, Dad
began to cut up deer for hunters.
This extra work brought in money for our large Catholic family, and we
developed a small, seasonal, family business. The profits paid for Catholic school
tuitions, family necessities, and most importantly today, hunting land in
northern Minnesota.
When we processed
the deer, my task was to skin the hide and then, before sending the quarters
of meat to my father, to burn off with a propane
torch the sticking, hollow winter hairs.
Small tulips of smoke would lift into the darkness above the
garage’s loft joists. I
will always have memories of the odors of burning deer hair, cold venison, a
doe’s suet and a stag’s dirty rectum. In ten years, I skinned over seven
hundred deer. I know well how a
deer’s bared ribs feel, and venison hams and slippery bone knuckles.
As the deer skinner I had
to listen to each man tell his kill story--the area where he hunted, the type
of cover, the quiet spot where he stood, or sat, or leaned against a tree,
the way the deer approached, its head movements and antler swings. Having heard ten stories like it the
day before, I was unimpressed.
Yet, because they were customers I never stopped a story. My restraint was not due to respect. I was an arrogant, introverted college
boy among working-class men.
Because these men craved to tell their stories, as men should, and
because most were never taught how to tell stories without a beer in hand, we
were at odds.
One evening as I worked,
an especially obnoxious braggart insisted on prattling
his expertise to me. I realized
that I could probably chase him from the garage if I turned the radio from
familiar, if disliked, “hippie” music, to the more mysterious
classical music. I found a
classical music broadcast from St. John’s
in Collegeville, Minnesota. When I returned to my work he
continued to babble. However, his
words became fewer and fewer, and his babble more disjointed. Finally there was silence. I looked at him. He stared at me like a deer in the
middle of a highway. Then I
became conscious of the sensory impact of my work. I moved and worked intently with a
slender knife in my hand. I wore
a bloodied, white meatcutter’s smock. A half-skun
deer carcass hung from darkness and its gaping chest cavity exposed inner
ribs and blackened blood clots.
Yellowish fat wrapped the backstrap and
folded skin flaps held soft white belly hair while a full, pink doe teat
dripped milk to the concrete floor.
Through the garage’s odors swirled the
sublime music of Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. The hunter froze in the midst of this
beauty and blood. We, two, stood at the edge of something larger than we
understood. I could feel, though
just barely, the spiritual power pulled into the garage by the music. He left the garage and I went back to
work.
I did not understand why
such moments were so spiritually powerful. But I felt something. From the first day I hunted with a
shotgun and refused to kill living pigeons just to practice my skills, I had
questions about my own hunting as “death-dealing.” What happens to animals when they
die? When I kill one, am I evil? Is there a spiritual realm beyond this
earthly world where the souls of animals and humans continue in a different
existence? I instinctively knew
that the hunting and killing of another creature was a core activity for the
human soul, and for human sustenance.
A hunt is not a hunt unless there is the threat that something
dies. The conscientious hunter
must accept this. He cannot turn
away and absolve himself from his participation in death-dealing; neither
could I dismiss as irrelevant the vitality I felt while hunting. I sensed that there was a spiritual
dimension in hunting. My father
and uncles accepted hunting as normal, worldly behavior and let it be at
that. Our parish priests could
not answer my question about huntiing’s value
to the soul. At this time I knew
nothing about the attitudes of indigenous hunters, and I did not yet realize
that my questions were part of a human being’s maturation process. I felt only guilt and confusion.
A blanket of bravado
wrapped most of the hunters I knew in a state of psychological denial. The commercialization of the natural
outdoors, the merchandising of the hunt, the Welcome Hunters signs on taverns, the governmental need to manage prey kills with bag limits and
seasons, the city-fication of the American culture
and the rising awareness of ecological disasters stifled respectful
discussions, and encouraged blustery and defensive rhetoric among the hunters
I knew.
My exposure to relevant
writings and opinions was limited to Time
Magazine, Sports Afield and Outdoor
Life. I never felt rooted in
a literary or religious system that could give authority to my beliefs. The
only serious hunting literature I knew of glorified killing or tried to
emulate Hemingway’s work, which I did not yet understand. Nor was I interested in the work of
someone who would kill himself. I
secretly loved poetry. Yet, I
could not find serious poems about hunting or its relevance to
spirituality.
Recently, I looked back at
some of the poems I wrote when I was twenty- two years old. My themes were the same themes I work
with today; that beauty and the natural world depend upon a great recycling
of living things; that the shadow side of rational, scientific thinking is
fear,
especially a fear of life’s unpredictability, which then
creates in us a craving for safety and purity. I was clearly seeking a spirituality in nature and an awareness of my own
natural soul. The invigorating excitement of a hunt added another layer of meaning to
my quest. The word soul darts into and through many of those poems. They speak of absolutions, rebirths
and holy wisdom. Here are a few lines pulled from a
rambling, poorly written poem:
In
the city my soul becomes an urban skeleton,
an abandoned
infant decaying in a can.
In
the pine I am a fresh intruder, but still wet with stink.
Animals
flee because my mother has not licked me clean.
Like
a devil, tension is cast out
by
the holy spirits of the elements
and
the weight of sunlight through
needles
and boughs forces age into
the
crevices inside me, fills those cracks,
and packs oldness
into my inner spaces.
I knew almost nothing of
the spirituality of other peoples.
After twelve years of Catholic education (many as an altar boy,) after
two years at the University
of Minnesota where my
Catholic education was challenged, I began to question my religious
background. In my professed faith
and spirituality, I was completely Catholic. However, the natural world was
infusing me with a deeper sense of spirituality. I was struggling to understand.
I had been taught that animals did not
have souls, yet I felt differently. When my friends and I killed animals, we
would go drink beer “to celebrate.” Such drinking numbed my soul. I wanted to be “one of the
guys,” and I desired a natural participation in the wilderness. These are contrary desires, and I was
not ready to choose one over the other.
I wanted wisdom and I wanted to avoid the burden of my dilemma, which
was, “Why does one soul have to kill another?”
The human body
senses things deeply while on the hunt. My physical senses were heightened,
and as an undisciplined person I had difficulties coping with such heightened
awareness. My eyes saw more
textures, movements, subtleties and patterns. Scents were innumerable, and
poignant. The range of sound was
vaster than anywhere else. More
importantly, the possibility of enormous silence gave my life a larger
potentiality. My soul
quaked under the burden of its growing awareness. It was exhilarating and
expansive. To survive and not
yield to numbness or fear, my awareness of myself had spread out. But it also condensed. The pulse of awareness, inward,
outward, inward, outward, was as important to my vitality (maybe even more
so) as the pulse of my physical heart.
I also learned that
nature itself kills with brutality.
Cruelty, ugliness and violence are as inherent as beauty, harmony and
peace. For instance, the most
courageous struggle of a small vole may be while it dies in the elegant
goshawk’s talons, as the beak rips the vole’s flesh so fledglings
can eat.
To comprehend the
beauty and vitality of nature, one must hold the paradoxes of life and death
in the soul. During the
Depression my Dad’s family revered pheasants, squirrels, the wild woods
because they survived by legal hunting and poaching. After the Depression ended, they
continued to hunt and fish. They
valued the unique beauty of the birds, the cleverness by which animals
survive, and the challenges of an intensely lived life. The ritual gathering of food and the
ritual killing for meat reminded them of the precariousness of life. They enjoyed being alive. My brothers, cousins, and I inherited
this enjoyment, and I attempted to bring its vitality and paradoxes into the
hidden life of my poems.
One autumn Dan took a break from his
wildlife management studies. I,
too, had decided to skip a quarter or two of college. We spent six weeks hunting and fishing
every day, along the lake, down the small rivers, and through the flooded
swamps where Dan also set traps for muskrats. Mostly, however, I scribbled lines
about my inner struggles. Here’s a stanza from one poem.
I
place my faith upon his skill
to supply the
meat for our meal.
As
helmsman, I guide
the
canoe, not by stars, but a thrill
of
the hunt and forced survival
in the wild. Only
death may decide.
I knew intuitively that to
mature we had to understand the meaning of survival. Of course, we would not starve, but we
had to act as if we might. My
poetic exaggeration was a form of a prayer. We were unconsciously ritualizing the sustanence of life through the hunt, and the hunt
ritualized our family’s story, which in turn is the story of
humankind’s struggle.
But as a young man of the times, I was also asking, “Am I serving
death or life?”
It was the autumn of
1972, a time when death and dying were imagistically
ubiquitous. I needed to
differentiate between the death-dealing in hunting and the death-dealing in
warfare. The Vietnam War had
brought more violence and threats of violence to my life. Violent images spread through the
media. My friends returned from
the war with rage and wounds. In
1970 my own conscription was prevented at the last minute by the severe acne
which had erupted on my body. I
was sent home from the induction center only minutes before the other
draftees began their trip to boot camp.
Despite the “summer of love” enthusiasms of the rock-n-roll
sixties, death energy had overtaken the iconography of my generation. Janis Joplin, Jimi
Hendrix, Mama Cass and others had died as drug-using rock idols. Altamount
had followed Woodstock.
Because I secretly dreamed of being a poet, John Berryman’s notorious
suicide while I sat in class across the campus gave death a greater imprint
on my mind.
A more personal
tragedy occured in 1969. My nine-year-old brother, John, died
from a brain tumor. We witnessed
his bouts of pain on the family sofa, and we watched him suffer through his
surgery, radiation treatments, and final miseries. In 1972, my family still lived in the
shadow of the simple question--Why was an innocent child taken by such a
cancer?
My poetic
exaggeration (only death may decide) was, therefore, not an exaggeration to
my soul. My immature abilities
focused upon the power of death.
Young men do, naturally and instinctively, move toward the edge of
chaos where creativity emerges and death challenges their survival. Whether consciously or unconsciously,
young people need to prove to themselves and to their community that they are
capable of sustaining their own lives and that they are useful to others in
the ever-changing motions of life. To do so they have always gone to the
edges of their culture or community.
Dan and I were in
the darkness of emerging manhood.
We had entered the great, tangly night woods
of northern Minnesota
and each of us followed a path into the unknown. We were looking for the elemental
experiences which would enliven us with hope, healing solace, explanations
and reverence. Years later, the
Mayan spiritual teacher, Martin Prechtel, explained
that we were trying to initiate ourselves into the mysteries of life. Our instinctive attempts were
noteworthy, but futile.
Self-initiation is not possible.
An older, experienced person must consciously lead a young person to
the edge of life’s mysteries if the maturation is to be life-enhancing
and life-respecting. When faced
with the enormous power of death, the young one will emotionally shut down,
or begin to move toward insanity if not accompanied by an elder’s
attention. Here’s a small
scale example.
Four years before Dan and I went north,
I took one of my neighborhood buddies on his first hunt for grouse. I coached him how to shoot a
shotgun, taught the hunting protocols, and told him about the pleasures of
upland bird shooting.
We never did jump a grouse
that warm September afternoon. On the walk back to the car, we kicked up a
cluster of frogs from the grass beside a marsh. My friend, frustrated that he had not
killed a bird, emptied his shotgun on one jumping frog after another, while
cackling with an insane look on his face. His neck muscles shivered in his
adrenaline rush. His body
crouched like a frog. His eyes
bulged crazily. This
mild-mannered eighteen year-old gave in to an emotional greed for violence. My friend had never touched the
carcasses of food animals. He did
not know the coldness of the animals’ death, nor did he honor the
life-giving aspects of meat. I
could not teach him that which I learned much later--a grateful relationship
with nature must be sought and acknowledged when one hunts another life. If no relationship exists, then the
activity is merely extermination. Extermination is the act of fear and greed
gone amok. I saw this
vividly. It disgusted me. I vowed to never again take a
gun-toting neophyte into the woods.
After that autumn
alone with Dan I slipped into the lifestyle and habits of the very fellows I
had scoffed earlier. I became
numbed and oblivious to any spiritual aspects of hunting. In August of 1974 I went with “the
neighborhood guys” to shoot clay pigeons and prepare for the upcoming
bird season. We were drinking
beer, bragging to one another, insulting each other and just being boorish. We were not paying attention to the
natural environment. All we
wanted to do was avoid the police and game wardens
and enjoy our guns and beer. Such
mindlessness is a prelude to danger and destruction. As we walked toward the backwaters of
the Mississippi River a wood duck suddenly
lifted from a pothole. One
friend, always a heavy drinker, swung toward the duck. His shotgun arced toward my head and I
dropped to the ground just before the blast. Had I not dropped, he would have
killed me. I became so angry and
rattled that I abandoned my friends to the slough and drove my car home. Four of them had to cram into a small
pickup. I had lost any
meaningfulness for hunting. I
almost died. For a week I
replayed this near-death experience and I remembered every violent,
uncomfortable experience I had while hunting. I had no sympathetic confidante and I
knew I no longer wanted to hunt.
Over the next ten years, I
finished my undergraduate studies, returned to graduate school, wrote
poetry, and performed it with musicians.
Even though I did not hunt, I tried to feed the hunter inside me. I tracked beauty. I hunted spiritual texts, art, music
and quiet moments in the natural world.
Often, I went alone to libraries, concerts and museums. I needed the time to seriously examine
beauty without obligations to a date or companion. These experiences felt similar to
those I had found in the woods, in a canoe, or walking in the snow.
Ironically, the path
I followed with poetry folks led me back to rather than away from
hunting. I became generally
familiar with Native American beliefs.
I listened to politically active Native Americans, and I paid close
attention to the hunting lessons woven throughout their indigenous stories
and literature. Meridel LeSueur, the
octogenarian grandmother of the peace and justice community, also taught that
life is circular and cyclical, and she encouraged the publication of my
poetry, which included the imagery of hunting. From the work of great American poets
I collected poems about the depth of the hunting experience, and I was
surprised to find that when they did write about hunting, almost all of our
great poets wrote reverently.
When I followed
poet, Robert Bly, into the woods for one of his
men’s conferences, I found new teachers, white men, who had learned
traditional knowledge from indigenous teachers. Among the various teachings about the
soul, those men spoke of valuable lessons to be learned from proper and
respectful hunting. Some teachers
taught in the manner of indigenous people, through stories rather than
lectures, through poetry and music rather than training videos, and with
conscientious rituals that revered and honored all living things.
Then I married. My wife brought her young son to my
house, and we had another son. A
deep force swelled into me. I
felt it as a father and a hunter.
My five brothers, my father and other relatives continued to hunt and
they continued to invite me to deer camp. They knew that I felt the need to
return to hunting. Something
primal aroused me. I now had a
deeper context for hunting rituals.
When I needed a
respite from fatherhood, I began weekly trips to parks just outside the Twin
Cities. I practiced stalking
deer, just as the tracker, John Stokes, had taught at a conference. I tracked animals in the snow until I
found their winter homes. With the help of guide books and gathering bags, I
more urgently identified various plants and animal life. In all kinds of weather I sat for long
periods and sensed the incredible richness of life, and the teeth of death
which fed the living.
Then I bought a bow. I wanted to know the quiet hunt a bowhunter knows.
I wanted to learn the patient skills, and to be physically and
spiritually connected to the woods and my prey. Martin Prechtel
taught that a young man must fall in love with “the goddess,
Nature,” so that he can throw his soul’s great expectations to
her, rather than onto his human lover.
Large expectations and fantasies become debilitating to the human
women men love. The intensity of one’s
inner life can never be fully handled by another human, despite our
romanticized expectations of marriage and relationships. Nature, on the other hand, can accept
and handle all the emotional turmoil and grief a man is willing to express. The grief and attention we offer to
divine Nature is like candy to her.
When we give our grief and tears we feed her, and cleanse
ourselves. I was falling in love,
again, this time with the goddess.
I understood the importance for myself, my sons and my wife.
After a couple years
as an unsuccessful bow hunter, I wondered what I was doing wrong. I knew only a few conventional bowhunters with whom I did not feel comfortable. So I continued to read, for practical
and spiritual advice. One book
contained the songs Pueblo
peoples sang for success on a hunt.
One song addressed the cougar as the king of hunters. No melody was indicated in the
book. Since I lived near the Como
Park Zoo I visited the cougars one Monday morning in October after I had
practiced at the archery range.
The morning was bright, and the high sky was deep blue. The cougar’s den had been built
from concrete and shaped as a mountain crag where they lounged in the
sun. The zoo was quiet and nearly
empty of people. The cougars
watched me intently. I spoke to
them quietly about why I had come to visit. Then I sang a melody that popped into
my head, and I adapted words from the Pueblo
verses.
He
comes alive, alive, he comes alive.
He
comes alive, alive, he comes alive.
He
comes alive, alive, he comes alive.
The
lion of the north, he comes alive.
That evening I left
for northern Minnesota. As I approached my freeway exit near
midnight, I saw the shadowy form of a medium-sized cougar seated beside the
freeway. As I turned onto the
exit the cat ran into the woods. I felt stunned and awed. The next day I returned to verify what
I thought I had seen. Sure
enough, I found a cougar’s spoor and some scat on a sandy logging road. I took it to be a sign and I hunted
that area. After only a
half-hour, a doe came running directly at me. I drew my bow and waited, but at about
thirty yards, she saw me just as I was about to shoot. She spun behind a pussy willow bush. Directly behind her a very small
yearling came running. Behind it,
something else moved in the tall grass.
The yearling spun with its mother and they ran across an open swath of
clear-cut forest. I was not
capable of shooting a deer fleeing at full speed. But it didn’t matter. It was a timeless moment. A surge of awe and grace and joy came
from a deep place inside me. I
had been a part of a cooperative hunt with a cougar. Just as the indigenous teachings had
promised, I received assistance from the “king of the hunt.” I had ritualized my prayers in
song. The cougar had chased two
deer toward me. One for me and
one for him. However, I was still
too inept to fulfill my part of the bargain. As my gratitude swelled, I gave loud,
grateful apologies to the unseen predator. A spiritual dimension opened to me. I
felt blessed by unseen forces.
Three years later Martin Prechtel told me
how to ritually make amends to the spirit of the cougar through prayers and
offerings. When I prayed directly
to the cougar spirit, when I gave it ritual gifts, I found another layer of
meaning to the hunt--reciprocation.
In the spiritual dimension reached through ritual, the intention of
one’s heart can penetrate ignorance and pain, and can heal the soul.
That winter I
finally bought a Winchester rifle and an
over-and-under Winchester
double-barrelled shotgun from a retired military friend. The following November I joined my
brothers and family for the annual deer hunt. My brothers knew of my years studying
the literary and spiritual dimensions of hunting. They knew that I went with groups of
men to study the outdoors, old folktales, and the cultural traditions which
bonded men in the unique matters of the soul. They knew the “cougar story” and
they knew that I now valued the hunt as a sacred, ritual activity. I had told
them personal stories about my experiences with the teachers, the poets, and
the men at these conferences.
They were aware, yet wary, of my attitudes.
In the week before
Opening Day my brother, Jake, told me he was glad that I would join
them. “You’re the
only one who’ll understand this,” he said. “Whenever
I’ve killed a deer, before I do anything else, I put a little pine
bough in its mouth, and ask it to forgive me, and I thank it for becoming
food for my family.”
His words were almost the exact words I had read in hunting stories
from tribal peoples. He knew
instinctively, what I had needed to learn. I had also learned that the act of
putting grass in the deer’s mouth was an ancient, medieval German
rite. Jake was not surprised, but
pleased when I told him.
As I rode north with
a second brother, Tony, we jabbered about our families, politics, union work,
and current events. After a
conversational pause, he said, “Well, umm, I’m really glad
you’re hunting with us.
You’re the only one who’ll understand this, but whenever I
kill a deer, before I gut it, I whisper a little prayer of thanks to
God....and to the deer. I know
the church wouldn’t see it as appropriate, but I think it’s
necessary.” I sat quietly,
grinning, and said, “Thanks, for having me with you.” Two of my five brothers, who had
been hunting together for years, were praying for the souls of their deer
kills, and they were embarrassed to do so openly, although neither was
ashamed to pray at church.
On opening morning I
hunted from a deer stand on Dan’s woodland. He has hunted more than the rest of
us, and his knowledge about the animals, their behaviors and habitats,
probably exceeds the cumulative knowledge of his brothers. He has also had a ritual which
he performs after every successful hunt.
Once he kills a large animal, he cuts out its tenderloin, “the
love muscle,” from behind the heart cavity. As soon as possible he fries it and
shares small pieces with whomever is near. His “tradition” is similar
to the rituals of tribal people, who ritually cook and eat a piece of the
heart to honor the individual animal and to absorb some of its personal
strength.
After a few icy
hours sitting in the tree stand, I heard him shoot. I waited awhile, then crawled down and
walked through the snow toward him.
As I came from behind a stand of fir trees, I saw him kneeling over a
fallen deer, whispering in its ear and patting it on the head. I allowed him time to finish, then
noisily approached as he began to gut the deer.
I did not say much
to my brothers about what I knew of their private, sacred rituals. But over the next years, I purposely
spoke about my own need to pray for the animals, for thanks, for the rituals
and the family bonds that are strengthened by our hunt. Always, they nodded and said little,
but I could see that they agreed.
Finally, on one hunting
trip after I had been hunting with them for a few years, I prayed openly over
a deer, the way one teacher had taught.
It felt awkward to me, but my brothers gave me respectful space for my
words of gratitude.
That evening, after
a first course of venison tenderloin cooked in butter, we ate a dinner of
buttercup squash and green beans from Dad’s garden, a pork roast from
Jake’s farm-raised pig, and cake sent north by Mom. Uncle Bill came by
to visit, and while he and Dad talked in the cabin, the rest of us, including
my other brothers Joe and Chris, went out beneath the spectacularly lit Milky
Way and we smoked cigars in the dark.
We spoke together of the spiritual dimensions of the hunt. They even let me recite a few hunting
poems. Brothers, a brother-in-law, nephews, all of us speaking in reverence
for the mystery of life’s basic law--Something dies, so another can
live.
For years I taught moral judgment, anger
management and social skills to juveniles at the Minnesota Correctional Facility at Red
Wing. Folktales and fairytales
were very important tools in my work.
This essay appeared in the Journal For Living special issue KIDS
AT THE EDGE.
THREE ESSAYS from Red Wing Days
JOURNAL FOR LIVING * No. 21* 2000, pp.37-39
Bullroarers and Stories
an essay by Timothy Young
The very nature
of young people insists that if they are to mature into useful, fulfilled
adults, they must examine the outer edges of their culture, and then return
to community. Many young people
go to college where their family or community beliefs are challenged at the
edge of academia. Some chase to
the edge of physical ability in the intense environs of high school, college
or professional athletics. Some
challenge themselves with risk-taking in extreme individual sports, such as
bungee-jumping, sheer-face rock-climbing or high-flying moto-cross. For others, the edge may be more
personal, and sexual experimentation becomes the mode for testing
boundaries. Maybe the drug
culture or the internet “dot.com” domain becomes their personal
trek site. For others, a trip
into cultic thinking, curious spiritual habits or spiritual isolation may
define their edge. For some,
it’s the Marines or the Peace Corps as a way to go beyond a familiar
boundary. For certain young
people that edge is a criminal one.
Young people
are driven by universal forces.
As they feel their individuals begin to sing its personal song, they
spin to the outer edge of their community, like bullroarers creating loud
noises. A bullroarer is a flat
piece of wood at the end of a rawhide string that makes a roaring noise when
twirled. It is used in some
tribal people’s ceremonies to call forth spiritual forms or energized,
especially when there is some lethargy in the individual or community.
The
bullroarer is both a tool to call the spirit, and an audible manifestation of
the very spirit called. Young people serve the same rejuvenating
purpose. Maybe through the sound
system of a slick car or squealing tires, through loud parties or
extravagant, shocking attire young people announce their presence to us and
to the spirited realm. Through
these forms they are also celebrating their existence. More often than not, that’s when
they irritate the rest of us at the center—elders, parents, neighbors
and younger children. Lest we
forget, many of us older people, when gathered with our peers, reminisce on
our own edge-playing days, because those events were integral to our
development.
Although
young people may pretend to that they do not want to be a part of their
community, their loud songs are meant to remind us that they are still at our
edge—courageous and useful.
As a biological level they are calling to other who may bring genetic
vitality to the community. And
they don’t want us to abandon them.
They want us
to hold tightly to that bullroarer thong. It is their lifeline. As they mature, they want to be
reassured that when the time comes, we will be strong enough to pull them
back from the edge as they exhaustedly struggle to rejoin the center.
How do you
who use crime as a risk-taking adventure return to the community? The athlete can return to his
community, and give back to his community, merely by playing on his
team. For those testing the
educational limits, they may graduate and bring their knowledge back to jobs,
community or family.
At the
Minnesota Correctional Facility—Red Wing, where I teach, one of our
stated goals is that “when a juvenile leaves he should have the ability
to function in society as a productive citizen.” To do this we work diligently to
provide the instructional methods best suited to the individual needs and
interests of the student and his learning style. Our job is also to help the young man
identify the skills he already has, to learn new skills and then help him identify
the center of his personal community and his lifeline (the bullroarer thong),
which can guide him back from the edge.
Some bullroarer thongs are not strong enough and the increase tension
brought by the individual youth actually breaks the bond to his family. Many of our students have not had any
familial, communal or social center, so we try to identify a meaningful
life-center for them, whether it is another family, his child if he’s a
parent, a neighborhood, or a work place.
To be a successful adult he will have to be responsible to more than
his own whims.
Every student
participates in an ongoing class on anger management, social behavior skills
and moral judgment. We try to
lead the young men through the pitfalls of thinking errors, victimizing
behaviors and inadequate social skills. Our curriculum is based on the
principles and practices of cognitive/behavioral restructuring and
cognitive/social skill development.
Through these classes I have listened to young men describe the edge
where they find themselves. Very
little holds them to any center:
not personal, family or community ties. Often, only a fantasy or a hope is the
connection. In some cases the
facility fence is the only thing keeping them from spinning further into the
oblivion of criminal chaos. Our
fence, a concrete symbol of the corrections system, is the backstop catching
young men who have slid past the social programs and communities meant to
catch them. Like a wild pitch, or
a foul tipped baseball, they gather, often neglected, along the backstop of
the Great American Playing Field.
In Minnesota, our
correctional philosophy for youth emphasizes therapeutic and educational
programming. In most cases, when
a young man is released from our facility he has proven he is capable of
responsible and productive behaviors. Yet we cannot guarantee to what
environment the young man will return.
If no center exists for him, any chance of a useful life is greatly
diminished. He must look to
himself for inspiration and psychological sustenance and hopefully, he will
be able to deal with any isolation and the negative pressures he surely will
face. This becomes a very
difficult dilemma. He has no
group to keep him accountable for his actions as he did in his Red Wing
cottage group. Nor is he
attending to another’s accountability. Without parental or familial
disciplines, his attitude about his dilemma is crucial. In most cases inappropriate
self-centeredness led him to our facility in the first place. Now he must balance his
self-centeredness with appropriate behaviors and find a connection to an
actual community outside of himself.
What do I, as
a teacher, offer the young man with little or no helpful community? I once asked the poet, Robert Bly, (whose books Iron John and The Sibling
Society address some of the cultural difficulties from which these young
men emerge) what he believed to be the best way to engage and teach young men
in a correctional facility. He
said that they should first hear the story of how I or any other man familiar
to them lived to be fifty years old.
The youth will then know men who overcame obstacles and understand
that there is hope that they, too, can live that long. Secondly, Bly
said that folktales and traditional stories should be part of any
instruction. Folktales instill a
sense of hope with
“happily ever after,” and “he lived to see
another day.” Stories give
us access to a center, a collective human experience, which is a trustworthy
anchor for individual experience.
In this case, a story is a bullroarer thong.
I first heard
Bly tell a folktale to adult men who later
discussed how the story mirrored their own difficulties. I sat stunned as those men talked
about the story as a personal map into adulthood. The psychological twists and
turns of life, the difficulties and thresholds of life’s danger are
played out through the vivid imagery and flamboyant plots of folktales. Years later, when I began telling
folktales to elementary school children, I found that their observations were
as often as astute as those of adults.
Because there is inherent story logic in all folktales, a logic that
has come down through millions of storytellers and listeners, the story
becomes the expert text for life’s survival skills. Often listeners will correct a
storyteller who adapts images or plot alterations that overstep the bounds of
that internal and communal logic.
Something in the human psyche knows when the story is off the beam.
The images,
the plots, or the characters in fairy tales or folktales have universal
resonance—the third son who is a simpleton, the girl whose father is a
widower, the brother who turns into a bird, the hag who cannot be tricked, or
the ghosts who can. The human
psyche, whether in childhood, adolescence or adulthood, can absorb these
story images easier than those present through the fine arts or mass marketed
icons. When an individual hears a
story, the pictures he sees in his mind are as individualistic as he is. In this way the lessons of a story can
penetrate his intellectual defenses.
Also, by
telling story, rather than reading it, the storyteller becomes a living and
breathing part of the immediate creation. One mythologist said that the
voice is half of the story’s wisdom. (I feel I’m finally getting old
enough to properly tell stories.)
When I tell a story, I have little difficulty with listeners who do
not pay attention. And if I can
dim the lights in the room and set up an atmosphere of mystery, I almost
always have perfect attention, even with the rowdiest of adolescents.
Before I tell
a story, I use a technique the storyteller and mythologist Michael Meade
suggests. I ask each listener to
pay attention to the story so that if a detail, an image or a plot change
really strikes his imagination, he should carefully note it. That detail is then the individual’s
personal “door to the story” and discussion about that
“door” will indicate a personal issue the listener must
address. That personal issue
connects to an unacknowledged grief, which has coagulated around the image.
Once I told a
Grimm’s tale, The White Snake, to a group at Red Wing. One young man said that he was
astounded that the character in the story gave away his most precious
possession, a fine horse that the king had given him. In a discussion that followed, the
young man acknowledged that he had burglarized goods because of a
self-centered fear that he would never have anything of his own. In the story, the character gained a
princess and the king’s throne and lands after giving away his horse
and trusting the fate of his
Goodwill. A fear and grief about material things
blocked the heart of this young man in Red Wing who, upon release, received a
job from the very man he burglarized.
By acknowledging his fears and grief, he loosened the bonds that held
him to criminal behavior. This
sort of anecdote abounds when storytellers and listeners exchange
information.
In folktales
the tricksters, young hunters, magical beings, treasures and beautiful
princesses can captivate the imaginations of the most cynical young men. Once they see how a fairy tale can
help them make choices and how different choices have different consequences,
they become enthralled with stories.
The stories about bags of gold may appeal to the more materialistic
young man, yet with a little explanation, with a little shift of
consciousness, that same young man might see a bag of gold as a symbol for
his freedom. Then his attention
is snared.
Traditional
stories are, according to storyteller and writer Joseph Bruchac,
“cautionary tales and guides to behavior.” Because of their criminal behaviors,
the youth a Red Wing need guidance and cautionary lessons that can penetrate
their usually defiant and hardened habits. They need to be convinced to choose
appropriate behaviors. In our
work we teach that internal choosing precedes behavior. Impulsive youngsters have not often
thought about this concept.
Often these
young men see themselves as cleverer than the average youth, and fairytales
often emphasize how cleverness can pay off. In folktales, the cleverest one has to
think ahead, make plans, be able to think on his feet, and understand the
consequences of his choices.
These are the skills that are reinforced by our program. We help guide their thoughts about
themselves to help them toward appropriateness. They might also learn that, as in
fairy tales, sometimes too much cleverness can backfire.
However,
sometimes, foolish courage is needed.
How many youth display this quality? In the Russian fairy tale, The
Firebird and Princess Vasilisa, when a young
hunter is told, “If you pick up the firebird’s feather,
you’ll know trouble,” the young man picks up the feather
anyway. He then has to pass a
series of trials. Throughout the
story his horse advises him.
Eventually, he wins Princess Vasilisa’s
love because he trusted his horse and heeded his advice.
Maybe the
horse represents the basic instincts of the youth. Maybe the horse represents the words
of a dead grandfather. Maybe the
horse symbolizes the “horse sense” a young man inherently
has. In our program almost every
lesson is structured to remind the young man to stop and think, plan ahead
and listen openly. So many
respond and say,
“This is just common sense.” When a storyteller can equate horse
sense with common sense, the story suddenly carries more weight and its
lessons slip into the imagination of the defiant mind of a youthful
offender. The choices of
the young men in Red Wing are similar to those choices of many fairy tale
heroes. Time and again, they have
been told by parents, police, probation officers, court officials and
educators that if they choose certain behaviors they will know trouble and
incarceration. Like fairy tale
heroes, they may not have listened to the advice of their elders, or to their
horse sense.
Yet, in story
after story, despite the ordeals, despite the quandaries and desperate
situations, there is always hope.
Cleverness is rewarded, if the hero’s heart is good. The simpleton triumphs, if his heart
is good. Strange animals help the
prince if his heart is good. Most
young men believe that their own hearts are good. We must encourage them to continue to
value the goodness they feel. We
must honor that inner knowing at every opportunity and acknowledge the
shining heart behind the hard façade. If his heart feels good, the light of
hope penetrates a young man’s darkest fears.
A young man
thus supported sees commonality in his personal experience and becomes
connected to the rich sweetness of the wider human experience. Now connected to other young men who
have lived that same type of story, he can add his story to the stories of
his family or community, and suddenly he knows in his deepest mind that he is
both, unique and connected, useful and involved in the universal process of
growing up.
The following essay appeared in
PARABOLA
Myth, Tradition, the
Search for Meaning
Summer 2003 * Volume 28 *
Number 2 * p.123-124
Sometimes, at the end of a difficult day, I’ve
heard a corrections worker say, “I feel like I’m doing
life--eight hours at a time.”
Prison work takes it toll.
I teach anger management and moral thinking skills at the juvenile
correctional facility in Red Wing, Minnesota,
the institution a young Bob Dylan sang of, but never visited. Work with juveniles is stressful; work
in a treatment-oriented, prison environment is, often, more so. An entire nation’s projections
stew in this culturally constructed cauldron. This year, I’m working with
juvenile sex offenders--young pedophiles, prostitutes, flashers and rapists.
Some are mentally ill. Some were
homeless. Their childhoods were as ugly and disturbing as the acts that
brought them to us. If a worker
is to remain healthy in this unique environment, he must look for a a spiritual connection to a
deeper or divine entity. Every
day is a day of spiritual work in this crucible. The day-to-day activities of teaching
are intensified by the physical structure and the psychological containment
of the young men.
Many of the teachers, officers,
administrators and caseworkers have served youth for decades. One colleague, a frontline caseworker,
Dane Petersen, has worked at Red Wing for over thirty years. He has had to teach basic
hygiene skills, find appropriate foster homes, arrange jobs, contact courts
and schools, complete reams of mandatory paperwork, and guide shamed young
men toward a deeper sense of self-worth.
He has dealt with sexual propositions, violent physical threats and
assaults, emotional breakdowns and radical political policy swings. Throughout, he has maintained a
liveliness and cheerful dedication to his work. As an ordained Lutheran minister
he chose to serve this community, not as a chaplain, but as a caseworker. He
sees his work as a spiritual discipline.
Just as importantly, he maintians a vital
physical, spiritual and mental life outside the institution. Others workers have also been
ordained or are deeply involved in their spiritual disciplines.
Corrections workers must face the demons of the
environment with spiritual and psychological strength or the atmosphere may deteriorate
quickly. It may become dangerous and do more harm to residents or the
staff. Marie-Louise von Franz
described a demon as the one-sidedness of a complex which eats up a person. When the person is eaten up, as some
of our residents are when they arrive, the demon “entangles itself in
the surrounding environment.”
If a staff member is being eaten by the environment he
spirals into desperate cynicsm. Dane Petersen says, “I have
survived because I look to see where God is hiding in each boy. And God is
always hiding there. That
awareness keeps me going.”
The African medicine healer and scholar, Malidoma
Some’, who has worked with juvenile gang members in California, said that when he first meets
someone,
“I look beyond the physical man and address his soul
standing right behind his body.”
When working in a prison it is necessary that you bring this skill
with you or learn it.
Our residents need to access and acknowledge their grief
to get a clearer sense of their own essences. Sometimes treatment work helps.
Psychological therapy may help.
Spiritual practice sometimes helps. In corrections there is always an
opportunity for self-scrutiny, restorative healing and spiritual work--for
the resident and the worker.
There usually comes a moment when a young man may choose a different
path. Yet, only if we workers do
our own spiritual griefwork, utilize our own self-scutiny and continue our own spiritual practices will we
recognize the moment for what it is and help him take the next step. The environment of a juvenile prison
is a cauldron for us, also.
TEACHING SERIOUS,
CHRONIC OFFENDERS
An Essay written for and
published for blog use.
A fog bank over the Mississippi
River began to swallow the bottom of the red full moon as I
drove west toward the Minnesota Correctional Facility at Red Wing. I had to drive into that fog. It cleared after the Eisenhower Bridge
into Red Wing and the sun light ricocheted off the white stone bluffs. At the facility, a mile south of town,
the sky was high and blue. On my way to work, I had smoked a small cigar, a
daily ritual as I move through the liminal space
from my rural home world to this.
On the way home I will smoke another.
Once inside the Administration
building, built at the end of the 1800’s as a replica of a castle on
the Rhine, I punched the electronic code at each of the two sally port doors
and walked off to Walter
Maginnis High School, a small, single story
school dropped into the middle of a correctional facility. Every time I enter this institution I
enter a world where the rules are quite different than “on the
outs.” I teach serious and
chronic, male juvenile offenders.
Most have been convicted of an average of five felonies in their short
lifetimes.
A few years
ago, a survey indicated that 98% of our boys had been suspended or expelled
from their local schools at one time or another. In the 2000-2001 school
year, 247, 500 students attended high school in Minnesota. Maginnis High School averaged 155 boys that
year. Boys come and go
year-round. Approximately
two-thirds come to us with Special Education IEPs
(Individual Education Plans.) We have no choice but to teach the worst
behaved, and often least educated, student whom other schools can push out
their doors. We cannot do
that. We are the last stop before
adult prison, if they don’t change their habits.
Administrators
assign our boys to particular cottages, depending on conviction and
court-assigned needs. Because a
cottage group attends all classes as a unit, one class may consist of
smaller, chemically dependent boys, fourteen to sixteen, who have educational
skills varying in levels from kindergarten to post-high school. The next class may be older,
meaner gangbangers who must live with boys from
enemy gangs. That class may be
followed by a group of whiny, needy sex offenders. Then another class from the Chemical
Dependency cottages. Then older
sex offenders, and so on and so on for seven hours.
Before my
first class, I sit down in Dana’s room. Numerical equations are scribbled in
marker on his white board. Mike,
the English teacher is already seated, as is Adam, a special education
teacher, LaVoie, another math teacher and Steve,
the science guy. I’m teaching
occupational skills this quarter.
Bill (a former physical education teacher who teaches cursory classes
in general education--math, English, science, social studies and health--in
the Dayton Security Unit, or DSU) begins our morning ritual by reading the
Isaac Asimov Quiz. We jump-start
our minds with this ten question quiz from the newspaper’s
comics’ page. Most
mornings, we’re able to collectively answer all ten questions and
reaffirm our bond as peers in this unique setting.
During my
first class, (this day it is keyboarding practice on word processors), a
“new commit” tries to establish his rank in this CD cottage
group. It’s obvious that
he’s far more intelligent than anyone else in the group, and he’s
loud and trying to prove that he’s street smart and unfazed by
incarceration. He poses as one
who thrives with his “authority issues.” I was told that his mother is a
college professor. Unless we can help him fit in appropriately, he will be a
serious problem in this group, which includes a young man with Fetal Alcohol
Syndrome who reads at a second grade level. The new boy will become a negative
leader, manipulating the weaker members, provoking distrust and
confrontations. Experience tells
me that he will definitely lead this group. The teachers, his caseworker and
cottage staff will discuss his behavior at the next cottage committee, and we
will plot strategies to groom him toward positive leadership and
compassionate mentoring for the other boys. In class I immediately tell him
that foul language is not acceptable in my room. He drops his eyes and looks for
support from the others, which he doesn’t receive. Then he apologizes. Because he does not argue, I know he
will be malleable enough to guide toward that leadership role. He may backslide, and as with most
fellows, he’ll misbehave seriously enough, at least once and go to
DSU. Maybe he’ll try to
hide some homemade “hooch” to drink after lights out. Or maybe he’ll get into a fight
with a group member with whom he spends sixteen hours a day, seven days a
week. Maybe he will throw a temper tantrum and yell abusive, sexual comments
toward a female staff member a few hours after his mother’s weekend
visit. Maybe he will make side comments
and threats to one of the sex offenders who pass him in the hall, a sex
offender who was raped for five years before the age of seven, who has rectal
damage and walks funny, yet has also begun to molest boys. Maybe he will try to throw a punch at
me. It’s not likely
he’ll sit in my class and try to fondle another group member, for which
I must be vigilant when the sex offenders are in my room. But, I can never be sure. One of these CD fellows is back in
class today after a trip to DSU for “horse-playing” and doing a
clothed, “Mississippi Leg Hound Act,” as Dana calls it, against
another boy’s hip. For
years I was assigned to the sex offender cottage committee where I learned
the histories, (mental, physical, sexual and institutional) of all the boys
in that cottage. Many other
boys, not in that cottage, have sexual issues, and their behaviors seldom
surprise me.
On my first
day years ago I had been given a short tour of the school, and immediately
assigned to help the teacher in DSU.
I had not yet attended “The Academy” where I would be
given three weeks of training on the philosophy of Minnesota Corrections, on
corrections policies and in various verbal and physical security
tactics. School policies would be
learned later. On that first day,
after my first hour, the DSU teacher and I were called from the high security
classroom to the day floor. Five
security officers held down an enraged Native American boy. The teacher and I each had to restrain
a leg so the boy could be placed in a special restraint chair. One of the officers quietly, but
authoritatively told the boy, “Relax and come back to us?” He repeated this over and over, with
patience and control. Despite the
careful but firm restraint by the seven of us, this skinny boy would not stop
wrestling. It took everything I
had to hold one leg.
Eventually, he quieted enough so we could put him in the chair.
Once seated
and strapped, he relaxed but ranted about the African American boy who had
taunted him about his race and skinny body. He had been eating his meal on the day
floor. The other boy taunted him
from a cell through the safety glass window on a locked metal door. The skinny Native boy swiftly grabbed
a pencil from the officer’s desk and tried to stab through the glass,
shattering the pencil, which further enraged him and escalated the
other’s taunting. I
wondered, “What have I gotten myself into?” Since that day, every year or so, I
have witnessed or been a part of at least one such incident, and there were
more I have not witnessed. Yet in
Minnesota
we are proud of the fact that there are far fewer incidents here than most
other states.
Once I began
to teach in the school, my days neared normalcy, but normalcy never quite
arrives. I work with some of our
most damaged and volatile young men.
Because of extremely dysfunctional histories they may never be able to
live a normal life. We usually
only hear of former students who make headlines in the news, whether
murdering someone or being murdered.
Sometimes word filters down that ‘so and so’ is doing time
elsewhere. Such news still breaks
my heart, but I have to leave that heartache at the facility. I cannot bring the difficulties
home. We never hear about those
who have turned a corner and live successful and quiet lives. I have heard that since 1998 the
recidivism rate for our population as diminished from 68% to about 35%, but I
do not want to ask for the factual proof. I want to believe that I am doing a
better job and I am helpful to the boys and to the public which entrusts us
with its cast-offs.
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