I walked across the expanse of the Perrine bridge in Twin Falls, Idaho, with the intention of photographing the beautiful gorge and the Snake River that serenely and quietly flowed some 500 feet beneath my shoes. What I never expected to see was someone jump from the bridge. Over the course of the next day, I watched a dozen or more people make that same leap.
It’s not surprising to learn that the St. Ignatius Mission, located on Montana’s Flathead Indian Reservation, is included in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. Or unusual that the reason for its listing is the 58 stunning murals that adorn the mission’s walls and ceiling. What is uncommon, though, is Brother Joseph Carignano: the untrained amateur artist employed at the mission as a handyman and cook who painted them all in his spare time.
It is often called the “Crown of the Continent,” and for good reason too. With vaulting granite peaks soaring two miles high and ice carved valleys bejeweled by 762 lakes that sparkle like diamonds and sapphires in the mid-day sun, Glacier National Park is every bit a crown fit for a continent.
One thing I never noticed about cows is how absolutely adorable they are. And thinking that, I couldn’t help thinking about something else. About how arbitrarily we categorize things. And also about the consequences of those categorizations. Dogs are pets, for example, while cows are food.
Those differences are cultural, of course, which is just another way of saying that they’re what our parents and neighbors believed. And they believed what they did for no other reason than their parents and neighbors before them believed those same things. If we had been born in India, where cows are often revered, we’d see things entirely differently.
If that is true then it is also true that our strongly held feelings regarding meat (among other things) are really based on nothing more than random chance. There is no law of nature dictating that we react with horror at the thought of eating Fido but be completely indifferent to the sight of Bessie on our plate. It’s simply what we’re used to. A more rational approach to our foods would have us either recoiling at eating all dead animals or at none of them.
Everywhere Once 