The 2014 Hunting Season

(This is for Anita, my friend who is always encouraging.)

My husband, Mark, is a provider. As in too-many-to-remember successive years now, he brought home the gutted carcass of another soft-eyed, graceful member of God’s creation, slain by a shell in a rifle carefully aimed at its gentle heart by him.

Tasty and nutritious though venison is, the image of a sobbing, scared Bambi and his dead mother always cross my mind when this holocaustic season arrives. So instead of the morbid, I focus on the trip’s positive aspects for Mark.

Weeks before the season opens, Mark starts talking about it. He c...