Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult

It's easy to mistake chaos for liveness.

Grandma told me, that when men hear predictions they get afraid. But women get busy

She tells us to watch for rattlesnakes and that when we encounter an animal that can hurt us, our options are: fight, flight, or freeze. Apex predators are omnivores and have lots of options. If they surmise you’ll put up a fight, they’ll likely opt for smaller prey. But if you encounter a black bear, don’t look it in the eye. Just back away slowly. If you encounter a brown bear, roll up in a ball. Either way, don’t be afraid, our mother says. Be competent. I think of the way Mother freezes around Dad, acting confident and unaffected when his anger flares. When the predator is significantly bigger than we are, we know not to fight or run. This will reduce the severity of injury. What she teaches her daughters is different from what boys are taught at the Field, so we’re not allowed to talk about what we know.

Our mother lets us wander anywhere we want on the Mountain, and has since the moment we got here. She doesn’t restrict where we go, nor ask us what time we will return, but she does tell us what to do if we run into trouble. Never put your hands or feet anywhere you can’t see. If you need to step over a log, step up on it, look, then step down.

For 99.9 percent of the time since our species came to be, we were hunters and foragers . . . We were bounded only by the Earth and the ocean and the sky. —Carl Sagan

Author’s Note This is a work of memory, but I have done my best to tell a truthful story. I met with all my siblings, several of my cousins, my parents, two of my aunts, dozens of former members of the Field, and several current ones (including the current director) to render as accurately as possible what the Field was like from 1976 to 1986 in the context of collective memory. While the Field, begun by my grandfather in 1931, still exists, it has been renamed and I’ve been told it is a radically different organization from the one I grew up in.

chiasmus if it helps. Just make sure the story