The Book

Read an excerpt from the book, Under The Red Willow:
Hunting for food is Not the same as Killing 4 Sport

Taylore has this incredible story about a classmate in elementary school nicknamed Echo. Joey, his first name walks into the woods one day sporting a brand new rifle. The boy happened upon a deer, and the creature looked up haphazardly chewing on some tender grass close-by. Echo stood quietly as a day owl, and very slowly he raised his gun –between– each bite from the animal. He eventually had the doe in his sights, ready to pull the trigger.

Unexpectedly this beautiful creature looks directly into Echo’s eyes, and in some telepathic Nature’s mumble-jumble connects to the boy as clear as any dreamwalk, “Now why would you want to do something like this to me?” So Echo listened urgently, hearing something as if the moment made perfect sense to him. He then goes home trading the rifle, for a couple of great artworks drawn by his brother Cyr; who is an amazing artist. Cyr was so good in the arts that at early grade school, he got F’s in Art and in other academic projects requiring artistic visuals because teachers thought adults did the work.

Children like Joey Echo, who can make life changing choices deserve the effort from adults (i.e., strange as this seems) a child is a person too. Thus, it is not too remote to begin detouring from these general biases toward a child’s lack of personhood, “Don’t U – think?” Taylore said out loud to the trees in the wood cattycorner to his bedroom window.

“Kids know this and you adults are the ones confused because the little people act their age,” Taylore used to say to his mom in rare moments. She got a real good laugh out of her son’s bravery. Then one day she said, “I dare you to say that to your father!” The absurd look went emotionally viral between the two in stillness for several seconds before both of them began cracking up ridiculously with googling eyes taking in water, dripping with foolish-fun-laughter.