The Last Days of Thanksgiving
By Cara Taussig

Tracy was my best friend growing up in the suburbs of Washington, DC. The only daughter of a career navy couple, she had four older brothers, was a ballerina-turned-pompom-girl, starred in a high school musical, and loved old movies and the BeeGees. We graduated high school in 1983.

Flash forward twenty years: my husband and I visit Tracy, executive director of an environmental non-profit, and her husband, an up-and-coming ecology writer, in their mountain home near Montana’s Lolo Pass. In the side yard is a coop inhabited by an enormous turkey, prophetically named “Thanksgiving.” It is late August, and Thanksgiving’s remaining days are dwindling.

Three years earlier, Tracy and I had reconnected through email, but I hadn’t seen her since high school graduation. At first sight, the most striking change in Tracy was her hair: as a teen she had always worn her tight red curls cropped close, battling humidity-induced frizz; in Montana’s drier climate, she had grown a headful of lovely copper ringlets.

As our weekend together progressed, the changes in Tracy’s outlook were even more striking to me. For one thing, last I’d heard, she had become a vegetarian. But only briefly, it turns out. To my astonishment, she now hunted for much of her meat, and had actually shot an elk and several deer the last season.

Hunting, Tracy explained, was the most ecologically benign way to be a meat-eater. After all, there were no fossil fuels used or precious western groundwater pumped to raise wild animals. Second best, she went on, was to raise the animal yourself or buy it from a local source whose methods you approved.

What she said made sense to me, and I’ve since heard internationally-acclaimed local ecology writer Bill McKibben similarly proclaim that it is good to “meet the meat you’re going to eat.” But visualizing Tracy actually killing an animal and then eating it was very disconcerting. Hunter Tracy was pretty hard for me to jibe with treehugger Tracy, let alone the girl-next-door Tracy I used to know. I thought about her brothers and her parents – did any of them embrace the same ethics about what to eat?

Actually, Tracy informed me, Thanksgiving (the turkey) was going to be the centerpiece of the extended family’s supper on Thanksgiving (the holiday). It turns out Thanksgiving, the bird, would be an ambassador of sorts. He would be dispatched, cleaned and then hand-carried in a cooler with dry-ice to the East Coast for the once-every-five-years reunion. Tracy elaborated that Thanksgiving, the bird, would live a very happy life until that fateful moment when, thwack! Lights out. I sure hoped that he would be a tasty and winning diplomat for her new food ethic . . . It’s been five years since our trip to Montana now. This summer, I read Michael Pollan’s 2006 bestseller The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, which explores what we Americans eat, where it comes from, and how it gets to our plates. Pollan’s book makes clear that, whether we are aware of it or not, how we spend our food dollars creates the future we will experience as directly, or perhaps even more directly, than the folks we elect to public office. It struck me that the conversation about what to eat, which Thanksgiving (the bird) started, is still going on in my head and my heart, five years later.

Now, this conversation about what to eat and how it impacts our planet seems to be entering our zeitgeist, the cultural mainstream. I know raw foodists (no cooked foods), vegans (nothing produced by animals, including eggs, dairy and honey), vegetarians (no meat), flexitarians (vegetarian that will on occasion eat some meat) and many variations on these dietary themes. Thinking about what we are eating, and making the connection between how we get sustenance, our health, and how we sustain the planet has become a practice of intentional living for many of our friends and neighbors.

Many people in Vermont have heard of the “localvore” movement (www.eatlocalvt.org) which focuses less on animal versus vegetable, and more on where (local) and how (grass-fed, organic or low-spray) their food is produced. Localvores eat as much locally produced food as possible to bolster the local farm and production economy, create food security and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. My friend Tracy and her husband were on the cutting edge of this thinking. Or, perhaps I should say, they revived it from their ancestors. I do believe the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving definitely featured a localvore-inspired menu.

This Thanksgiving, as we reconnect with our families, our friends, and with the turkeys, and tofurkeys, that sustain us through the event, my wish is that we all make peace with what is on our plates, and with each other. And may the spirit of Thanksgiving -- the bird -- and all the plants and animals that give their lives so we may live, live on through us in thanksgiving -- the practice of gratitude -- all year long.

Warmest Thanksgiving wishes to you all from the Charlotte Sustainable Living Network.