Notes From A Bear's Journey

Again, some of what follows may not be for everyone as it discusses slaughterhouses, hunting in excess and language which may prove disturbing...please consider this before proceeding.     Author Harold McGee's recent book, Nose Dive , described waste as this: ... from a root meaning "empty" or "desolate."    In giving that explanation, he was talking about excrement; but lest you walk away with the impression that our colon is little more than an end point, note this observation that our colon is: ... also the primary residence of our gut microbiome, which can include thousands of different species and contributes several million different genes to our superorganism, compared to our own body's measly twenty thousand.  20 million (colon) vs. 20 thousand (rest of our body).  He goes on to talk about an "aggregation of countless small building blocks" that early on formed into a "network that can be enlarged indefinitely" -- lignin.  It'

Some of what follows may not be for everyone as it discusses slaughterhouses, hunting in excess and language which may prove disturbing...please consider this before proceeding.     Admittedly, this post sat for nearly two weeks as I decided whether or not portions of it would bother readers, as it did me.  At times it can feel as if hope and compassion and respect for life is being pushed into a corner, forced to cower as if held captive to an apparent uncaring force.  But then I also see so many other examples of what could be, what is again possible, as if the cell doors have been left open and the morning light is peeking through to reveal an empty room, a hint at awakening from a bad dream.  Images and stories of what is horrifying but true tend to be like knife cuts, perhaps not enough to deeply wound but deep enough to scar;  I've certainly had my share of reading about and viewing modern-day slaughterhouses with their methods being enough to steer me away from eating meat;