newsminer.com

FAIRBANKS — We celebrated my son’s fifth birthday with a fall picnic, just in time for the season’s first snowfall. While the flakes settled on the barbeque, I made potato salad from the garden. The day before, I dug a couple of old deer roasts out of the freezer, the kind still too full of meat to throw away, but that wouldn’t look so pretty on a dinner platter.

As I sawed at the flesh tucked in between the last shards of bone, slicing bite-sized pieces and filleting off the tough sinew, I realized that I’ve made a meal out of almost every variety of meat that can be harvested in Alaska. I’ve cooked moose roasts and rabbit stew, bison burgers and sheep vindaloo. My husband’s planning a goat-hunting trip in Kachemak Bay this month. If he’s lucky enough to kill one, I’ll be figuring out how to feed that to our family and friends, too.

I’ve never shot an animal, but once it’s on the ground, I can provide in my own way. I did not grow up with this kind of relationship to food. I was one of those suburban dwellers, an elementary-school-aged kid who finally realized through my hamburger-stuffed mouth just what animal we were eating. My eyes watered to think about chewing the flesh of something with lashes as long as my own.

That wouldn’t have happened just a few decades ago. Since the 1950’s, when my step-dad was a young adult, grocery stores sterilized and separated us from our food sources. Our country can’t supply the fuel necessary to meet our vast energy needs anymore. We lost track of what it means to provide for ourselves.

I might have become a vegetarian if not for the example set by the hunters I know — my uncle, who chose a life in the country surrounded by the animals he both loved and harvested over an existence that conformed to city values, and the indigenous people of Alaska. If they had caught the vegetarianism bug, their descendents wouldn’t be around today to tell us how they lived. I discovered that we omnivores can have our own kind of spiritual connection to the food we eat

Ever since Alaska Governor Sarah Palin burst onto the national scene as the Republican vice presidential candidate, pundits and comedians have had a field day with her hunting prowess. They’ve scoffed at her self-touted ability to field dress a moose and made her family’s salmon fishing business into a punch line.

One of the theories about her popularity is that she symbolizes the ideal of a pioneer, balancing a fierce positive outlook with a feminine appearance. She represents the frontier women who had to face the same harsh challenges as the men, staring down bears and scrounging a living from an unforgiving land.

Whether we agree with the implications or not, our governor has become the symbol of Alaskan women. That’s a subject I used to consider myself something of an expert on.

I grew up knowing that I could do anything I wanted, thanks to feminism and a natural equality in the relationship between my mom and step-dad, but the world didn’t always measure up to my expectations. I wondered where I would find my own unlimited opportunity, until I came here. Suddenly, it didn’t matter whether I shaved my legs or if I wore makeup to a job interview.

I learned how to hack chunks from a freshly killed moose carcass and wrap the meat in freezer-sized packages. I wiped my fish-slimed hands on a pair of Carhartts and then slipped into a miniskirt to watch my favorite band. I made jam from berries I picked and pickles from vegetables grown by my friends. I noticed how the land and my own lifestyle changed in response to the seasons.

When the passion of the national election — with the fate of the world seeming to hang in the balance — is over, I hope the country will remember some of the lessons the Sarah Palin experience has to teach. That whether we’re fighting over how to handle the predatory practices of immoral mortgage lenders or how to manage predator populations, taking care of the land is still our responsibility. If the wilderness goes and our frontier lifestyle ends, that’s on us.

After the birthday party started, we threw kabobs marinated in a whiskey/soy sauce on the barbeque as the snow melted in the afternoon sun. The deer-meat-on-a-stick was a big hit. I’ll never forget the look on the faces of the kids when they thanked my husband — and the deer — for providing that meat. At that moment, they knew exactly where their food came from.

Theresa Bakker lives with her family in downtown Fairbanks, where she finds plenty of things to write about. Contact her at theresabakker@yahoo.com.