Hunting and Gathering

My friend, Louie, has a lifelong love of the sea. He grew up on a sailboat and when he was grown, worked on boats. Eventually, he became the Captain of the Scripps Oceanic Vessel, quite a job. We visited recently, and thoroughly enjoyed the force of life Louie feels when he is at the helm.

It is safe to say that Louie is a fisherman through and through.He had just returned from one of his many fishing excursions with kids who would never otherwise know how to bait a hook. He arranges free fishing poles for them, and teaches them the simple ins-and-outs of how to fish. Kids who begin by asking when the boat will return to dock are suddenly flush with pride and happiness when they land a fish.

Just a few days ago, he asked me, "What is it about the last vestiges of the hunter-gatherer society? Why is it so important to us?"

I replied that nature's incredible bounty (and our need to gather it) is humanity at its heart. Like many pronouncements, it seemed incomplete. I began to muse that life in this fast world has changed so much that many people only have a vague restlessness and unattached emotion when we think of what is nearly lost. I have it at the Farmers Market, I feel it at the grocery store, and certainly I feel it while working in the garden. It is deeply felt, but not well understood in this age of milk in cartons and corn in cans.

This morning, I woke up to this Rumi poem that helped me frame my feelings. Yes, it is abstract, and yes, I hate gutting fish, but I'm a human being, a hunter-gatherer, even if I do it at the Saturday Farmers Market.

What Opens to a Rose

They are here with us now,
those who saddle a new unbroken colt
every morning and ride the seven levels of sky,

who lay down at night
with the sun and moon for pillows.

Each of these fish has a Jonah inside.
They sweeten the bitter sea.
They shape-shift the mountains,
but with their actions neither bless nor curse.

They are more obvious,
and yet more secret than that.

Mix grains from the ground they walk
with stream water. Put that salve
on your eyes and you will see

what you have despised in yourself
as a thorn opens to a rose.

~Mevlana Rumi

Translation by Coleman Barks