Elk Country

Grade Level: High School
Guiding Question: What's environmental about food?

"We can't deny that suffering is part of eating, for all of us.  Even if we don't consume flesh, we can't look away from the implications our actions have in the pursuit of this death.  Vegetarians who purchase meat substitute products are simply eating a different product made by multinational corporations that also raise and kill livestock.  Even produce sold at alternative grocery stores is often picked by underpaid workers in near-slave-labor conditions.  Even a small-scale, organic, family-owned vegetable farm, using natural pest control methods kills insects and worms.  If we acknowledge we are part of the web of life, we must also acknowledge that any action we take to feed ourselves is inherently disruptive of that web.  To look away is, I think, to abdicate responsibility.  Ignoring the death of the buffalo is to ignore our own death, to forget that we are still animals, caught in the intricate web of survival, a complex dance about the quality of an animal's life, the conditions and dignity of a death."-Marissa Landrigan, "Elk Country" from Orion Magazine

Today, I asked students to come up with discussion questions, and we talked all class period about the structure and content of Landrigan's essay.  We discussed her use of research an non-linear structure and pondered the different ways food writing can be environmental.