I was nine when I first realized I was a writer. It happened while I was leading a research expedition through a trail that led through the bush across from my home. The trail wound its way through a forest of five or ten year-old saplings, each one perhaps thirty or forty feet tall. This land had, at one time, been cleared and ear-marked for promotion, but lacking follow through by the ides of industry, had grown over once again. Instead of another swath of new homes, and perhaps a convenience store, the land – as much as a kilometre square, in the middle of a suburb – had been reclaimed by this armada of persistent young trees.
This forest was the kingdom of young minds, a mecca of make-believe, the like of which, the mere act of entering the trail mouth was a portal to boundless worlds of youthful imagination. Adventures were mitigated only by our limited experience, owing to our short time on this earth.
Once you’d entered the trail, if you went right instead of left, and rather than favouring the path that led straight into the heart of the forest, soon you’d pass a number of somber memorials, marking countless epic battles, each memoir inspiring refuelled stories of great bravery, or inciting emotional debate over a point of chronology, or misdeed.
Eventually you’d emerge from the trail, upon a strange and alien sight – a series of buildings – each a near-exact clone of the former; great, long buildings that seemed to have no right to be there.
You’d approach this first of these, that extended broadly to the left and to the right of you, and you’d place your hands upon the worn and weathered grey wood. These were turkey barns. All six of them were filled with legion upon legion of these hapless birds of questionable temperament, all jostling and agitated in their way. The wood was warm with the life that seethed and bustled mere inches from the palms of your hands, on the other side of the wall. You’d crane your neck and look up at the wire mesh that covered glassless windows lining the entire upper length of the wall. It was at this moment that the warm air would descend upon you in an unexpected wash that assaulted your senses. The dense, warm odor of thousands of turkey, all jostling for position inside, would spill down around you.
This forest was the kingdom of young minds, a mecca of make-believe, the like of which, the mere act of entering the trail mouth was a portal to boundless worlds of youthful imagination.
– Dean Unger –
The air inside the barns was warm and alive with an au jus of sawdust and turkey excrement, seasoned with the earthy aroma of the feed that spilled from the metal feeders that ran down both sides of the barn. The feeders themselves, were perched like miniature robots, who were awkward and embarrassed to be there among the turkey; the turkey, whose eyes were permanently incredulous and whose heads bobbed ceaselessly to make sense of it all.
Despite what it was, the acrid stench was not entirely offensive, but was strangely familiar, perhaps reminiscent of something from another lifetime.
From time to time you’d arrive at the turkey barns to find them void of life, and you knew the trucks had come during the night. It was a small and efficient crew of men and women that carried their dim lanterns forth into the darkened barns to collect the birds – mostly university students, vagabonds, and local artisans. They would lunge at the birds, sweeping the dodging turkeys up by their feet and quickly stuffing them inside cramped wire-frame metal cages. These occasions, post bird-collection, would immediately be recognized as rare opportunities to push into the netherworld of foreign territory. Once inside, your first order of business would be to launch a stalwart campaign against the rows of feather and spider-web-covered light bulbs that lined the rafters. These noble veterans were considered prisoners, and dangled there, ten or twelve feet above you, pensive and sullen for all their transgressions.
Then the day came that you dared to go there alone, an intrepid and foolhardy assignment that, nevertheless, could only be left in the capable hands of a seasoned professional.
It was against all odds, you’d made it. You stood there in the middle of the empty barn that was still quiet with death and suffering, staring down at the corpse of an expired turkey – its one foot curled impossibly beneath it. This was a crippled fowl, that had survived among the younger birds, but had eventually been swarmed by its zealous compatriots, and violently pecked until it expired from grief.
And it was while you stood there in in your victorious reverie, contemplating the vicissitudes of life, that you’ discovered you were indeed a writer, though a lifetime would pass before you’d realize it.