Having just blogged about joy and optimism, I'm rather self-conscious about this entry. However, there are some things that aren't particularly joyful. Here's one.

Driving to and from a retreat yesterday, I passed a lake I'd visited once. It'll be a bit odd to revisit it when it thaws. A truck crashed through a week or so ago. The passenger was rescued; the driver drowned.

I'm not big on death. On the reservation, I went out scouting turkeys with a friend. I didn't realize, until we were sitting there in the cold, that he'd brought a gun along. (I know, it was as tall as I am; how could I miss it?) He shushed me when I plied him with questions. Why hadn't I taken a book? And then I saw them--a little feathered herd strutting beyond the treeline. I nudged him and slowly pointed. Equally slowly, he lifted his gun and aimed.

Dread quickly filled me as I pre-felt the impact the BOOM would have. The absence of life. There...and then gone...

I wanted to stand up, yell, and send the turkeys flapping. Maybe it was some odd sense of propriety that kept me from disrupting my host's turf. Instead, I whispered.

"Run, little turkeys, run!"

I closed my eyes. Silence... I looked at my friend. He had put the gun down.

"You're not shooting?"

"Nope."

Later, I learned he had told my parents he just couldn't shoot when I was pleading for their lives like that. Nice guy. He also never took me hunting (or scouting) again.

That was probably the day when I realized the profundity of life moving to death. I'm grateful to the people who are able to provide meat for my table. Along a very twisted line, I'm grateful to the people who, in the line of duty, are able to take out "the bad guys." But to be there in that moment of trauma would wound me deeply--and that's something I'd like to avoid for as long as possible.

So I think of this poor ice fisherman... And I think of the water where he died. My kayak and I have been there...have been there...at the place where life moved to death.