Historicizing Heritage

"How many times as a child did I see the inside of a deer’s body?  How many times did I smell it, touch it?  We’d play with cut-off legs, make them run and prance.  We’d wear sawed-off antlers on our heads.  A childhood of deer bones, in the yard, in the woods, bones running the gamut from fresh-killed to decay.  The new bones gray-white and softish before they turned yellow-brown.  The yellow-brown bleaching full white before they turned another gray.  What is it to grow up with such intimacy between my body and the body that would feed me?  What is it to grow up without it?"

The complete essay "Take, Eat" was originally published in Willow Springs Magazine.