I don’t often see badgers, but when I do I pay attention. They live underground, but hunt aboveground. I think of my grandmother, now an ancestor, who often quoted Hermes Trismegistus:
As above, so below; as within, so without; as the universe, so the soul.
The mantra of “as above, so below” reappears in the lifeway of badgers.
My brother Hank is visiting us for a long weekend. We walk out the door to the wash, which is cut deeper every year by flash floods that have become more and more frequent in Castle Valley. This year, we walk farther upstream and cross over the ravine at a lower spot until we find the easiest deer trail to follow toward the La Sal Mountains.
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Along the way, we find ourselves back in the sandy wash with walls well over our heads. Hank stops and points to the badger tracks in front of ours. He then looks up at the red dirt walls where dozens of badger handprints are pressed in the sand, revealing their long, downcurved claws. We note the large dens recently dug in the sides of the wash. We wonder if they are inside.
The last time I had seen a badger was with Brooke, when we made a day trip into the Book Cliffs, wild country north of us on the other side of the Colorado River and east of the Green River. We wanted to visit the site of the 1,120 oil and gas leases we had purchased from the Bureau of Land Management for $1.50 an acre in 2016, declaring, “We will not develop our leases until science can show us that oil and gas is worth more aboveground than below given the cost to climate.” We were a long way from nowhere.
We parked the car where the dirt road ended and walked for a good while until we saw something move — gray, black and white, low to the ground — a badger.
We stopped.
The badger stared at us with its broad-jawed face flush to the mound it was lying on. We tried not to blink, and when we did, the badger disappeared underground. It never came up.
Badgers are not to be provoked, but respected. Old-timers call them “Little Bears.” A coyote or wolf can try to grab a badger, but the badger can shape-shift, moving to the other side of their skin. If predators persist, they can turn in a flash and lunge in an unexpected attack with their long, sharp canines glistening and black lips pulled back in a threatening pose, not so unlike their relatives, the wolverines.
We returned with badger in our minds.
A few weeks later, in a macabre moment during the height of the pandemic, we decide we should pick out two burial plots in our small cemetery, two roads down from where we live. The cemetery is filling up.
“How will we know which gravesite should be ours?” Brooke asks.
“We’ll know,” I say. “There will be a sign.”
We walk to the Castle Valley graveyard, which is marked by a barbed wire fence. There are maybe 50 gravestones in place, very creative in both the language used and the artistry expressed. For example, a well-loved boatman chose to engrave PUT IN and TAKE OUT on his headstone in lieu of BORN and DIED.
We discussed, prior to our burial search, that Brooke wants to have his ashes scattered in his favorite canyon. I just want to be wrapped in a Pendleton blanket and placed in the red soil, letting my body return to the desert, devoured by insects and animals. The ravens could have my eyes.
“The ravens could have my eyes.”
Brooke knows I like being on the edge of things. I know Brooke loves to be in the center of any party. Both of us appreciate a good view. As we walk to the northeast corner, our burial site was obvious — two holes have already been dug by a family of badgers. According to our map, they are plots 3 and 4.
I bend down and sift through the backfill that had been dug by badgers.
“It’s good to know where we will be when we’re dead,” I say to Brooke.
“Not sure it will matter,” he says, “but the view is great while we’re alive.”
Of course, we don’t know who will be laid down first or when or how. And after seeing this site, Brooke ponders burial over burning. But what we do know is that the red sandy soil is soft and already inhabited. When Death comes, we know our place and who our caretakers will be — not in the afterlife, but the underground.
We leave the badger haunt, mindful they are solitary creatures. A graveyard rarely visited with disturbed soil would suit them fine with a wealth of food sources available to them: insects, mice, rabbits and lizards; hibernating snakes and a couple of bodies. More than enough to raise one’s kin, if not the Dead.
In our county, you can be buried clean without having to be embalmed with chemicals pumped into your body. I like knowing that just as we were consumed in life by the intensity of our relations, we will naturally be consumed in death.
Reciprocity is ensured.
