Grouse

I was supposed to be deer hunting.  I was up before dawn.  We stopped at the A&W for sausage eggers and coffee. The second day out I'd even bought a new thermos so we'd have more coffee. Gilbert, the dog, didn't particularly like the sausage.  It was peppery.  We liked it. He frowned but eventually ate it.  We drove the Old Hedley Road.  Lots of deer in the farmer's fields. None a buck.  It's only buck season.  I could have shot an antler less white tail but white tails are more easterly.  Around Princeton it's mostly Mule Deer.  I'd shot big mule deer there before.  I was certainly hoping to shoot another this weekend.
We were talking though.  Mostly about Jesus and Communism.  The world thought the Cold War ended the era of spies but today old KGB and Chinese Communist spies, government and industrial, popped up everywhere.
Communism is Atheism operationalized.  Just as Canada was Christianity and Catholicism operationalized.  Isreal today is Judaism operationalized. Russian and China are Atheism operationalized.  Put simply the religion of atheism is communism. That's it's manifestation just like Saudi is the manifestation of Islam.
Jesus wouldn't much like being Communist.  But Putin seemed to be returning to Old Russia and making allegiance with the Orthodox Church by sacrificing the gays.  Weird times.  Even weirder times for China where capitalism, confucianism, communism and abortionism go hand in hand.
"Feminism is cultural communism."  he said.
"It's not Marxism. Marx was a slouch. Scottish socialism and the union movement proved him wrong,utterly wrong before the turn of the century.  Marxist was binary and the Scots were trinitarian.  Three dimensional chess trumps 2 dimensional chess every time. Lenin just needed him to create his little gang, which would 'dictate to the proletariat', to give his totalitarian dictatorship some substance.  Engels and Marx wanted to destroy all that was Christian. They hated the family.  Marx got his cleaning lady pregnant then dumped her.  Without the London School of Economics no one in the West would have paid one iota of attention to his mad ramblings which parodied the old testament."
"Lenin was the lawyer and murderer.  He's the real gangster.  After him Stalin was just a foot note. Everything utterly evil about communism comes direct from Lenin.  He engineered the program and everyone including the Pol Pot followed on it.  It was a template for genocide and mass murder.  80 million killed in Russia and 120 million killed in China.  Millions more wherever communism became the dictatorship of the committee. And Lenin devised the one committee to 'dictate to the proletariat.'  Marx was an idiot compared to the Machiavellianism of Lenin. In comparison Marx was a mad man."
We were riding in my Ford F350 4x4 Harley Davidson edition Truck with my Honda 250 enduro motorcycle in the back.  Gilbert sat between us.  We climbed the steep mountain up to the Rattler branch of the Forest Service Road. There were spruce and pine on either side, clearings where a deer might be standing. There were openings in the new growth forest where a bear might be wandering. We drove along looking everywhere.  I probably should have got out and sat waiting for the deer or stalked them in trails that led out from the main logging road. But the truck was warm and we were having a really good conversation. It would last two days.
"I thought Freud was as much a parody of the Old Testament as Marx." I said.
"They both hated God.  Have you noticed that the ungodly aren't particularly creative and rely mostly on theft for their ideas. "
"The Communists knew about the nuclear experiment before the President."
"Obama is spying on everyone. Everyone is being monitored.  The United States under him has become even more under surveillance than the Communists kept their population."
"They'll only be happy when everyone is a slave."
"I'm a wage slave as it is."
"No I mean a real slave. You're able to own a truck and drive out to the woods but it won't been long before you'll have to get permission to travel from one city to another or province to province.  You soon won't be able to afford it with the price of fuel.  Everyone will be working and only have enough money for their accommodation and some toys to entertain themselves before they go back to work."
"I just heard a similar scenario when I was overseas.  There's a lot that believe that the world as we know it will collapse soon.  My colleague figures that just as Israel was punished by leaving the ways of God so he thinks that society as a whole will be punished for murdering babies en mass. The Nazis could be said to have been punished for their carnage.  He makes a good point about the history of consequences. "
"I think the people who were behind communism saw that the west ruined their vision of being the ultimate dictators of a one world government of proletariat  so they'll do anything to bring down the west.  They're destroying it from within.  Everyone whose a threat gets taken out with some honey pot sex scandal and then is replaced by some lightweight party liner.  Can you believe a three star General in charge of nuclear weapons got burnt by a fabricated gambling charge. Then the best of the presidential guard get knocked off with a prostitute scandal.  These aren't random events. "
"I thought that when they got rid of the next President of France to be with the cleaning lady scandal."
"The KGB perfected the honey pot scandals.  I heard that politicians asked in Europe said they were all afraid their reputations would be ruined if they spoke up"
"Then there's Weaner showing pictures of himself naked on the internet. Can you believe the God shot of that guys name. His high school classmates must be saying now "He always was a weaner."  
"It's just that the women here as so stupid. They are being lead by the nose. It was the same with the long gun registry. Long guns never used by criminals. No registered guns used by criminals. Criminals killing Criminals.  They lied about the suicide stats too. They were killing themselves jumping out of palm trees when I was in the Polynesian Islands.  The stupid girls all jumped on board to out law guns and suddenly they'd disarmed themselves and now couldn't carry a purse gun.  The long gun registry was a 2 billion dollar government money grab fostered on everyone because women didn't take the time to study the stats.  Mark Lepine wasn't even who people thought he was.  But suddenly every rural person with a gun was a rapist and needed to be disarmed.  I couldn't believe it and only believe that enough woke up that that was why Ignatieff was turfed. Now they're getting them to vote for the electorate to be stoned, none of them remembering "give them cake. I hope enough women get a real education, not that stupid women's lit shit in women's studies.  They don't even read Alice Munro just Gloria Steinem ad infinitum so they can get memorize the communist slogans for their chants. Once women get educated they want meritocracy as much as the next guy rather than being slaves and living on pig slops.  The Iron Curtain kept people in.  Meanwhile everyone legal and illegal is trying to get into the west. Communism destroys everything eventually . "
When we stopped to pee Gilbert ran around the truck and through the woods all about doing circles and patterns in search of grouse. He was bored by our stupid conversation and wanting us to get on with grouse hunting. We call him Grouse Master Gilbert. He's only a little guy and not much help with deer or bear but when it comes to grouse he flushes them ,finds them and even catches them with dog olympic leaps into the air.
"The UN is communism all round. It's into this Article 21 thing and wants to reduce the world population to a matter of millions.  They all want to be the dictator though. Like Mortgentaler aborting the Catholics in Quebec. He didn't get his wife to abort his children.  The Communist leaders have always had their dachas and concubines.  It's just that the proletariat don't even get condoms and all the women have their babies ripped out of them."
"I heard about the Chinese women who try to have a second baby, they're killing them even as they're being born, sucking the brains out as she's delivering."
"It's a death culture.  More people have been murdered by atheists in a hundred years than any God based group has done in the whole history of th world."
"Bolivia is making a lot of fine bird guns."
"Apparently they have a problem with crows on the plantations so everyone has shot guns to handle the predators."
"I love my Bolito 20 gauge. The 12 gauge shot hurt the meat but the 20 gauge is like sand and so far I've shot 14 birds with it and they've all been fine eating without any loss of flesh.  I think I like it better than the 22 guage.  Shooting the head off grouse is fine but I'm more certain with the 20 gauge and when I hit the shoulder of the bird with the 22 I lost a lot of meat.   Sonny was big on the 20 gauge when we were up in Fort St. James and I have to give it to him I'm a convert now.
Other than the dozen or more doe we'd seen coming in we didn't see any does, or moose or elk or bear all morning. Then we were driving down this side road when I yelled stop.  I took out the 20 gauge and blasted the grouse standing in the high grass along side the tree line. I'd just seen the head turning to look in the direction of the truck.  Gilbert leaped out the window of the truck and was a blur of motion as he pounced on the bird.  I had to find the bird underneath him to wring it's neck.  I missed the next one.  And the ones after that too.  By the end of the weekend the tally would be a dozen grouse free and only 2 shot.  Gilbert flushed the ones in the bushes but I never got a clear shot in the heavy woods where we found them along the streams. I took the shot but the birds were long gone.  Gilbert followed and ran circles and patterns looking for more. He was a little disappointed in me.  Tom was driving the truck and he felt Tom had done his job but I was the shooter and I was supposed to hit more birds. He gave me those looks hunting dogs give, "what am I doing hunting with you." looks.  If he had a cell phone and an agent he'd have been on another hunting team before the weekend ended.
We were staying in the motel in Princeton.  Great place with pool right by the highway beside the gas station near one of the best hunting and fishing stores in the province.  We had a pizza from Pizza Party just a short walk from the motel.  Gilbert had spooked 5 deer when we'd got up at 6 in the morning and headed over  to the A&W.  They were in the parking lot of the motel.  Talk about spies.  I'm sure they were there to report back to the rest of the deer in the valley when we woke up. That's why we didn't see any bucks.
A guy we met told us he and his friends had shot six bucks up north. Like we need to hear this when I've just missed another grouse.  Early in the season the grouse are really stupid and easy to hit. But later in the season they're running at the sound of the truck and when they see you out  walking they're way gone flying in the trees like alien space saucers.
"I told you I met Prime Minister Harper and he was a really decent man."
"That's all I've heard about him too but the media certainly aren't going to tell you the truth about him.
"I met the Liberal leader Turner and he was a good guy too but the media trashed him."
"Right now Troudeau is the media favourite."
"That's because the Canadian media are all dope heads and he's going to legalize their marijuana. For years they were getting drunk in the parliamentary media room and now they're be able to smoke up and write their fantasies about Canadian politics."
"Did you hear Clinton liked to watch porn on the #1 plane and the secret service guys didn't like that.  A general said it was tough advising him about possible war in the middle east with all the tits and ass going on on the screen."
"Do you think the secret service who didn't like porn are the guys who got trashed in that honey pot scam."
"Could be."
"It's all about my pay grade. Watching politics in the world today is no different from the ancient Greeks listening to stories of the Gods on Mount Olympus."
"I think they're trying to undermine everyone's belief in authority so the totalitarian authority guys can step in and kick the girls out after they've killed off all the men. "
"Dr. Ney said men don't care about anything any more because they can't even protect their babies.  The Moslems are righteous and they'll fight for their families whereas western men aren't going to fight like that.  The Chinese guys are all going to fight to rape the western women.  That's what Ghengis Khan and Attilla the Hun were in it for. I read somewhere that 1% of the human genome can be traced to those 2 guys because of all the conquered women they raped.  The Chinese are killing all their feminist babies in the womb so the guys are all single in their armies and ready to do to the west what the Japenese did to them when they invaded. They're still pissed at the West for the opium wars."
"I heard this General talking about the Cowards in Washington  forcing women to fight in the Seals.  He said the Israelis had tried having women  in combat roles but it hadn't worked."
"It's not supposed to work. It's supposed to destroy the Navy Seals and the Marines. The only thing keeping law and order in the world these last 50 years is the American military so everyone wanting to take over the west wants to destroy them so what better way than to put women in their ranks."
"I don't get it.  All the other groups who proved themselves in combat like the blacks did it by proving they themselves could fight as well as the white, like the black air combat patrol.  Yet there's no woman's combat group just women  with men and the men are getting themselves killed trying to save the women rather than carry out their mission . Women aren't going to get themselves shot to save men but that's hard wired into men.  We're protectors."
"Not any more.  Any man who tries to protect a woman in this society gets hit with a sexual harassment suit".
"I couldn't believe all this bullshit about women not being able to get jobs yet I heard they're doing anything to try and get women into the trades but they're now having to get 500 Irish men to come to Canada for these high paying jobs because women don't want to do any heavy lifting. My female surgeon friends say the feminist don't want to get blood on their hands. They like telling everyone what to do but don't want to do the real work. That's why they're all in women's studies and administration."
"And the new Harvard administration schemes all say that you don't need to know anything about anything to tell people what to do. That's why Allan Rock, a lawyer, got to be head of Health Care and botched it up royally because he didn't know anything about the industry. "
"None of them knowing anything about farming either and yet suddenly theres some ivy leaguer whose minister of agriculture. It's like the nobility in the Charge of the Light Bridgage. You bought an officer position. You didn't need to know anything about anything. We're going back to the medieval days with these Lords and Ladys in charge, the new Beugeosie. Out with the old and in with the new. Propaganda beats the guillotine anyway."
We watched an episode of NCIS eating pizza.  I like the show.  All the gender politics are played out. But the woman in charge isn't one of the new 'light lifting'  sorts.  It's all about protecting democracy and I like that.  Good scenarios.  Mix of the terror and the old cold war themes.   The female geek star is as believable as the gorgeous tall policewoman.  The guys get their hands dirty and they're believable too.
We talked about Tom Clancy and C.S. Lewis.
"It's through our Wounds we grow."
I told Tom about Azerbaijan and he told me about his dad not being able to maintain the house .  There'd been a flood and his basement had caved in. "Were it not for a miracle he'd have been taken down by the deluge that  burst through the door.  It's an assisted living place. " Tom figured he was going to like it.  I talked about Dad some too.
I told him I'd had my boat cleaned and how I felt cared for.
"Gilbert's not pleased. I'd been a human living in dog house and now he was a dog living in human house."  Amazing what having a place clean and tidy can do for one's spirit.
"A lot of friends are retiring."
"Some  dying too."
"We're that age."
"I worry some of the ideas about the world at large by old people aren't a projection of their own fears about dying."
"Like Suzuki saying we'll all going to be toast tomorrow and the projections say we're hundreds of years away from any real catastrophe now once the lies are put aside."
"Yea, but not just him.  Anyone who starts saying the worlds going to end when they're old.  I know I'm going to end but I haven't a clue about that or anything else. It's like the whole of life is about coming to terms with the mystery of birth and death."
"I think more and more that the Christian life is about preparing for death. I looked up the 4th dimension and it was a big thing in the 19th century everyone thinking that these 3 dimensions couldn't explain everything but that there was a 4th dimension that they were apart of, the sacred, God, synchronicity, something other and outside of this material world."
"I've always thought that.  I've had all these experiences and I see people loving in spite of circumstance.  I loved Victor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" after his near death experience of Auschwitz. I loved Bonhoffer too.  The Nazi's were pagans, not atheists. They killed a lot of Jews but they didn't kill anything near the numbers Stalin did as an atheist."
"They're still finding the mass graves like the one in Poland."
I missed another chance at shooting a grouse and Gilbert gave me another 'whatever' dog look. Back in the truck he sat on Tom's lap and didn't look at me.
"I think that one was a ptarmigan. They're tougher than partridge.  I think I hit it but I was too far away.I'm finding out how close I have to be, about 30 yards. With 12 gauge you can get grouse out around 50 maybe 100 yards but not with the 20 gauge.  Gilbert's not happy with me."
"The orthotics are helping my injured toe. It was crushed and I got arthritis in it.  But it's actually healing. I asked George when I finally couldn't walk for the pain.   Ttupidly I'd been doing all the wrong things and made it worse. Hows your shoulder."
"Healed right up. I think it' got better when you told me it might be a rotator cuff injury and wouldn't ever heal. "
"I find I'm not willing to hurt my body as much as I did when I'm younger. It's like the truck. I don't want to roll  or crash any more vehicles.  I 'm getting more cautious because it just costs too much to fix things and it takes that much longer for injuries to heal. "
"You know the Roschild's banked both Wellington and Napoleon but before Waterloo Napoleon's troops didn't get their pay."
"I heard Rockerfeller was involved in some dirty politics and I'd have thought he was pro american but you can never tell these days."
"We're living in nation states but the multibillionaire families could already be living on space stations and we'd never know it. Maybe Roschilds, Rockerfellers and Bill Gates and all these guys we know of are just the tip of the ice berg. They're the guys we know of but they take their orders from these guys even richer than them that have so much money they can be truly private."
"I saw that whenever they point the Hubble Space Telescope at empty space they find millions and millions more galaxies."
"Dr. Ney was telling me he figured Satan was the second law of thermodynamics and that heaven was perfect without entropy."
"I actually smell sulphur when I'm around truly evil people. I think it's a pattern recognition trigger that I've learned for recognizing the clear cut psychopaths."
I got back into the truck after missing another grouse.  Gilbert climbed into the back and went to sleep. He was being a bit dramatic.
"I told Phillip I'd concluded that women who want to marry psychiatrists are clearly the craziest whereas the poorest women would be attracted to bankers and the sickest to surgeons."
"Men are stupid. They're just interested in cleavage."
"I'd like to do a comparison study of men breast fed and those who weren't.  I truly don't know which would be more likely to fixate on breasts but it would be a great pure science study. "
Gilbert pounced on the second grouse I finally shout. He held it down with all the might of his little body,  till I came up and took it out  from under his paws. While I was wringing it's neck he was running circles looking for more in the woods.
In the morning pre dawn with our A&W breakfasts we headed out to Tullameen and took the Lawless mountain road back towards the coast. I pointed out to Tom where the highway had caved under and they'd made it a one lane.  I'd been there when there was an avalanche of rocks another time.  A lot of people live out their lives in city ghettos and may as well be like the Bubble Boys. Out in the real world it's more about surrender than control.  But you can't tell the arrogant young and beautiful about reality. Sometimes they live their fairytales right up to death and then they wake up fighting tubes in their nose and throat. I've seen the terror when they realize their whole lives were a lie and they're unprepared for mystery.
When Tom was riding too close to the outer edge out the high mountain logging road I told him I was feeling anxious.   I reminded him of the time  I'd had my truck dangling over the edge of just such a high mountain logging road, when the road caved out from under me . I 'd had to climb out the passenger door and use the winch to get the vehicle back on the road above.  It had been dangling like a teeter totter and I'd been afraid if I blew on it it would have gone down the 6 story high cliff.  I was blessed to get out alive. Driving down with two wheels on what was left of the road and two on the wall , I was worried I'd flip.  In that split second I'd gunned it over, it  was a very scary thing.  Tom kept the truck closer to the rock face after that.  He said he was trying to save the suspension by missing most of the pot holes. There was only a little road around the potholes at best.
We talked of Luke, John, old friends, theology classes we'd taken together, the new technology. He gave me the Tom Clancy Debt of Honor book to re read. It's all about Saipan.
"I know. I read it when I was there."
"It's even more important now.  Do you think Tom Clancy died of a hit put on him.
"Could be.  We still don't know who shot Kennedy. "  I said.
"I cook the grouse in butter after I've de boned it. I sometimes use curry or some lemon for spice and then I serve it on rice."
We'd only shot 2 grouse. The diesel fuel we'd used was about $150 just driving around in the back woods.  Adding the wear and tear on the truck, the missed shells, motel and A&W, we figured each grouse alone was about $200."
"The caviar in Azerbaijan is worth $400 for 100 gms.  This grouse is like caviar to me.  I think knowing all that goes into it, and the joy of watching Gilbert, makes grouse my favourite food of all time.  Better than caviar."
 "It sure is tasty."
"Good seeing you.  I probably should have been out sitting on a rock waiting for the deer or stalking about in the bushes alone but I enjoyed the conversation and driving around the backwoods in a warm truck with a gun,a dog a thermos of coffee, a friend. Well it can't be beat."
Tom wanted to wash the truck but I told him I'd done that the week before.  I was planning on going out hunting again next week so why bother.  Before going out on the highway I got the trigger locks on all the guns and emptied my pockets of ammo, putting it all in my waterproof cases. Then it was a drive down to Tom's country place before I headed back to the city with Gilbert.
I don't know what's going on in the world but it's not what it seems.  I know for sure it's not what we're being told.  The media only gives us what sells.  Jesus said the devil is a liar and a murderer.  There's a lot of that these days.
And if you want to get rid of the devil without you have to address the devil within.
I gave one grouse to Tom and took the other home with me.  I'll share mine with Gilbert.