Memoir (14) by Professor Joe Watkins, University of Arizona, USA
I was talking to a member of the Global Station Institute (GSI) about the footprints in the snow, and I was mentally transported back to 1958 when I was 7 years old. I was living in Harrah, Oklahoma, then (a town whose name was a palindrome – it spelled the same forward and backward). My brother and sister and I were living there with my stepfather and my mother. One winter we awoke to 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 centimeters) of snow. My stepfather told us rabbit hunting in the snow and helped us wrap our shoes in burlap and then pushed us out into the snow to “Get some rabbit!”
I would have been 7, my sister 8 ½, and my brother 11. We had no real idea of what we were doing. We were carrying clubs so that, once we found the rabbit, we would club it and take it back to the house
I remember that we didn’t go to school! But that day stands out in my memory not for any success (or failure) of the rabbit hunt (we didn’t get any), but because we were sent out to do something that we had no preparation to do. I remember tramping around in the snow, looking for rabbit tracks, without having any idea of what I was looking for. I remember seeing places where snow had fallen off branches or limbs, wondering if those were rabbit tracks. I guess we kids were supposed to know what rabbit tracks looked like, and what we were supposed to do when/if we came across any, but I don’t remember asking, or being shown, what it was we were looking for or what we were supposed to do.
We didn’t get any rabbits, but I can still picture where we walked, the bushes, trails, and roads we crossed, and the various fences that delimited the areas we searched. I know what rabbit tracks look like now but had no idea what we should have looked for then. None of us knew what was expected of us as “hunter-gatherers” then, and, looking back, I wonder how much I know now.
Photos by Prof. Joe Watkins