We Were Never Meant to Be Spectators

It was 5:30, and I was standing barefoot in the middle of the kitchen trying to figure out what to whip up for dinner. I had a karate class to teach at 7:00 and a stomach that was quickly moving from hungry to hangry.

I’d already pulled a package of ground venison from the freezer on the back porch. The label read “Alice 7-pointer 11/25.”

But putting together a meal that was quick, easy, and actually tasted good felt like something outside my skillset. The empty stomach was not helping my creativity.

I stood there with the pantry doors wide open, staring at the shelves. Ball jars of bone broth, fig jam, and bread-and-butter pickles lined up beside a bag of jasmine rice, a can of Rotel, and a jar of Duke’s mayo.

I was waiting for inspiration to hit.

I was surrounded by food I had hunted, grown, cooked, and preserved, but in that moment I was just a hungry person staring into a pantry hoping dinner would reveal itself to me.

I reached for a jar of pickles, thinking maybe smash burgers sizzled up on cast iron. Topped with some Dukes and some pickles. It could work.

When I twisted the lid on that Ball jar, the pop sent me back in time.

I am poking seeds into peat pots in March, when the mornings are still frosty. Then I’m gently moving the seedlings to the raised beds and praying they can handle the stress. It’s a week later, and I’m wrapping them in grocery bags because the forecast calls for freezing overnight temps.

And then it’s a May full of trying to save them from squash bugs, pulling the copper colored eggs off with packing tape, careful not to crumple the leaves.

By June, I’ve kept the bugs at bay, but am battling a drought. I stand in the yard at sunset with the garden hose, soaking the plants while I swat blood-drunk mosquitoes from my bare legs.

And then there’s the thrill of snapping the first bulging cukes from the vines and the afternoon spent washing, slicing, packing into jars, pouring hot brine and sealing them to eat on a day when summer is a memory.

And the label on that package of burger isn’t inventory. It’s memory.

I’m huddled in morning light, shivering, my hands stuffed in the pockets of my camo jacket, trying to keep them warm. My breath puffs in silvery clouds that frame my face when he steps out of the brush. My heart races at the sight of those antlers in that golden hour light. I steady my breathing, knowing I owe the animal a steady hand before I squeeze the trigger.

Don’t get me wrong. My pantry isn’t a museum of self-sufficiency. There’s a can of Rotel sitting right beside the homemade pickles for chrissakes. I like it that way.

But it struck me that the only things in my pantry capable of transporting me somewhere else were the things I’d had a hand in. The Rotel didn’t remind me of anything. It didn’t take me back to the aisle in Food Lion with its fluorescent lighting and piped-in 80s music. Neither did the Duke’s or the jasmine rice.

Not because my pickles are better, or healthier (although they might be), or more virtuous. My preserves and venison burger weren’t valuable because I had put them in jars or wrapped them in freezer paper. They were valuable because I had been there from the beginning. Because I had participated in their story.

We buy bread we’ve never baked, vegetables we’ve never grown, meat we’ve never seen outside a plastic tray. We replace things instead of repairing them. We can spend hours watching someone build a cabin or forge a knife without ever making anything ourselves.

We can buy almost anything without seeing where it began. That is an incredible privilege. But it’s also a subtle loss.

Convenience isn’t the enemy, but it does have a cost that doesn’t show up on the store receipt. We’ve gotten so good at outsourcing the work that we’ve almost forgotten how much the work gives us back.

And it slowly convinces us that participation is optional.

Maybe that’s why twisting off that pickle jar and reading the label on that package of venison felt less like making dinner and more like opening a photo album.

Because the things we participate in become part of us in ways the things we simply buy never do.

I eventually made the burger, topped it with Duke’s and the pickles, and scarfed it down before heading out the door to teach karate. It was satisfying in a way a lot of meals just aren’t. Not because it was the best burger I’d ever eaten, but because it held a little bit of November frost, golden-hour light, June heat, and mosquito bites.