By René Locklear White (Feather)
Lt. Col. USAF (Retired)
Lumbee Native American Indian
President Sanctuary on the Trail™ non-profit
 
Everything this week was going as planned, until bow season started. I had other things planned for this day and tomorrow, certainly no plans to be standing in front of a dead deer.

Even though we have no TV, I have three mindless movie rentals scheduled today along with a bag of medicinal dark chocolates. Then, I plan to mourn the loss of someone dear to me.

But, by the sound of my husband’s boots as he enters the house I know my life’s direction is about to change.''
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I hit pause on the DVD-player. I hear my husband Chris say in a tender voice, “Hey honey! I’m gonna need some stiches, you want to go with me?”

I am a 52-year old grandma with 22-years military training preparing for most anything; even how to emotionally compartmentalize.

Today I will learn that gutting a deer is easier than embracing grief. 

NATURE

Until this deer, I realize after losing my mother recently, I have been dropping and running ever since.

My mother and father are Lumbee Indians. My husband Chris is Cherokee. We both grew up on farms, he in Northern Virginia and me on Lumbee farmland in North Carolina.

We both have raised chickens, hogs and cattle. We have planted, picked, canned, frozen and dried fruit & vegetables. We have seen life and death and held it in our hands.

With my husband and me, life is never dull.

Once, Chris walked in with a wounded hummingbird and barred owl. Another time he caught, scolded and released a chicken-hawk attacking our chickens. Last year he rescued a woodpecker, two hummingbirds and a screech owl.

Today it is a doe, a female deer; this is not that song from “The Sound of Music” nor a story about Bambi.

Yes deer are cute and many people “do not” like to eat “cute.” They would rather eat “ugly.”  But for us simple country folk, eating deer is as natural as drinking our natural mountain spring-water.

In Native American Indian culture some believe when the deer is your totem or spirit animal you are a highly sensitive person with strong intuition to get out of a tricky situation with power and grace.  

Chris had two dear in his sights. But he did not take the shot.

On his way home, he saw the same two deer in our drive way. They stared at my husband standing there in front of them. Chris crouched down. One deer walked over towards my husband.

Now past twilight, with the silhouette of that doe between our house and my husband, Chris could see her clearly and he took the shot with one arrow, a complete pass through the heart.

The deer ran 70 yards ironically just steps away from where the eagle dropped the catfish a while back and then the deer lied down under a tree near our house and collapsed. 

My neighbor June Krupsaw and I believe it could be possible for our ancestors’ Spirit to persistently try to communicate with us through nature. If she can, my mom would say, “live your life now Shug, don’t worry about me.”

DATES

In Virginia, bow season or archery season for deer, started Oct. 1 and runs through Nov. 18. According to my husband, if he waits, it is almost impossible to stalk a deer after the open seasons for gun-powder muzzleloaders or firearms.

For mama, what day was it? I can’t remember. The dreaded blue bag from the funeral home is sitting next to me. Let me see, it says Sept. 8, 2016. So much time has passed already. I refuse to look at the photograph yet. But I know it is my mama. She had Dementia.

We depend on each other – my husband and me. We took wedding vows; to be there for each other for better and worse, richer or poor, sickness and health.

It occurs to me now, we do not take an oath with our parents, nor do our parents take oaths for us.  But, I loved, cherished and honored my mother till she parted this life. What is it like to lose someone that close? I still do not know fully.

UNEXPECTED

My husband and I depend on at least one deer to get us through the winter. When the fall weather cools like this, you can almost taste the first harvest especially with a little teriyaki on it. 

We prefer to use the word “harvest” to describe the “kill.” We also try to use as many parts of the animal as we can, not as trophies, but as sacred ceremonial objects or practical resources.  Is it not more humanely to kill game as a food source than corporately-raised and factory-processed livestock?

For deer hunters, especially bow hunters like my husband, reading blood trails and field dressing are essential responsibilities to bleeding the animal and processing safe meat for us to eat.

Before field dressing, and to make sure the deer is dead my husband was using a new, very sharp field knife. His head lamp was pointing in one direction and his two hands in the other direction unexpectedly met in the dark as he turned the deer over. Then suddenly the knife in his left hand gashed across and into his right hand between his thumb and wrist.

Sometimes things happen in life even to the most experienced people. And things in life do not always go according to the planned script. Scars remind us we made it through!  

UNSCRIPTED

Now I am sitting in the driveway with the motor running wondering what happened to my husband who just dropped red positive-A up my basement stairs all the way through my kitchen to the utility sink in the laundry room.  

With lacerated hand wrapped with one of my old favorite brown kitchen towels, my husband is lifting the deer onto our utility vehicle to bring her to the house. Fortunately we do not have far to take her since she wound up here on her own.

For situations like this, our guests do not know we have a hoisting winch hidden under our basement porch. Hanging the deer up there by its hind legs allows blood to drain out of the body while I drive my husband to the ER.

The INOVA medical center is closer to us than Winchester Hospital, so we dash off to get stiches and a splint because of this unscripted inconvenience.

Is death an unscripted inconvenience? Why do we have to “embrace” all these feelings? Gutting a deer sounds more appealing to me right now.

READY

A few hours later, a few stitches for him and a couple of glasses of red wine for me, I am ready to dress my first deer.

I have never harvested an animal for food, not even a chicken. I have cut up many animals. But I have never killed a fish, a chicken, a deer, a cow, nor a hog. That is what husbands, big brothers and older sisters are for.

One time when I was a little girl my brother Ernie said, “Watch this!” Then he started grabbing up chickens two at a time a wringing their necks. I ran into the house screaming, “Mama Mama, Ernie is killing all the chickens!”

She laughed and said, I told him to get a couple of chickens for dinner. Ernie loved our mother. All of six us children did. It was hard at the end because mama had dementia. I think we just got a little closer to understanding what other families with dementia must feel.

Since we did not get to field dress the deer before we left for the ER, now I have to gut it while it is hanging up in front of me.

My husband entrusts me with his sharp study knife. He shows me where to make a shallow slit in the skin and peel the muscle layer back to keep the hair and organs away from the meat.

After one careful slit, from top to bottom almost done. Then I admit my husband cut a hole around the deer’s private areas; there are some things I am just not ready for today.

Chris tells me, “Good job dear, you didn’t break open the stomach or intestines. And you didn’t penetrate the urine bag so it didn’t spray in your face.”

Well that’s encouraging, I try to smile back at him. He looks so proud and pleased standing there with his arm in a sling as his wife field dresses his deer.

I am thinking, he is thinking, this probably counts as one of those dates we promised each other?

After cutting the connective tissue along the backbone the entrails fall right into a five-gallon bucket. Our ancestors would have been kept that bladder for a thermos to carry water.

(Most people do not know hot-dogs and sausages are packaged in pigs’ intestines.The most interesting thing about the deer to me? The windpipe on a deer is an amazing piece of engineering by its Creator.)

Now with the entrails out, my husband gives me verbal directions on how to remove the hide and meat. Can you imagine anyone’s wife driving the car, while her husband gives her driving directions while she’s holding a sharp knife?

Needless to say, what could have taken him five minutes – yes my husband can field dress a deer in five minutes – this is taking me hours.

With the deer hide now off, we are ready to quarter and hang the major portions.

Did you know our ancestors processed deer tendon to make sewing thread? If you pound a tendon with a rock it begins to separate into a bundle of strong sewing thread you can twist into sinew cord.

I realize, this whole time I was so busy rushing to the ER and handling a sharp knife, I successfully put off mourning again.

THINKING

Chris leaves me alone with this now to work on the drive way from all the rain we have been having.

As I cut, I imagine how wonderful it would be to live in a community village like our Native American Indian ancestors; especially now! Sue and Birgit pull the hide off. Tracy and Mel get the fire ready. Glenda, Chris and Toby scrap the hide. Then Kim tans the hide for her granddaughter Amelia.

I would be in a lodge or by the creek, surrounded by my sisters Bea and Janice and all my other lady friends, nieces and aunts currently scattered in the four directions - mourning together and telling stories about our mothers.

Usually this time of season, I am in the kitchen waiting with meat grinder, jerky gun, freezer bags, food sealer and jerky recipe. Waiting for various parts of the deer to seal wrap including: two fish, two back straps or tenderloins, two shoulders and two hams.

But, now I’m standing here alone in wet boots, with a sharp knife, fresh meat and my thoughts. In my right hand along with the knife I wear my mother’s wedding rings. 

DIAGNOSIS

Dr. Tom Cloyd in an article about grief, PTSD and your brain, summarizes grief as “a variety of a feeling called distress, which is the brain’s automatic response to loss;” from minor loss (say, of your car keys) to major loss (like losing a child). Put into words, Dr. Cloyd’s continuum might look like this: distress → sadness → sorrow → grief → anguish.   

That is what I feel, anguish! And anger. Dr. Cloyd left out anger!

My husband’s hand surgeon Dr. Martin Morse in Great Falls, Va. said my husband is a “lucky mountain man.” He added that my husband can expect 30 days to a year and a half before the nerves in his hand start talking again.

Dr. Morse is a “Top Doctor” in plastic and reconstructive surgery, and explains why there is no pain in my husband’s hand. The knife cut the nerves sending the hand into shock causing the hand to go numb.

Is that what happened in my heart? I just feel numb.

I wanted to ask Dr. Morse, “Examine my heart scars too. I am sure losing a loved one is deeper than a skin laceration. When can I expect my healing to come?”

Dr. Morse said my husband is okay. I know I will be okay. Everyone goes through this right?

Life comes quickly. We cannot hit pause on loss for long. I think sharing stories helps. Taking moments to share good and bad we get closer to being in real community together.
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If you have lost a loved one, perhaps they too would not want you to live with scars brought on by their being in your life. Rather, “celebrate their life.” I have heard that before, now I better understand what “celebrate” means.

My mother’s name was Frances. I am reading that little book marker now for the first time, the one the funeral home gives you. She was 86. She had 14 grandchildren and 17 great grandchildren. The book marker calls her “kind, humble and caring, a rock solid provider, a highly respected person of strong faith.”

Many times mama told us she dreamed about working in heaven. God gave her a job in heaven sewing angels’ wings.

Right now, her job sounds a lot better than mine.  

HEALING-HIDE

This is my new oath. I choose to participate in nature and life. I accept that sometimes things happen in life even to the most experienced people. Things in life do not always go according to our planned scripts. And I accept that wounded hearts really hurt and it is okay to cry about it.

Through sharing this story, I now have hope where I did not before. Every time I see my husband’s hand healing or my mom’s rings twinkling, these remind my heart to celebrate. And next year at our Native American Indian harvest festival (The Gathering 2017) when you see me wearing this “healing hide” may it remind us of something my mother would say, “live your life now Shug, don’t worry.”

Today is a new day. My heart will probably still hurt tomorrow. But at this moment, sharing this, I feel a little better.

The jerky is done and the steaks are in the freezer.

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The Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem recognized Rene' White (Native American Church of Virgina President) as Member of the Year during a gala event held in Riverside Calif. on Sept. 19, 2015. Chris White (Native American Church of Virgina CEO) HOSLJ Commandry of Virginia introduced Rene' to accept the award. The couple are pictured here with HOSLJ Princes Karen Cantrell and HOSLJ James (FE) Mooney Commandry of Indigenous Peoples.

Sanctuary on the Trail™ - Two hummingbirds battled their way into our living room this sunny Monday morning. She found safety onto our red carpet and he seems to find safety chasing her around. Now they are romantically trapped inside our house.
   My husband, the animal whisperer, is still enjoying his cup of coffee as I’m freaking out to “save the hummingbirds, save the hummingbirds.”
    Buzzing like a hundred bees, they fly around the ceiling, in corners, up on the rafters and on the windowpane, under the table, over the chair, back up to the ceiling and over and over, until they become too exhausted to care about each other and are too tired to fly.
    Now carefully, my husband offers them a new resting place on the end of our long window cleaning-rod thingy. With his coffee cup now empty, hummy-food sensibly paced at the door, the hummingbirds walk onto the rod my husband extends to them. He carefully brings them down to recharge at the door. And sooner than they arrived, they are zooming off to their next adventure with my husband and his tool bag tagging in behind them.
    Nothing like two hummingbirds and a cup of coffee to start your day.

A Valentine's Day Story about my husband Chris,
as featured in the Middleburg Eccentric Newspaper by Rene' White (Feather).

Some doctors describe “good medicine” as a pharmaceutical painkiller. My mother and father, both Native American, would call good medicine anything natural that our Creator God made from the “beginning.” I have experienced this natural medicine first hand, because my parents placed a lot of lettuce leaves, potatoes and tobacco on me when I was a child. 

I am from a state recognized tribe called the Lumbee. My husband, Chris, is of Cherokee descent. Our grandchildren named Chris “Paw-Paw,” which is an Algonquian word. The pawpaw is a tree that bears fruit.

 My husband has helped me appreciate that in Native American culture, medicine can mean different things. Laughter can be good medicine for people who need more joy in their lives. Empathy can be good medicine to people mourning loss. I believe my husband’s medicine is helping animals and nature.

 Winged, Finned and Four-Leggeds (animals) seek sanctuary around my husband. Dogs do not bark at him; hawks fly over when he talks; deer walk up to him; bears stand and look at him; and eagles fly over his head.

 This week, it is a Screech Owl.

 During this week’s big snow, Paw-Paw was out taking photos of rocks for an art piece he plans to exhibit at the “Art at the Mill” in Millwood VA. I was inside on the computer.

 I was making new friends on the computer while he was making a new friend outside.

 Inside, I was reading an article I had clipped from the January issue of the Middleburg Eccentric newspaper. You know how you can have a stack of things you want to read, but you never get to them? Well a window of time opened.

 I am finally reading the article about an American Bald Eagle, Dr. Belinda Burwell rehabilitated and released. I just clicked LIKE on Facebook for Dr. Burwell’s Blue Ridge Wildlife Center, checked out www.BlueRidgeWildLife.org and in puffs my husband.

 When we first got married years ago, I would ask a lot of questions when he puffed in. But now I can just tell by the sounds he makes, or how his boots hit the floor when he enters the house or how he calls my name, that causes me to want to stop what I am doing and check out what he is up to.

Believe me, it is always something unexpected. Once he walked in with a wounded hummingbird. Another time he was scolding a hawk over our chickens. What could it be this time?

 Let me take you back a few steps. While I was inside on the computer, at the same time my husband was outside walking up the drive. With his camera still out, he walked up on a small owl sitting on our drive way in broad day light.

 Now, if you know anything about owls, you know they are rarely seen during the day. Most owls are nocturnal, actively hunting their prey only in darkness. This one is sitting on the ground holding a mole in its talons. There is blood on the rocks and ice nearby it.

What would you do?

 Using a fishing net, my husband brings the owl inside so it could rest and be safe and protected from predators.

This is not the first bird to seek sanctuary here. A Barred Owl, we named Clea, sought out my husband once. The crows would have killed her if he had not brought her in. She recovered and was released before we could take her to a wildlife center. Same for the woodpecker.

When he brings these winged ones and four-leggeds in, most look stunned for a few minutes, promptly recover and fly or walk away -- quicker than I can grab my camera and include them in our family album.

Sometimes some do not make it; like this poor little hummingbird one time.

When I met my husband, he said I had hummingbird medicine. When we met, I worked in the Pentagon and within international circles. I could fly up to the General’s office, down to the Sergeant’s office and left and right like the hummingbird. At times, I could even dart backwards.

My husband says I have “good medicine.” He said, when I appear in something, I am “very engaging, then move quick.” When the conversation ends, “poof” I am gone. I could show back up as soon as I left, he said. He also associates me with “flowers and sunshine.”

“The occurring to an observer is that they are happy to see you,” he says about me. “Lots of smiles back and forth, lots of energy in it. Some people try to hold on to you, but you have to be free to be who you are.”

My husband liked that I was slightly different from other birds, I mean women.

That is how my husband sees me.

My husband says about animals, “We observe their nature and characteristics and we can see those characteristics in personalities. Understanding the nature of an animal can enrich your sense of self.”

In Cherokee, Hummingbird is pronounced with slightly different inflections, “walela,” “waleli,” “walelu,” or “waduli.”

Now! There is a Screech Owl in my living room getting ready to be put in a large cardboard box and taken to our spare bedroom in the basement. We contacted our new friends Dr. Burwell at the Blue Ridge Wildlife Center to make arrangements. But we are being snowed in. Roads are closed. We have to just wait until tomorrow. For now, Screech is resting.

In 2010, I noticed my husband’s owl medicine was strong and I had a medicine shirt made for him. It took a year to design and to make his shirt from deer skin with the help of Sharon and Barry of www.NativeArtsTrading.com.

Sharon who use to live in the states, is of Cherokee heritage like my husband. Sharon and Barry now live in Scotland. They host an image library online of their beautiful art including my husband’s shirt.

Paw-Paw wore his owl medicine shirt recently during a sacred ceremony in California. He was named the “Commander of the Commandery of Virginia,” a non-profit non-government organization (NGO) with the Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem. The investiture ceremony took place inside the Benedict Castle in Riverside, Calif. The co-founder of Utah’s Oklevueha Native American Church James Warren ‘Flaming Eagle’ Mooney nominated my husband because of his courage, honor, justice and readiness to help the weak.

A few years ago, my husband yelled my name. I knew by the sound that I should bring my camera. Along my husband’s path, between his shop and our house, he had nearly stepped on a fish lying on the open ground. Not an ordinary fish. It was a 16” catfish just lying there on my husband’s path.

 Now, ask yourself, “How did a 2-3 pound catfish get here,” “any fish for that matter?” The closest river, the Shenandoah River is a least two miles away.

 After close inspection, it was easy to see talon marks left by what we believe was a sacred “White Headed” (Great Bald Eagle). It must have dropped the fish as it flew over. 

The day that “White Headed” sacrificed that fish to my husband is part of another sacred story that needs to be told. 

The Screech Owl is now resting until we can take it to the wildlife center tomorrow. 

Did you know owl feathers can render an owl almost undetectable under certain conditions? The edges of their feathers are serrated. The surface of the owl’s flight feathers are covered with a velvety texture. Somehow they muffle out the sound of their own wing beats. They fly practically silent. The owl’s eyes are disproportionally larger than its skull; another characteristic which aids in their nocturnal prey capture.

 To me, the Screech Owl’s plumage mimics the colorations of Fall orange leaves and textures of our forest’s tree bark.

 It is morning now. Today is Valentine’s Day. We woke up to more than 24 inches of snow.

 The Screech Owl?

 Screech did not make it. My husband found Screech lying down on a purple and black tribal rug on our basement spare bedroom floor. 

In response to the loss of the Screech Owl, our friend Michael Dowling said, “That’s sad. You made his last hours here comfortable though.” Michael is a local business owner, former editor of the Clarke Daily News, Berryville VA resident and blogger at www.GrowingInterest.org.

 I agree with Michael.

 It is fortunate my husband found Screech. For his last hours he was in a safe place. What an honorable thing to offer someone or something -- a peaceful place to die.
 In Cherokee the word for Screech Owl is “wahuhu.” I know this because our friend Brian Wilkes is an author of The New English Cherokee Dictionary. Cherokee is not a widely spoken language and it is nice to know someone is trying to preserve it.

 Like this little “Wahuhu,” my native language died. We were not permitted to speak it. No one was allowed to pass it down. And no one will ever hear it again.
 My husband speaks a little Cherokee. Last Christmas, our local church asked him to read for advent in Cherokee the Bible Book of Isaiah chapter 2 verses 1-4. While the whole New Testament has been translated into Cherokee, the Old Testament has not. It took my husband, Brian and several other spiritual leaders working together to translate these four verses.

 On the day my husband read Isaiah 2:1-4, I played the flute. Our daughter shared with the audience that those who were hearing him read were among the first to ever hear Isaiah spoken in this Native American language. Let us hope not the last.

 If our animals are dying, someone needs to help them. If our languages are fading away, someone needs to keep speaking them.

 As fewer people protect our animals and speak our languages they could all disappear before our very eyes and ears.

 We need more people like Dr. Burwell protecting our animals, like our friend Brian protecting our words and like our friend Michael protecting our sense of community.

 We believe we are all related and that we are all protectors of Mother Earth and all her inhabitants.

 “Mitakuye Oyasin” in Lakota means “we are all related.”

 It is too big a job for us alone.

 For now, humbly I write and weep for Screech the little “Wahuhu.”