The
year is crashing into late November like a train wreck. Overnight, winter
has hit hard. The last few dead leaves cling to skeletal tree limbs
with a rapidly loosening grip. With every gusty breeze more are caught
off guard and drift to the ground like crumbling ash. I linger in an
uneasy sleep, half awake, watching the green luminescent numbers change
between long, drowsy blinks. 3:17. 3:19. 3:48. Reaching over I turn
off the alarm. It's no use wasting more time. I'm up.
Through
my window I see the hazy grey eastern horizon. Over the far bank of
the river the sun is beginning to rise. Morning is coming on fast in
New Geneva. It's the first day of the Pennsylvania buck season.
New
Geneva sits at the confluence of the Monongahela River and George's
Creek just barely on the Pennsylvania side of the Pennsylvania/West
Virginia border. The town thrived with the coal boom and shriveled when
the bottom dropped out of the steel industry in the 70's, just like
the two-dozen or so other tiny towns tucked away in the woods along
with hundreds of abandoned open pit mining operations. On the bluffs
overlooking the sallow river, the town sits and quietly rusts like the
mining equipment abandoned in the pits that once kept it alive.
You
see, the hungry furnaces in Pittsburgh and Weirton needed to be stoked,
and like mechanized vampires, they sunk iron fangs into the ground here
in Fayette County, puncturing veins of black coal that pulsed under
the thin rocky topsoil. These monsters ate the earth from the inside
out, belching thick plumes of inky black smoke into the air, defecating
glowing red rivers of molten steel that flowed across the nation. Buildings
got taller, railroads bridged the expanses of the plain states, and
old rich men got richer.
In
towns like New Geneva a system of feudal dependency was born. The miners
owed their lives to faceless coal companies and an entire region of
the state was built to keep the steel runs rolling out of the mills
in Pittsburgh. Built to suck the blood out of the land. These were the
tap sites.
Odocoileus
virginianus. The Virginia white tail deer ranges in massive herds
from Nebraska to New York. The Pennsylvania herd hovers around 1.5 million
animals in the scattered woodlands of the state. With winter coming
early this year that number will plummet with massive die offs as the
animals overtax the land.
Each
year the Pennsylvania Fish and Wildlife Commission issues roughly one
million hunting licenses generating nearly $30 million in revenue for
the state's conservation efforts. Over the course of the three-week
season nearly 300,000 antlered deer will be harvested from Pennsylvania's
67 counties, thinning the herd to try and prevent mass deaths. This
is scientific conservation and management. Give no thought to the fact
that William Penn's surveys in the eighteenth century estimated the
herd at less than 300,00. There is revenue to be made in the growth
explosion.
The
wealth of the state has always rested in its natural resources. A long
time ago, before the Quakers came with William Penn to settle this territory,
even before the Algonquin stalked the land, a deep swamp covered most
of what would become the Northeast United States. As the swamp died
and time moved the continents, the carbon in the decaying vegetation
froze solid into fossil fuels. Gas and oil wells dot the northern sections
of the state and a thick stripe of coal runs under most of the southern
half. It twists like a snake under the panhandle of West Virginia and
through central Maryland.
The
coal under Pennsylvania runs the quality scale from the hellfire hot
anthracite deep under the eastern regions of the state to the cold burning
crumbly bituminous just under the skin of Fayette and Greene Counties.
The blast furnaces in Carrick and Elizabeth, outside of Pittsburgh,
lived on the hard hot burning anthracite coal culled from deep mineshafts
in the east, but as the thick underground rivers of coal shriveled and
closed like the spiked veins of a jaundiced junky's eyes turned to the
mid grade coal just under the top soil in the southwest. They peeled
Fayette County like an orange, sending the coal north on the Monongahela
on heavily laden barges.
In
the night a winter storm, the first of the season, has settled over
Fayette County like a roosting hen. Sleet strikes my windowpane as I
swing my legs from under thick blankets and begin to move in the chilly
predawn air. I dress quickly in the dark pulling on thermal underwear,
a quilted flannel shirt, and a down vest, then lift my heavy rifle from
its place in a locked cabinet. The blued steel barrel glows in the scant
half-light. A fresh coat of oil is slick on my bare hands. The heft
of the 30-06 feels good as I loop the cracked leather strap over my
shoulder. I fill my pockets with shiny brass cartridges and pull an
orange knit acrylic cap over my ears before creeping out into the frigid
storm. I begin the walk to my uncle's house.
The
coal barons built this town and most of the towns in the area. Tiny
company towns popped up like mushrooms on a fallen log to accommodate
the influx of immigrants, Germans mostly, coming to America. To save
on construction costs most miners' houses were two family town houses.
Two houses stuck together like a set of Siamese twins sharing a common
wall.
This
is the area where the Continental Coal Company owned huge tracts of
forestland and a string of patch towns in this county. Continental #1,
Continental #2, and Continental #3 still remain. They stand like grave
markers for the company that built them. The Continental mine at Robena
was the site of one of the worst mining accidents in Pennsylvania history.
Fifty years ago, the walls of a strip mine caved in, burying ninety
men alive in pit #1. That was only about twenty minutes from here. I
walk past rows of tumbledown town houses and down a narrow alley.
I
huddle deeper into my vest as a gust of wind cuts across my cheek. Under
my boot, the crunch of pea gravel. I cover the half-mile to my uncle's
house in ten minutes. He is standing in the drizzle, loading a battered
orange pickup. Bowling ball shoulders strain the fabric of his red flannel
shirt. His hands are catcher's mitt huge and thicker than cowhide. Expression
lines crack his round face radiating out from his warm brown eyes. His
parents named him Robert but the tough miners' kids in the dirty coal
patch town he grew up in, called him Tank on account of his thick forearms
and broad powerful back, a name that has followed him through his adult
life.
"Ready
to take off?" he asks, his deep voice lost in the falling sleet.
"Yeah,
let's go."
Tank
worked in the mills in Pittsburgh as a young man. He spent seventeen
years on the floor under the buckets that poured tons of molten steel
into sand forms.
"It
was like working in Hell," he once told me. "You're wearing
this asbestos suit that weighs about fifty pounds and you look like
some sort of an alien or something cause it's all shiny like a space
suit. With the buckets over top of your head the floor gets to be about
120° with the big fans going at the door keeping the air turning
over."
The
windshield wipers describe slow arcs, sweeping sleet from the windshield
as we bounce along neglected red-dog access roads far back into the
abandoned strip mines. There are no old forests here anymore. The land
is still recovering, still scabbing over with thick masses of basket
like scrub and piles of brush as dense as a child's tangled hair. The
machines are gone now, the earthmovers and conveyer belts. There are
no more backhoes and front loaders. Diesel engines no longer shake the
ground. The coal is all gone, and so are the great furnaces in Pittsburgh.
All that remains are the ghost towns with the strange names of an era
of that seems totally disconnected from the atrophied economy that has
fallen on this area like a wet blanket. We drive for twenty minutes
before he speaks.
"Keep
your head up and your eyes on me today. Watch that barrel cause I don't
really feel like getting shot either. And whatever else you do, be quiet."
The
same words every time. I've followed Tank through these strip mines
since before I was old enough to hunt. Each time we enter the woods,
I am given the same warnings: always be aware of my surroundings and
always watch my uncle. He knows this place. This is not a sport to him.
It is deeper than a weekend diversion; it is a way of life. On these
trips into the woods he passes it all on to me in tiny increments.
To
hunt is to hold a deep reverence for the land. It is more than a sport.
It is an act of communion. To go into the woods as a hunter is to understand
the tie that binds us to nature. We become more than consumers. We are
active participants in the food chain. I know where the deer run and
where they bed down.
Parking
the truck in a turn around off the narrow access road, we walk into
the thick scrub. As we work our way through a break in the tangled mass
of blackberry vines, trying to avoid the needle thorns, the gray sleet
has changed into a steady wet snow. Almost an inch frosts the fallen
leaves as we disappear into the thicket
There
is no sound as he walks. Despite his heavy frame, Tank moves lightly
through the thick tangles of underbrush. He's easily two hundred and
fifty plus pounds and well over six feet tall. In most situations he
seems awkward, even clumsy, like a teenager still reeling from the first
growth spurt. Struggling to keep up with his long, sure gait I realize
that this is because most of the time he is holding himself back. Here,
it's as if he floats above the forest floor, never touching the brittle
twigs. On our first trips I would thrash through brush piles. A quick
angry glance was the only reproach for my violation. It was the only
correction I needed.
We
work our way deeper into the forest, following the line of the old high
wall that once marked the end of the largest of the pits. The wall rises
at a right angle to the ground. Its sheer face extends upward twenty-five
feet, and as I look up I see a host of hunters perched along the wall
waiting for the push. I see ten immediately above us. That's about $3500
in revenue to the Game Commission. As the woods fill with hunters, frightened
animals filter through the bottomlands in a panic. As deer streak through
the bottoms, the men on embankment wait casually, pick their trophy
like a steak at the butcher shop. This isn't the way I was taught. I
fight a deep feeling of revulsion in my gut as we move on.
"That's
who we should be hunting." Tank whispers. I laugh uneasily.
Further
back in the pits we leave the slovenly weekend hunters on the high wall
and push through a marshy area. The smell of pungent sulfur hangs heavily
in the air. Streams crisscross the bottomlands. Dirty yellow-brown channels
of foul smelling water tainted with sulfur and heavy metals run down
from the high wall and disappear into the swampy ground. The old strips
radically redraw the watershed of an area. The natural topology of the
land is razed. The land is turned inside out like a mugging victim's
pockets. Diesel shovels reached deep, sacking the land; they left the
good, rich topsoil in piles, exposed to the rain, eroding away and clogging
the streams that once drained the land.
Winding
up the narrow channel of one of these sulfur-laden streams we come to
a small gully. This is an area that we have scouted through the summer
during long afternoons of black berry picking. In the rut, the beginning
of the breeding season, a huge buck frequents this area. Thin barked
birch saplings bear the scars of buck rubs. These territorial displays
mar many of the young saplings in the area. Mounting a small rise I
take my position with my back against a tree trunk.
"I'm
gonna circle around to the other side. Will you be okay on your own?"
"I'll
be fine," I answer.
With
my back against a tree and my rifle across my lap I wait. Scanning the
brush, my head begins to sag. I doze off, float high above the treetops
looking down at the ruined landscape, watch the pulse of the land growing
stronger. The lines of the old pits disappear. It's like the sunken
features of the land are fleshing out, growing fat. The tree line advances,
the leading edge cutting down the town like an avalanche. Roads sink
into the revitalized earth disappearing beneath the soil. At first they
can be seen from above, but the scars quickly fade. Snow falls in heavy
clumps from sagging branches and onto my shoulder. Cold water on my
neck. I'm awake.
From
across the gully, sounds of rustling underbrush filter to my ear. My
body instantly tenses. How long was I asleep? Tank went the other way.
He would never make that much noise. Twenty yards down the gully, a
broad form pushes through the thick underbrush. I shoulder my rifle.
Through
the scope I watch as he emerges from the thicket twenty yards away.
I dig my elbow hard into my knee bracing the gun. Thin rivulets of water
flow over the cords of his broad powerful neck and stream down his sinewy
flank. With each breath, a plume of steam rises from his black snout.
Head down to the ground, he scents his way into the open. The beams
of his rack twist towards the sky. My shoulders tighten. Moving slowly,
he comes into a small clearing. Tank is 100 yards further up the valley.
I
sweep the scope over his flank stopping at his powerful legs. I pause
at the thin twists of muscle under the drum tight skin, his veins pulsing
against his matted grey-brown fur. I hear the blood pounding in my ears
like hammers beating bronze. Under my stocking cap, thin beads of ice
cold sweat prick up against electrified skin. Breathing so hard I am
afraid that I might hyperventilate and pass out, I slide the safety
off with a numb finger.
Click.
The
tiny metallic sound sends a shockwave through his body. His head bolts
upright. The powerful cords in his neck bunch up and his ears flatten
against his skull. Gathering his legs like a spring he prepares to fly.
Gently,
I squeeze the trigger…
I
feel the explosion in my teeth. The recoil of the rifle bites into my
shoulder throwing the barrel off of the animal. Struggling to bring
him back into the line of sight of the scope, I catch a flash of white
as the buck raises its tail, revealing the snowy fur of its hind quarter,
and bounds through the underbrush propelled by the fury of the thin
powerful legs. I check with my tongue to make sure that my front incisors
weren't loosened by the shot. I work the action and eject the spent
cartridge, pick it up, and put it into my vest pocket.
Before
the smoke clears, Tank bounds over the top of the bluff. I didn't even
hear him coming.
"Did
you miss?" he huffs between quick breaths. He sprinted the distance
between our positions.
"I
don't think so," I half whisper.
Working
our way through the falling snow we reach the point that the buck disappeared
into the brush. Thick drops of crimson black blood stain the snow in
Jackson Pollock spatters. We follow the blood trail through the thicket.
"I've
followed blood trails for four or five miles," Tank says between
deep even breaths. "Always follow the trails boy, never leave one.
They'll bed down and bleed out and rot out here. It's the most senseless
waste."
The
snow is falling faster now, blotting out the blood trail. We quicken
our pace. From a fast walk we break into a run. The shoulder strap of
the rifle bites into my flesh. My lungs begin to burn with every icy
inhalation. Wind stings my eyes. My head swims with adrenaline. A little
further. I see him in the scope. I feel the explosion. The blotchy crimson
blood is darker now. Less oxygen dissolved in it. Lung shot. He can't
run like this forever. Neither can I.
Fording
a yellow-bottomed stream, we burst into a small clearing nearly a half-mile
from the point that I fired the shot. He fell in full stride. A wide
swath of snow and leaves and black blood were torn from where he fell
and skidded like a downed bomber. Steam rises from a ragged wound behind
his right shoulder, his blood mixing into the soil. Already a thin blanket
of snow begins to accumulate on his back forming a burial shroud. Standing
over him, I feel something strange. Is it grief? Admiration? I say a
little prayer in my head. In death the power of the animal is not diminished.
His black eyes are still open, fixed on the trail ahead.
The
mines died because they took all that there was to take. They sucked
the marrow from Fayette County. The mines bled out and the mills starved.
Will the way of life that I have been taught survive? Every year the
number of hunters rises, and the harvest numbers along with it. Every
year Tank and I go further back into the mines to get away from the
hunters on the high wall.
Laboring
through the thick brush back with the buck attached to an improvised
towline, we hear the thunder crack of the hunters perched on the high
wall. A thin snow falls over all of us.