Bad News From Burkina Faso

One of the themes I am going for in this blog is of things that I find transcendent. The bible talks of a New Heaven and a New Earth. I think, sometimes,  if we are very lucky we catch glimpses of the New Earth. The wild plums that I mentioned in a previous post were transcendent and a glimpse of the New Earth, or as termed it there, the New Narnia.

Over the last few years, I caught a glimpse of the New Earth from the most unlikely quarter. Burkina Faso!!! Burkina Faso is a landlocked nation in the West African Sahel and Savanna that few outsiders could find on a map and that fewer still have ever been to. It is a nation of grinding poverty in a poor quarter of the poorest continent.

I have a deep interest in African wildlife conservation and I had long since written off this area as an area where the wildlife were simply gone. It is too poor, too heavily populated and too conflict ridden.

However, I started seeing a few hunting reports from southeastern Burkina Faso. Along with adjoining lands in Benin and Niger, it was a region described as "the largest protected area still rich in wildlife in West Africa."

Aldo Leopold once said>>>

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.<<<

Right now, I am nursing a wound over a place that I have never been and that most could not place on a map. 

"Despite"-The Ugliest Word I have Ever Read

By David Wrolson

As the father of a daughter, I am completely flabbergasted by a sentence in "Little House, Long Shadow" by Anita Clair Fellman. Fellman is a Women's Studies professor whose book is an examination of the supposed "dark shadow" cast by the Little House series of books. It will surprise no one to know that she largely views the "Little House" books as impacting society in a negative way.

One sentence (one word really) from this book is burned into my mind and really tells you all you need to know about the mindset of Women's Studies professors.

"And despite the strong bond between Laura and Pa described in the books, nothing suggests that there was an incestuous relationship between the two of them,"

"Despite", really!!!! WTF???? So Fellman's default position of fathers and daughters with a strong bond is to automatically assume an incestuous relationship. No wonder our young women come out of the Women's Studies courses so poisoned.

I have a strong bond with my now 17-YO daughter and in my previous post I described one of "Our" things which is picking wild plums. We have other "Our" things. Of the 3 kids, she is my big-game hunter and, maybe even, someday, my farmer. I dream of taking her to Africa.

But, I guess Ms. Fellman would assume that our relationship is incestuous because, in her world, fathers and daughters with a strong bond are automatically that way, unless nothing suggests so.

"Despite"-Words mean things and Ms. Fellman just threw that word out there without any thought as to what it really means. It was just another word to her, but it clarifies what poison comes out of Women's Studies departments. "Despite."

I shouldn't wish this on anyone, but part of me hopes that Ms. Fellman burns in Hell forever, for that one word, haunted by visions of Laura and Pa just being Laura and Pa. I also wouldn't mind if some visions of me and my daughter picking wild plums were included.

Despite

I Have Seen the New Narnia

By David Wrolson

The Chronicles of Narnia series ends with the creation of the New Narnia which is like Narnia, but better. This is an obvious metaphor based on the New Heaven and the New Earth at the end of the bible.

I like to use the phrase "I have seen the New Narnia" for something transcendent and that raises the soul.

I have seen the New Narnia but we had to earn it to appreciate it.

My daughter and I like to pick wild plums and my wife makes jelly from them. After picking wild plums for several years, we knew what wild plums looked like. They are a certain size and level of juiciness and that is just what wild plums are.

Then we found the New Narnia. A few trees in an odd corner of a woods. The wild plums there are twice the size of regular plums and the juiciness is unbelievable.

I am glad that we did not find these plums first as we would not have appreciated them.

With those plums, I got a sense of the "New Earth." They are that transcendent and nothing can take that sense away from me.

The Ragged Edges of the Land

By David Wrolson

I love the ragged edges of the land

The odd corner, the brush pile

The rocky shore calls to me

Farmers hate odd-shaped fields

I am a farmer, but I love odd-shaped fields

They are just more interesting

My heart breaks every day

The ragged edges of the land are going away

Smelling the Smoke of a Thousand Campfires

By David Wrolson:

General Patton described his vision of past lives in a poem titled "Through a Glass Darkly."

So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.

I sense these lives differently.

If I close my eyes just right, I can smell the smoke of a thousand campfires. I think they are Roman, but I am not sure. I can sense the dark woods of Teutoburger Wald closing in. Teutoburger Wald where 3 Roman legions were destroyed by Germanic Tribes.

I can smell the horseshit and the sweat and fear of men at the Horns of Hattin. We were so thirsty there.

The earth thrums for me in Colorado. I was Cheyenne there at the height of our years of power.  I hate the Comanche. Later we fought the white men together, but in my time we were enemies. They killed me, I think. I was at the height of manhood when I went away. We could not know how fast the buffalo would go.

Now I go west across the plains, always looking for something. I am looking for the buffalo and I am confused that they are gone.

I hate the movie Dunkirk to the core of my soul and with the heat of a thousand suns. You can't hate that movie as much as I do just from one human life. I hate it on behalf of those who died with me and those who killed us.

I am a farmer now, and the earth is in me. I have been a farmer before. I can feel it, I know it.

Now, I know nothing of horses, but I yearn for the day of the horse. Something big is missing in this time. It took me a long time to figure it out, but the horses are gone and things just don't seem right without them.

I like to see what is over the hill. I have scouted new paths and visited new lands.

I have hunted Zimbabwe in this life. That patch of land is very important to me, but it is Rhodesia that I love. I have been there before with Burnham and Selous and Rhodes. I love that land as I love no other. But it is gone now. I lost someone very close to me in Rhodesia. I know it. I feel it.

Was I Burnham? Did I lose my daughter there? Was the jolt of recognition I felt when I opened his biography "Scouting on Two Continents" real or merely imagined? He was a scout, but he was also oil and mining and those are in me as well.