November is deer hunting season. When you live a rural lifestyle, in my neck of the woods at least, you grow most of your vegetables in a garden, gather a lot of your fruit in the bush, collect a good portion of your fish from a stream or lake and hunt for most of your meat and fowl in the woods. Anything less and you are missing out on what a rural lifestyle in the Cariboo-Chilcotin has to offer; you might just as well be living in the city. Each hunting and gathering endeavour has a month assigned to it. November is deer hunting.
The other day I got out of bed in the dark and checked the calendar to find out what I was supposed to be doing. It was the big buck deer season. Sunrise found me sitting under a tree at one of my favorite deer trails with a thermos of hot coffee, a rifle and an image in my mind of a huge buck (male deer). I was intently focused on a spot where the deer trail went through a cut-line. An hour later, no venison had presented itself so I decided to get technical and try a calling sequence. This amounts to skillfully blowing through a little plastic gizmo that looks like a mouthpiece from an oboe and making deer noises, in this case the sound of a lovesick doe (a female deer). The idea is to attract a lovesick buck; at least that's the theory. Like most things technical, when it comes to nature it doesn't usually work but at least it's something to do while you're waiting.
An hour of intermittently making deer noises passed and still no venison showed up. That's odd, I thought. I always see at least a doe or two at this spot. I was in the midst of contemplating this unusual situation, as well as the rather queer feeling I had been experiencing for about a half hour, when the reason for both wandered out on the deer trail intersection. There before me, less than 50 metres away, was the largest cougar I had ever seen. The cat stalked slowly out into full view, turned his head and looked right at me. No fooling, I could see the colour of his eyes. He looked like he could see clear though me, and if he did, he would have seen the hair on the back of my neck standing straight up. After staring at me for what seemed like hours (actually probably less than a minute) the huge catamount flicked his tail, turned his head and stalked on down the deer trail.
Seeing the big cat seriously unnerved me but when I began to unpack the experience immediately after the cougar had left, I nearly had my first coronary. My careless deer calling had attracted the huge cougar. I figure he showed up on the scene about the same time my queer feeling did, no doubt stalking up behind me for a good look at a possible meal. I don't know how close he got, but the bush is rather thick behind where I was sitting so I'm guessing about 25 feet. That would have given him a good look. For at least a half hour he eyed me up from behind my back making several deliberate choices. I am not sure what all those deliberate choices were but one was that I was not a deer, therefore not worthy of a deer attack. Another was that I was a rather stupid oblivious human, a suitable option for prey for any hunting cougar. Humans have fallen victim to aggressive and hunting cougars before. This one chose not to elect his option. Instead, and I am not sure why, he chose to back off a bit and walk right out in front of me and scare me half to death. And then he made another choice, flicked his tail and cat-walked down the trail chuckling to himself.
Most cats are very deliberate with choice. Five minutes watching the family cat in the back yard gives you an idea of what I mean. Cougars or catamounts take this to an extreme. Choice for them is something very deliberate, intentional and calculated. In that, they take full advantage of choice. Would that I could do the same.
When it comes to choice, like many of my species, I tend to approach it like it is some kind of crapshoot. I don't deliberate or calculate very much. A lot of the times I don't choose at all, satisfied with just letting things happen and then muttering, “I guess it was meant to be,” when what happens turns out badly. That's really a weird and skewed view of the sovereignty of God. At other times I make choices like I can remake them over and over again to my heart's content, not really spending much time on the gravity of what I am choosing. That's really a queer way to approach reoccurring sin in my life. At other times I make choices and try to feign that I am a victim when things turn out badly. That's a great responsibility cop-out when it comes to health choices. And so it goes.
The freedom of choice is one of the greatest gifts of grace God gives each one of us. Choice, especially in the affluent part of the world I get to live in, affects almost every aspect of my life. And many of the choices I make ripple out to have an effect far beyond me. If I am going to treat this great God-given gift in the spiritual and grateful and responsible way it deserves, it seems to me I need to make a shift towards making catamount choices … intentional, deliberate, premeditated, calculated choices.
Often when Presbyterians think about choice it quickly becomes theological and theoretical. We tend to go back to the first couple of chapters of Genesis and begin to think in terms of stuff like “free will,” “original sin,” “predestination” and “sovereignty of God.” Uuuugh! I think this misses the point. Choice is a deeply spiritual and practical thing, especially for the Christian. Exercising choice is the option I have for imaging God in society and creation. I can choose to care in a costly way, to love unconditionally, to live simply, to pray continuously, to seek the mind of Christ, to do the will of God. Choice is how I fulfill my mandate to follow Jesus. Choice is the platform from which all my ministry springs. Choice is the arena of practical Christian ethics. It behooves me then to make my choices, catamount choices.
