David Adams Richards says some of life’s greatest lessons can be found in the woods. Richards is an author, screenwriter, poet and St. Thomas University’s artist in residence. The Newcastle native spoke with STU’s third year radio class last week about his newest book Facing the Hunter: Reflections on a Misunderstood Way of Life, which comes out this week. In it, he tells the stories of rural Canada’s disappearing hunting traditions.
Why did you write a book about hunting?
One of the things I wanted to explain to myself was why I hunted when I did. And why I was so enthusiastic about it at one time. And why I’m not so much anymore. I’ve changed my perspective. I don’t condemn it, but then I don’t glorify it either.
It’s about what I’ve seen in the woods that is admirable, what I’ve seen that is heroic and what I’ve seen in the woods that is, at times, disgraceful. I come to no absolute conclusions about it, but I do come to some conclusions about the men who participate. You can’t leave your integrity at the door when you go into the woods. The woods will tell you who you are.
Can you explain what you mean by integrity in the woods?
Sure, there’s a great scene about my friend Wayne Curtis. He came home from the factories of Ontario where he was looked upon as a third-class citizen as were most Maritimers in the 50s and 60s. He decided to go hunting and he tracked a deer all day and he finally tracked the deer almost to the ground…And he put his rifle up and said, “No, that’s not the one.” And he went home and never shot a deer again. But he did prove to himself who he was.
And I also write about the guy who shot two bull moose in a day and left them to rot in a field, just to do it.
Not all hunters are good, not all hunters are noble, not all hunters are kind, but some are. And I would trust my life with them. One of the people I know, who I’ve hung around with all my life. He’s got a Grade 8 education. He’s never read a book except for mine and he can’t figure out why I would write such nonsense. He’s probably right. I would trust my life with him over any other writer I’ve ever met.
Was it a difficult book to write?
I’ve been thinking about writing this for some time as a companion to the fishing book – Lines on the Water. This is a more serious examination about the idea of killing things. And so it took me a long time to decide whether I wanted to write it or not. It’s like the book I wrote on religion. There’s certain things that can cause you a lot of trouble in your life. Writing about religion is one of them; writing about hunting is one of them.
On the one side you’re a novelist and on the other you’re a hunter. Is there any overlap between the two?
You must have determination and resolve to hunt; you must have determination and resolve to write. So that’s how they overlap. But you know, Hemingway had a great line, about kneeling at his mother’s death bed and saying to himself, “My God, this will make a great short story.” Now everyone’s going to say that’s a horrible way for Hemingway to think, but I don’t think there’s a writer in the world who would not understand what he said.
Do you need to live in New Brunswick, grow up here, to understand your work?
If people needed to spend time here in order to understand the work I did, then I wouldn’t bother to write. There would be no point. Yes, it’s important that I understand New Brunswick, just as it’s important for Dostoevsky to understand St. Petersburg. But it’s not important for me to understand St. Petersburg in order to read Crime and Punishment.
In an essay on hunting you recently published in the Globe and Mail, you address ideas about the need to be uncomfortable when you hunt as well as the spirituality of being in nature. Can you elaborate?
The idea came to me when I was flying to Windsor, Ont. I know there are a lot of fine American hunters, but these guys on the plane were just gloating about the deer they got and they were on a big deer hunt. They were hunting for deers with big racks and that’s fine. But the idea is to be comfortable all the time; you might as well be on a spa…And I told them, he wasn’t hunting for a trophy buck, he was hunting for food. To make fun of people like that shows the absolute insult to what they were actually doing. I thought these guys have never been uncomfortable in their lives. So I make that point in the hunting book. I thought maybe when you go out to hunt you should realize something about the elements you’re in. And maybe when you understand more about the elements you’re in, it becomes more spiritual.
Are we losing that? Are we losing something of what it means to be human?
I’m not sure. I don’t come to any conclusions about that. But there’s a part of the book where I do say that my people – whoever they are, where ever they are from – are disappearing. It’s no longer the way it was and maybe we’ll all lose something from that.
This interview took place in a journalism classroom. Some questions were edited for clarity, some answers for brevity.
