I was born on my grandparent’s trapline, which I still maintain to this day—the same one on which I am now trying to teach my grandchildren how to respect the land and the animals living on it, which so many people abuse.
I’m one of the lucky ones that still can go out where the land has not been clearcut and the streams still run clear. I can walk out on this trapline and see those animals that most of mankind have been abusing by way of clearcutting, building of increased subdivisions, allowing of open access to motorized recreational vehicles and the pollution of our air, land, rivers, lakes and oceans.
The hides and furs from this trapline kept me very warm and fed as I was growing up. We hardly ever used the hormone-injected meat that came from slaughter farms. Times have changed a lot, but when the time comes I can still live off this same land, God willing that no one comes along and thinks that the trees which protect our land and those animals will be better off somewhere in Japan or China.
There’s still a lot left of the animals we have been trapping for the past 75 or more years, which we hope to have many more of in the years to come. It’s from them that we have learned that there’s a time to trap and a time to enjoy life such as it is. I feel that, like mankind, when an animal’s time on this Earth is done they leave it like we do, like it or not: be it by traps or other means of nature.
Edna Helm
via e-mail