A Life in Four Movements (Excerpt from Kalien Chapter)

Gina loves animals with the kind of fierce devotion that makes her assume the best about every creature she encounters, which is both her greatest gift and, as we were about to learn, occasionally a tactical disadvantage when dealing with the realities of wilderness life.

It seemed like such a reasonable idea: purchase a chicken coop, fence in an area with chicken wire, and enjoy the pastoral pleasure of collecting fresh eggs while feeling smugly self-sufficient about our homesteading prowess. We bought four chickens from Ricky Woodard, one of the contractor brothers who had built the bones of our main home, and who assured us that chicken farming was “easier than falling off a log”—which, given my construction track record, should have been my first warning.

At first, the chickens were delightful. They would come running to us with that distinctive jerky, hitched gait that makes all chickens look like they’re perpetually late for an important appointment. We grew attached to them in the way that people do when they anthropomorphize creatures that are probably not capable of returning the affection but are excellent at performing gratitude when food is involved. The eggs were wonderful—bright orange yolks that made store-bought eggs look anemic by comparison.

But many mornings we would wake up knowing that someone had to make the trek down the ridge to the chicken coop for the daily egg collection, and each of us would look at the other with the kind of hopeful expression that wives and husbands use when trying to avoid unpleasant chores. It wasn’t that the walk was difficult, exactly. It’s that chicken coops, no matter how well-maintained, have a particular aroma that serves as a daily reminder that pastoral romanticism and actual farming are two very different enterprises.

After a few weeks of this morning standoff routine, Gina began expressing guilt about keeping the chickens fenced in. “Look at all this beautiful grass,” she would say, gesturing toward our acres of meadow. “They should be able to free-range like chickens are supposed to do.”

This argument had the ring of moral righteousness that makes it difficult to oppose without sounding like a heartless chicken oppressor. She painted a picture of liberated poultry roaming freely across our property, living their best chicken lives while still providing us with eggs and the satisfaction of being enlightened poultry guardians.

Against my better judgment—and what I now recognize as intuitive understanding of predator-prey relationships developed during my mountain childhood—I agreed to let them roam free.

For a few days, it worked beautifully. The chickens explored the property with what appeared to be genuine joy, pecking at insects and living the free-range dream that Gina had envisioned. They seemed to understand the general vicinity of home and would return to the coop area in the evenings, and I began to think that perhaps I had been overly cautious about the dangers lurking in our Appalachian paradise.

The morning of their demise, we were up the mountain working on a hiking trail far above the coop and barn area, engaged in the kind of physical labor that makes you feel virtuous and connected to the land while simultaneously questioning your life choices. That’s when we heard it: an unbelievable combination of squawking and screaming that sounded like a poultry apocalypse echoing across the valley.

We rushed back down the mountain with the kind of urgency that comes from recognizing disaster in progress, but alas, we were too late. The only remains of our chicken empire were feathers everywhere—not just scattered feathers, but what appeared to be the aftermath of a pillow fight organized by psychopaths.

We tracked the feathers and various other chicken parts down to one of our wet-weather creeks, following a trail of evidence that told the story of what had clearly been a very efficient and thorough massacre. Eventually, we found a den in the side of the creek bed that we learned was a fox den, though calling it a “den” makes it sound cozy rather than what it actually was: the headquarters of a cold-blooded chicken serial killer.

The irony wasn’t lost on us. We had only seen the “cute” little red fox a couple of times, and he had seemed so harmless, so picturesque against the mountain landscape. We had even pointed him out to each other with the kind of delight that city folks feel when they spot wildlife, as if his presence confirmed that we were living in harmony with nature.

What we had failed to understand was that he had been conducting surveillance on our chicken operation, probably watching our daily egg-collection routine and noting our gradual relaxation of security protocols. The moment we gave those chickens their freedom, he had implemented what was undoubtedly a carefully planned military operation that would have impressed Pentagon strategists.

Our days as part-time chicken farmers had come to an abrupt and educational end. We learned that wilderness living requires a different understanding of animal behavior than what you develop watching nature documentaries from your suburban couch. Cute and deadly are not mutually exclusive categories, and free-range chickens are called “free-range” because they’re free to become range food for every predator in the area.

Gina was devastated, not just by the loss of the chickens but by the realization that her compassionate decision to liberate them had essentially delivered them directly to their doom. I was philosophical about it, having learned that every aspect of Kalien life came with expensive lessons attached. The chickens had lived freely for their final days, which was more than most chickens can say, and the fox had fed his family, which was the natural order asserting itself despite our suburban sensibilities.

We never replaced the chickens. The coop stood empty for the remainder of our time at Kalien, serving as a memorial to the brief period when we thought we could outsmart millions of years of evolutionary predator-prey relationships through good intentions and chicken wire.

The fox, meanwhile, probably told stories for years about the day the humans delivered a four-course meal directly to his territory and then had the audacity to act surprised about the outcome. It was, from his perspective, probably the most successful hunting expedition in fox history.

ºººº

This story perfectly captures the ongoing education that Kalien provided—not just in construction and wilderness survival, but in the reality that good intentions and suburban sensibilities don’t always translate well to mountain life, where nature operates by older, more immediate rules than human compassion.

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Protected: Chapter 2 “The Educated Body”  (Password: LIFE) (All Caps)

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Protected: A Life in Four Movements (An Unfinished Symphony) (Password: LIFE) (All Caps)