21st Century

Let me preface this article by saying that I am not a woodworker.  Two years ago I needed to make a large paraboloidal object out of wood.  I was racking my brain:  Where will I find such a big block of wood?  I don't think my local hardware store carries this.  Then my 16 year old tapped me on the shoulder and pointed out the window.  He said, "Couldn't we just use that tree that fell down?"  We live in the middle of the woods.  We heat our house with wood and have a major, beautifully stacked woodpile.  Yet I never stopped to think about where all that milled lumber from Lowe's or Home Depot really comes from.  Oh, I'd seen trucks rolling down the road with a cargo of tree trunks and knew they were headed to the mill.  My neighbors had sold trees to a local hardwood mill.  But, seriously, I never thought MY trees could be the source of a turned wooden object. It was a jarring revelation, one that made me realize how 21st century I'd become, how removed from the land I'd become.

I'm not the only one.  My husband is a hunter, so at least I know where meat comes from.  But one of my omnivore neighbors, a rabid anti-hunter and noted participant at the local annual pig roast, was yelling at me because a deer ran across the road right in front of her and died.  It had been shot on the lot opposite my house by an authorized hunter in a tree stand. No one likes to see an animal suffer, so I could understand my neighbor's frustration to a point.  She just needed to vent, but sorta went over the top.  She started by accusing me of maiming innocent animals, touched on my worth as a neighbor, and ended her diatribe by saying SHE did not make animals suffer.  I had been quiet during her rant, but that triggered a nerve.  I should have said nothing, but instead I asked her, "But don't you eat meat?"   Really, where did she think supermarket meat comes from?  Some cow, pig or chicken that spends its days frolicking around a grassy field in the sunshine until one day it just turns up on a shrink-wrapped plastic tray?  Having read a few books like Dominion, Omnivore's Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and having raised (and dispatched) a few farm animals in my day, I have a better idea of how food gets to your table, and it isn't all neat and clean.

Another startling revelation I had was visiting friends in Colorado and West Virginia.  Seeing the huge scars on the earth left by mining (Colorado's Climax Molybdenum and southern West Virginia's mountain top removal for coal) made me appreciate the energy and metals we have so readily available.  These images are a huge part of what's made me a big fan of "reduce, reuse, recycle."  I certainly know that the last time I had to make a run to the hardware store for a specialty drill bit, I considered the ease of obtaining it a modern miracle.

All this leads me to wonder if we wouldn't be better off re-thinking where stuff comes from.  Would we appreciate what we have more if we realized a tree was cut down so that our chair could be made or that so many feet of a mountain was carved away so we could heat our home or that an animal had died so that we could have supper on our table?  Maybe a little 18th century living might teach us better how to appreciate the things we have and to be better stewards of them, too.