A Carnivore's Inquiry

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I am standing at the side of the highway, which is a good place because it is nowhere. The snow is crusted on the ground and more is falling. I drove out of the United States last night; I also drove out of spring and back into winter, which makes me feel as if I am driving into the past, although it’s much cleaner than the one I left behind. Canada is a country of lumberjacks and wolves, hospitable, cold, and foreign.

Beginning is always hard, especially when one’s story is not yet over. I am an only child. From my mother I inherited my dark eyes and my darker sense of humor, from my father an ability to bring things to a significant conclusion and the black Lexus S.U.V. It’s a gorgeous car with a fantastic stereo, but it makes me feel as if I’m in a fast-moving coffin. I can move at ninety miles an hour without realizing it, which is why I pulled over on the side of the road. We are all hurtling into the future like so many unwilling comets. Sometimes I feel the need to stop, to look back before moving on. The snow is hissing in the wind and almost seems to be whispering my name—Katherine, Katherine—as if there is something great in store for me, but down the highway I see nothing but a nation plunged in darkness. As I look back to the United States I see the same thing. And why not? Our nations’ histories are raveled together, all of this great American continent conquered by trappers popping their bullets into beavers and Spaniards unsheathing their swords. Our civilization is the heart that was pulled still beating out of the heaving bosom of the New World. Am I just a product, as my mother always suggested, of this violent, bloody past?

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