You'll shoot yer eye out!

The first week at work, this flyer stopped me dead in my tracks when I first spotted it. Really? All you gotta do is pay ten bucks and you can have your very own rifle?

Wyoming, I knew you were a state that takes personal freedoms to extremes, but man oh man, the quasi-Californian in me found this hard to swallow.

I immediately got flashbacks of that scene in Bowling for Columbine where Michael Moore opens up a bank account just to show how quickly and easily he could get a gun. The whole thing is too reminiscent of a reality from some years back -- I myself was at school only a few miles away when the Columbine tragedy struck. Then came the Aurora shootings. And then came Sandy Hook. Suffice to say that I have long been of the opinion that gun control is a necessary tool to keep stupid people from hurting others (and themselves). Never mind that my boyfriend, my dad and my brother all own more than one gun.

Then there's this at the bottom of the flyer:

It reads, "The mission of the Muley Fanatic Foundation is to ensure the conservation of mule deer and their habitat and to provide such supporting services to further the sport of hunting and sound wildlife management."

Well...that was not what I expected.

Then I remembered that this concept isn't something new. I'd just forgotten what it was like to live in a place where wildlife exists as more than just an aesthetic exercise in "ooohs" and "aws/ahhs." Hunters in Wyoming have long been advocates for sound wildlife management practices, if not simply on account of the fact that there'd be no sport if there are no wildlife to hunt. They are some of the biggest contributors to conservation programs, setting aside hundreds of thousands of acres of habitat for wildlife, and they also play a role in population management.

If there's one thing I learned last winter in my environmental ecology class, it was that there is hardly a species on this planet that isn't affected by human activity. So, we can't really say that "nature takes care of its own." In a wild place like Wyoming, you'll never see the demise of the sportsman hunter and fisherman. It's simply a way of life.

What has surprised me, though, is the spirit by which this way of life is advocated. Nothing exemplifies this better than a recent New York Times article that explores the growing movement of ethical hunting, where women make up the only growing demographic in the sport and sustainability is a major motivating factor.

I'll save in-depth thoughts on the implications of that for another post. For the time being, I'd like to spend more of my summer talking to the people who are a part of this way of life. I'd like to learn more about their motivations and, surprisingly, more about their tactics. I.e- is it more humane to kill with a crossbow as opposed to a gun?

I also want to order this book to read: Call of the Mild: Learning to Hunt My Own Dinner by Lily Raff McCalou. There's something really intriguing about a hipster environmentalist turned hunting enthusiast.

It's not the destination, but the journey...right?

Much like for everyone else, my 20s were a spiral staircase of formative experiences. In the short span of a decade, I learned what it was like to form meaningful bonds, break some of them, form new and better ones, and climb the seemingly endless rungs of that staircase that leads to adulthood -- or whatever you want to call it.

San Francisco played a major part in shaping the direction of that upward climb (yep, I even blogged about it). Yet, the concept of "home" was absent from my identity during the six years that I spent there. Don't get me wrong-- I loved that place. But was it me? Did it reflect who I am, and did I really want my life to become anchored there, in that city, in that state? Something wasn't right.

I had to wonder -- does anyone else in this goddamned place feel the same way?

For all intents and purposes the answer to that question is rhetorical. Everyone leaves home at some point to embark on that great existential search for "who they really are" blebbityblahblahI'msuchadeepthinkerblahblahblah. But whatever, there's a purpose to that: many of those people find their way back from whence they came, embarking on the next stage of adulthood with a new, greater appreciation for what home is and a more profound sense of identity.

I'm one of those people. (Surprised? Didn't think so.) This summer is the first step in that much needed journey back home to what I know best -- the sites, sounds, character, and integrity of life in the good ol' Mountain West. Each morning begins with a breath of fresh air and the realization that holy shit, I finally have more than just a rushed holiday to spend quality time with my family and friends. Whoa, I can go hiking and fishing and be all outdoorsy and do all the other things I was too self-absorbed or insecure to do before I moved away to California. And there's still more to explore!

Most of all, I also finally have a lot of free time. So I may as well blog about it.

Stay tuned for more tidbits as the summer unfolds...