“A close observation of nature cannot help but yield a poetic sensibility, and who observes nature more closely than a hunter?” – Rick Bass, from A Thousand Deer

I hunt in some ugly places. Fetid, buggy swamps. Former military installations littered with abandoned storage bunkers and piles of concrete and rusting metal and wires and God-knows-what. Weed-choked briar patches and scrubby woods in suburbia where I can’t tune out the cars and barking dogs and leaf blowers. But over time these places have become sacred to me. Sure, some of it has to do with sentimentality: That big six point I thought I made a bad shot on piled up right here in the tall grass by the heap of derelict concrete. But part of it is that in places where there’s evidence of human intrusion and “development,” Nature’s coming back, reclaiming space. And in these places of reclamation and litter and ugliness, I often find solitude. Few other hunters, and far fewer hikers and dog-walkers and woodsy drug users or copulaters want to be where I sit. And that’s how I like it.

It always surprises me when I see a woodland creature amidst debris and litter and evidence of human development. Once, when I lived in a small city Northwest of Boston known for its rough neighborhoods and historic mills, I went to meditate in a small strip of woods near my apartment. There was trash everywhere—empty bottles and cans and wrappers, a weathered tarp, a stolen (and subsequently abandoned) shopping cart—but it also had trees and rocks and dirt, and it was more secluded than the tiny yard in front of my building, so it worked. At one point I felt something was off and opened my eyes to see a big, yellowy coyote looking at me from twenty yards away. I held still and it trotted off, but it blew my mind that there was a wild animal in such an ugly, desecrated bit of nature.  

Repetition and familiarity also get me attached to a place, regardless of its aesthetic qualities. It takes time to really see a place, to understand how it lays out and to notice its nuances. You suddenly become aware of the murmur of running water and realize that there’s a very slow trickle of a brook running through the swamp. Or you feel the breeze breaking against a copse of dense pines like waves against a cliff and it swirls back to you in your treestand. Or maybe it’s just the emerald patch of moss growing on the concrete rubble. But it’s there. And my attachment to a place grows very quickly if I harvest an animal or see something cool (like an owl perching on a nearby branch or a particularly vivid sunrise), or if I don’t get disturbed there. It takes time and sometimes perseverance to see past the ugliness, the flaws, and to recognize the hidden (or at least less obvious) beauty of a place.

“Because he looked at me funny.”

That’s the reason I get when I show up at my son’s school in the middle of the day as
requested by the guidance counselor and ask my son why he punched his best friend in the face
during Social Studies.

I consider his answer before continuing. “Haha funny or strange funny,” I ask.

“Strange funny,” he replies in a voice without any anger. “Funny like ‘you’re a freak and
I am going to embarrass you in front of the entire class’. Funny like...” His voice trails off and
we sit at the table in silence. My son is twelve with the normal maturity quirks, but this is way out
of character. They say boys are easier to raise, but at this moment, I wonder whether it’s actually
true.

“There’s a three-day required suspension for fighting,” the counselor notes. “Since the punch
was unprovoked...” he stares at my son while speaking, “the other boy will not be subject to the
suspension but will be sent home for the day.” I nod. “And you may want to get your son some
counseling for his anger issue.”

That last comment irks me. Yes, my son is emotional, always has been. But he doesn’t
have anger issues. I’m not one of those parents who believe that his child can do no wrong, but I know my son. His actions are confusing.

Back in the car, there is no talking. I start to play with the radio a bit, changing stations,
then turn it off completely. “So why did you REALLY punch him in the face?” I ask, still staring
straight ahead at the road.

There’s a pause. In my peripheral vision, I see him make a quarter turn in his seat to me.
“Jimmy forgot about the test we had today. It was a big one, worth half our grade. If he failed,
they would hold him back.” He turns back in the seat to face front.

“So you punched him in the face? Knowing he would get a bloody nose in front of the
whole class and you would get a three-day suspension? Was he cheating off your work?” I ask.

“No. He would never do that. Neither would I. I figured that if I did something, he would
be excused from the test for today and get another day to study. He’s my best friend. I don’t want
to go to eighth grade without him.”

I sat silent for a minute. I think about all the life lessons this brings forward. Honesty and
hard work and trust and following the rules. And what friendship really means.

I decide that today’s lesson had already been learned.

By me.

I press the button on the car dashboard to call work and tell them I won’t be back in today.

“Let’s go get some ice cream. And catch a movie.”

Build-A-Sister means fun for everyone, especially the youngest. Watch her play video games, be prohibited from touching the TV remote, get bitten on the arm when you try to touch her Barbies! All created in a place that inspires you—your childhood home, with her room just across the hall, not across state lines just yet—to build memories that last a lifetime.

Before getting started, you’ll be greeted by a SIBLING BUILDER Associate—a mother that looks like you, a father that looks like her—who will walk you through these seven simple steps.

Choose Me: Be born second, thrust into a world already made for her. Neither of you chooses the other; something else, some God or deity or other cosmic force brings you together forever, whether you enjoy it or not.

Hear Me: Hear her yell at you to leave her alone. Hear her whisper the curse word she learned in school that day into the bedroom pillow. “Okay, get ready...fuck,” she says so quietly you almost can’t hear. Hear her laugh with your cousins at a joke that she describes as something you “just wouldn’t get.” Hear her have her very adult conversations with her very adult friends when they come over to eat pizza downstairs, these at-home celebrities you’re so curious about. One single basement door severs you from the precious teenaged life she lives.

Stuff Me: Stuffing scented with the Warm Vanilla Sugar body spray from Bath & Body Works and Crystal Light made by your grandmother. Stuff in a heart with DNA you both share, the blood and beating pulse that will tie you together for all time. Sleep on her floor for an entire summer. Eat the Tums and salt she keeps under her bed and offers you as a “light snack.”

Hug Me: Hug for family photos, after the school musical, when she comes back from college to see you in The Little Mermaid. Hug when she leaves to go back to college, where her room is no longer across the hall from yours.

Dress Me: Steal her clothes. Get mad when she steals yours.

Name Me: Watch as she starts describing you to her friends as her little sister, no longer
pretending you don’t exist. See her start calling you her best friend in Facebook posts. Read the letter adorned with flowers where she asks you to be Maid of Honor in her wedding.

Take Me Home: Watch her move up the East coast, to the city with the large tree you used to see each Christmas, only she’s there year-round. Where you used to see her every morning, shoving each other to take turns in the bathroom mirror, now she’s a train ride away, the tracks stretching so far it feels like she’s on Saturn. Hear her say she missed you. Feel the hugs she now gives you with her own free will. Keep stealing each other's clothes, think about the word “sister,” and how it feels different from “sibling.”

When my husband was a boy, he bused to a farmer's fields to detassel corn for a few dollars a day.

What did he spend his money on? Hubba Bubba bubble gum, Big League Chew, candy cigarettes, arcade games (Pac-Man can't help but die and needs countless quarters to keep chomping and alive), 2-liter pop bottles of Mountain Dew, and canisters of Pringles potato chips...Nothing that lasted long but gave him the sugars, salts, and fats he sweated away in the corn rows.

Think of how he sweated and sunburned on the tips of his ears where they poked out from his baseball cap. What did he hear in those ears? Restless wind, rustling leaves, maybe a motor—other teenagers talking, joking. Maybe someone wore a Walkman and pop music spilled out from the headphones.

I read him this imagined memory.

“Well, that’s romantic,” he says.

“Want to know what I saved that money for?”

Of course he was saver. I should know better after knowing him since he was barely more than a boy.

The blue backpack in our basement, he tells me. That’s what he bought with his $4.25 an hour earned in the cornfield. His first frame backpacking backpack bought though he had never been backpacking and had no specific plans to go. His aspiration in that hot, perspiring summer was in a plasticky blue backpack, one that he’s saved to this day. All his hopes stored inside.

Though very tall, he was not even thirteen. Just a boy under cloudless blue skies, with a blue backpack thick in his dreams. I ache so tender for him, hearing this was his first job. I don't know why it nibbles at me so. Children have always helped on farms ever since they were invented and detasseling is common-enough summer work for teens. But something slips in my heart for a skinny school boy bused to where the suburbs ended and farm fields stretched on and on. Is it that his hopes were so small — or that they’re saved forever?

Use of “backpack” Do you want to let this go or should I insert different words?

You have no idea how practiced you will become.

 

The first thing you used: purple child-sized craft scissors, their half-moon tips ribbed with hot glue. The first place was the inside of your left wrist perpendicular the stone-blue pulse.

These steps are a drumbeat you give yourself to, hypnosis in the click of the bathroom lock, socks whispered off, into the bathtub shivering. You, nearly thirteen, a naked offering to a silver god.

 

//

 

You dig. As if buried in the hook of your ulna was a red scepter, a moon-bright shore.

You don’t know what you are creating, pulled into you like the whimper of childhood’s basement stair. In those halls flooded an ocean – you dreamed it would swell at dusk and swallow you.

The crescent between your fingers holds a maple burn, a pale slice of fall.

 

//

 

No, you don’t know.

The dazed reunion with which your forehead meets stained tile.

That X-Actos grate with the sound of struck matches — your veins open best to Wilkinsons.

That at the ER you prefer arrowroots to saltines, sutures to staples, and doctors who remember to ask if it hurts.

The way your mother’s tears will give you a sun to hide under.

The shape of the empty room your mouth makes when you say no.

That the word for the harbour under your skin is subcutaneous. Or power. Or ritual.

 

//

 

Litres — the amount you can lose each day and still have breath to lose.

That stomach acid braided with clotted blood in the drain is only ablution.

Tasting salt, you run the water over your hands until the colours pale and numb.

 

//

 

The first time you cut yourself, you string a spider line of blood moons. You stand, wrist lifted, watching them tug at ancient, gaping tides.

 

//

 

Only the drops in the sink. The face in the mirror — how you chase the moment it contains you. Only the purple scissors and the plastic flaking like dry sand.

Only the waves’ breaking — if only.

 

Wounding. You have mastered this, too.

 

Keys jangling in my palm, I stumble upon a man plugging a microwave in to the exterior of my condo complex. He crouches low to the ground, to reach the outlet, concealing himself behind his rusted-out sedan. Preparing to cook his ready-to-eat dinner in the 12 by 18-inch box. Which makes me wonder: Without something as standard and underappreciated as four walls and electricity, how would a person make a warm meal?

My presence elicits a skittish energy from him, like a feral cat. He must know his actions could be construed as unseemly, illicit. That he needs to watch out for me. That I possess a certain power in my new status as a homeowner.

When I was a kid, my parents used to argue, voices yelling, about the very real possibility of “losing our house.” My biggest fear was that if the house was repossessed, my parents might be seen as unfit. I eventually worked up the nerve to ask my mom: “If they take our house away, will they take me away from you and Dad?”

“Of course not,” she hissed, her embarrassment and fear masquerading as anger. “Look at all those kids who end up living in cars with their parents.”

Even now, safely in adulthood, being housed still feels like a precarious blessing.

So, I simply nod, say hey there to the man and keep walking, enter my unit as he grunts in response. Hoping his meal does not taste like shame.