Our last evening in Sister Bay we picked a restaurant called Chop.  The place appeared to be newer by comparison to the other places we had dined during our stay.  So close to Lake Michigan, but I had enough fish, so anticipated consuming something different for our last evening meal in Door County.

The interior decor was spare, modern, striking in choice of colors, shapes, –creating a “just right” atmosphere for the meal.  We ordered the same thing off of the menu.  We often do that.  I guess we’ve come to enjoy many of the same things over the years.  And the strip-steak, — flavorful, was prepared exactly as we requested.

My enduring memory of the evening though was of our female waitress.  She clearly communicated to us our ordering options, and attended to the serving of water and drinks precisely.  She also checked at frequent intervals to be sure that we had plenty of water, that everything was satisfactory.  Her heart was in her job.

At the end of the meal I asked if she lived in the area.  She said that she did, and was raised not far from Door County.  In the course of the brief conversation about the natural beauty of the area she mentioned that she was a bow hunter.  She was excited because this year she had taken her first deer with a bow.  I realize that many Wisconsin residents hunt, but it takes a high level of skill to be successful with a bow.  I asked what she remembered best about the experience of taking the deer.  She said that the need to get so close to the animal made the shot so special.  Clearly she was moved by the memory.  I listened

As a philosophical aside, life itself involves violence.  Birth and death are violent events. Violence is rapid change, a rate of change that disrupts the stasis, the equilibrium, the balance of energy within a system.  Organisms need energy to continue to live.  The procurement of energy, the give and take of Nature is all around us, usually unnoticed.  When the fox takes a squirrel we may happen to notice.  Yet this is within the natural order of things, and no one would disagree.

I listened to her brief description of the hunt, the physical intimacy of proximity.  I envied her experience.  A thought came to mind and it just came out…..  I said that I had a rifle that could be used for hunting.  However I rarely use it anymore.  Holding and using the rifle would be the polar opposite, the antithesis of holding, drawing, aiming, and releasing a bow.  The sharp metallic muzzle blast and recoil, the impact of the bullet than would splinter a six inch diameter tree or split a cinder block, the acrid smell of gunpowder—is quite unlike the quiet, disciplined, measured loosing of an arrow.

The Kalashnikov is quite outside of the natural order of things for many reasons.  It’s use leaves me, the user, fractured, existentially lost in the hyper violence of the act. —-none of the simple, natural joy of every muscle of the body and the eye engaged in release of the arrow.  The rifle?

Its just a killing machine.