I don't not need a gun, but I don't really need a gun

on individualism and only prepping if you feel like it

have u ever seen a chihuahua with frost eyelashes

First, two things!

-I’ve opened applications for my summer 2025 Alaska Brooks Range trips! These are different from my 2024 trips in that

(a) The first session is open to everyone, including cis men (the second session is still just for women, trans and non-binary people)

(b) I’ll have permits for two other areas in Alaska, so if the forecast before the trip for where we’re headed is seven days of hypothermia rain we can drive to a different mountain range with a different weather system, and hike an awesome and just as spectacular route in (hopefully) better weather there.

Deets and the application are here!

-Second thing- there are a few spots left in my February Arizona trips and I’m putting them on super sale, $500 off! I’d like to fill these trips while also acknowledging that signing up this late gives you less time to prepare. Deets and the link to register are here!

Loafus Borealis (the northern loaf wolf) on another cabin trip

I don’t not need a gun, but I don’t really need a gun: on individualism and only prepping if you feel like it

I can drive myself crazy trying to predict the future. I stay up late at night, reading and scrolling. Things right now are similar to this other period in history- what happened then? How did it go? Maybe if I can learn everything about that time it will help me now, will help all of us. No, no, that won’t do- things are different now than they were then. This is a unique time in human history. It won’t be the same. But then, that other time was unique too. No way they could’ve known how things would go. Maybe every time is different than all the others? Dammit!

Maybe it’s best to not try and know what the future holds. Preferable, even. You’re just one person. You can only do one person’s worth of work, hold one person’s worth of anxiety and fear. Feeling tired and stressed? Ignore the news. Take your dogs on a walk. Knit a sweater. Plan next year’s garden. Prioritize your sleep so you can keep showing up in your life, putting food on the table, tending to your relationships, taking care of your health.

There’s no need to go looking for trouble. Trouble comes for us and when it does we’ll need to be calm, healthy and grounded. This hard game called “life” will last for the rest of our lives. Letting yourself get so stressed that you fall apart doesn’t help anyone- it actually makes things worse.

rest is important

That being said, be a prepper if you want, if it brings you comfort. But not in all the ways. Individuality is a myth- we didn’t get this far by surviving on our own. Our strength has always been in our ability to work together. Be good at chickens, or good at guns, or good at making electricity, or emergency medicine, or ham radio. Have a large library of print media. Or don’t be a prepper at all. We can’t prepare for what we don’t know. When you finally do know, you’ll know. You know?

If you only do one thing, get to know your real physical neighbors. But if that feels too difficult right now, if there’s too much of a divide, it’s ok to wait. Connecting with our neighbors will feel easier as things get harder. This will be one of the best things to come from all of this- connecting, the thing we’ve been so desperately wanting for years, will get easier. Eventually it will happen effortlessly, and we’ll have trouble remembering why it ever felt so hard.

It’s already happening. The right is developing class consciousness, and that’s eroding the divide between left and right. This is the ruling class’s greatest fear. Conservatives have been propagandized to blame all their problems on a mysterious “other”- immigrants, women, people on the left. This illusion of division in the US is manufactured, and the people in power do a lot of work to maintain it. The illusion is fragile though. All it took was one very regular 26 year-old dude with a mixed bag of political influences, a fondness for The Lorax and a bad experience with the healthcare system to shoot one CEO with a 3D-printed gun and boom, the first giant crack appeared. I don’t know if this bipartisan class-consciousness will continue to spread, wherein we stop fighting each other and turn, en masse, on the billionaires, just us and, you know, our 400 million civilian-owned firearms (which does not, I’m assuming, include the 3D printed ones?) or if said billionaires will offer some placating gesture and we’ll accept it, lowering the temp back down to a simmer until things get worse and another crack appears-

But I’m trying to guess the future again. Laying awake at night thinking should I buy a gun? I’ve always had an aesthetic aversion to guns, even though I want to get better at them so that I can take on more responsibilities on moose hunts. What if Trump makes it illegal for women to own guns? I should probably get one now?

Individuality won’t help us survive- we win by working together. Like all Americans, I know many people who have between one and a lot of guns. I don’t need to have my own, necessarily. I’m sure I could borrow one if it came down to that.

I’m not trying to alarm anyone. I’m not trying to alarm myself.

Here’s what I’m trying to manifest:

You decide to go to your neighbor’s house. They’ve got a big property so you have to walk up a long driveway and you can hear a dog barking, and that makes you nervous. There’s a little snow on the ground- the only snow that’s fallen this year, and by tomorrow it’ll all be melted away. You heard that a decade ago there’d be a foot on the ground by Christmas, and that it would stick around until spring. As you near your neighbor’s house you see a yellow flag hanging limply from the porch- don’t tread on me. It’s dirty and the ragged edges flutter in the breeze. The blinds are down on the porch windows, and the slats of the blinds are broken. You knock lightly on the door, and the barking increases in volume. There’s no other response, so you knock harder. At last the door opens on a chain, and an old man peers out. Yellow light spills from the crack.

“Shush!” he says, and the barking stops.

“Hey,” you say, and you introduce yourself. “I live next door. Our water’s not working, and I heard you had a well?”

The kitchen table is stacked with old newspapers and the man, who walks with a cane, clears a spot so you can sit.

“You want some coffee?” he asks, as he lifts the pot from the coffeemaker with a shaking hand.

“Sure,” you say. It’s warm in here, almost uncomfortably so- a woodstove glows orange in the corner- and the air stinks of cigarettes. Somewhere a radio is playing. The man sets a mug in front of you. The mug has Garfield on it.

“I brought you this,” you say, suddenly remembering, and you pull an apple pie in an aluminum pie pan from a canvas tote. “The apples are from our orchard.”

“I remember the family that planted that orchard,” says the man, looking at the pie. “That was a long time ago.” The dog, a plump heeler with focused blue eyes, is also looking at the pie. “Siddown,” says the man, waving his hand in the air, and the dog exits the kitchen and settles on the couch, keeping his eyes fixed on the pie.

“Do you live here alone?” You ask, looking at the kitchen with its wood-paneled walls and worn linoleum, the living room with its sunken couch and dark, shaggy carpet.

“I do,” says the man. You’re looking at his cane now, and his eyes follow yours. “I’m a vet,” he says, waggling it in the air. “Is why I use this. Had disability until they took that away.”

“They took your disability away?” You ask, stunned. “How are you surviving now?”

“How are any of us surviving?”

You think about the garden, your goats, your partner’s part-time job, her boss who’s been coming to work drunk saying “I don’t know how much longer we can stay open, I don’t know.”

“I repair farm equipment,” says the man. “I’m not as capable as I once was, the pain can get pretty bad some days. But I do enough to get by.”

“Farm equipment?”

“Yeah. This property used to be a farm. You didn’t know?” He’s smiling as he sips his coffee and you can see his teeth are yellow, he’s missing some. “I farmed less and less acreage over the years, and now it’s just the equipment. Good skill to have.”

“The people who owned our property before us farmed a bit too,” you say.

“They did,” says the man. “You guys don’t though.”

“We have a garden,” I say. “I wouldn’t know how to do anything larger. And anyway, now that we’re having trouble with our water the garden’s in jeopardy too.”

The man makes a dismissive motion with his hand.

“You can use the water from my well. And I tell you what. You’re young. I need some help with the repairs. Other equipment but my own equipment too. If you can get it working you can use some of it. On your land and my land both. What do you think about that?”

That evening you get home late and your partner is awake, worried, laying on the couch, a single candle keeping the dark at bay.

“Where have you been?” she says. “I tried to call.”

“Service is down again,” you say. “We should really look into getting a landline. Or do you think there’s one in the house somewhere? In the attic with all the other junk? If we plugged it into the wall would it still work?” You sit down on the couch, lean your body against hers. “I want to tell you,” you say, clasping her hand with excitement, “about all the farming equipment our neighbor has…”

—

That’s all for now,

Carrot