Outdoor Museums & Wild Things

Hi! This is a pinned post for the top of my blog, featuring a helpful FAQ if you’re interested.

This will be the summer I wrangle up an animal and eat it. It's happening. I'm getting my fishing permit on opening day. I will go full gollum lordoftherings on the sweet meat of the river.

What's the difference between a tabular body of silica-rich igneous rock and a lesbian who has fallen ill?

One's a felsic dike and one is a dyke who fell sick.

Thank you, the booing makes me more powerful AND less funny actually.

Somehow I lost 500 pictures from my trip, from the best day of photos I took on my favorite day of the two weeks! No!!!!!

No.

And while this seems like it's accusatory to me, I'm going to answer honestly.

I was vegetarian for a while in college. It was easy to do, and didn't affect my life at all. I'm allergic to a handful of things that make veganism difficult for me. I also live in a remote place with little access to fresh produce, but the grocery store I can get to easily always has meat.

I get eggs from local farmers who use their chickens as natural pest management, I eat down the food chain, and am hoping to start fishing to get my own (sustainable and probably exclusively invasive) protein in.

I wear leather and fur items because they are an awesome sustainable, low waste alternative to wearing all plastic. My fur mittens were handmade by a local who harvested the beaver herself. Unlike my old plastic ones these will last a lifetime, and decompose if they aren't needed anymore.

The reality is that people have used animal products for centuries, and fully vegetarian or vegan living doesn't work for everyone. I think we all have a responsibility to be better (eat less meat, use less plastic, use less fossil fuel, help restoration work), but absolutism isn't universally productive, especially when it actively demotivates efforts to improve. I think people should do what we can to live more sustainably.

Animals products aren't going to disappear, and judgement about using them pushes people deeper into using them. I think we need to focus inward on things we can do and not on what other people are doing individually. Protest those big polluters, organize with people in your community, make your own good choices that you are able to make, and reserve judgement on people who could be your allies.

Environmentalism is a marathon without an end. We're all going at our own pace and watching our own steps.