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IT ISN'T OFTEN you get to discuss Buddhism with a group of hunters.
In a cement block hunter's lodge in rural Hampshire County, West Virginia, under the watchful eyes of stuffed, antlered trophy bucks I had the chance this fall.
At the end of the first week of deer season in November, my teenage daughter and I were were invited by our neighbors to a Saturday evening at the “doe shack.” We were vastly outnumbered in gender and in culture, but they made us feel at home by sharing silly jokes and urging us to eat more baked beans and potato salad.
The club has hunted on our family’s land for years. In fact, the land belonged to their families long before our city-bred family bought it. In a real sense it is still theirs. They know every stream and have a name for every piece of topography not marked on the map. Ginny’s Hill. White Pine Hollow. Pole Bridge. Brill’s Ridge.They know where the water comes out of the ground. Each path where the deer cross. What time of day they cross.
I AM NOT A HUNTER MYSELF, but have been known to tag along with them to learn more about the woods. They may feel they have to curb some of their language when I’m around, but they’ve been great about answering my dumb questions. I may never understand what makes them get up at 4 in the morning and tramp or sit through wind and snow to get a glimpse of a deer they may never even shoot at. But they value the woods and that makes me happy.
About a dozenyears ago, some Buddhist monks moved into our end of the county. Led by a short, radiant monk from Sri Lanka, they set up a long lodge on Back Creek Road. It was built on piers with lightweight wood. It was nice and cool there in the summer, and nice and cold in the winter. Soon the monks added a wood stove and insulation. They learned the hard way how to live in the West Virginia woods.
Some of the neighbors lent them tools and advice. Others were afraid of these foreign men in orange robes, fired guns into the air, refused to speak to them. But the monks worked hard. They built a garden and, with the help of carpenters and excavators, set up a beautiful meditation hall with a solar greenhouse and sophisticated wood furnace. They showed up at community meetings to discuss fire and rescue operations.
 “I SAW ONE OF THOSE BUDDHISTS in the orange robes today,” one of the hunters remarked, as my daughter and I sat that day in the doe shack. “It was the little older guy. He threw his hand up and waved. He always waves.”
“He always walks to the post office with the dog. I bet that dog has 100,000 miles on him,” said another hunter.
“Some people think they are strange, but they are nice people,” stated the hunter, who is president of the fire department and knows everyone’s business.
“I heard they don’t wear anything under those robes. Is that true?” one of the men queried with a grin. The conversation had been getting too boring. I assured him that I did not know. I didn’t want to go near to that one. But the hunters persisted.
“WHY DON'T YOU KNOW? I heard you go over there and meditate with those monks.” I admitted that I did, but that I had failed to ask about the details of monk underclothing.
“What is it like to meditate?” someone asked.
I thought for a minute and remembered one day when I sat on a rock with a hunter, motionless for over an hour, being told not to spook the game. How crisp the air smelled. How loud the crows called. How cold and hard the rock felt.
“It’s like sitting in the woods waiting for a deer,” I said.
“And you just sit there? Nobody says anything?”
“Nobody says anything. In fact you aren’t supposed to move.”
“Even if you have to go to the bathroom?” said the fire company president.
“You are supposed to do that ahead of time,” I explained. “But you can get up and go if you have to, and try not to disturb the other people.”
“What do those Buddhists believe, anyway?”
BEING JUST AN occasional monastery visitor, just as I am an occasional hunting follower, I had to meditate for a minute on that one. I don’t know all the details of the Eightfold Path and Four Noble Truths. I couldn’t think of one of them. I was really on the spot.
“It’s complicated, but I think it comes down to this.They believe that you spend time meditating, it gets you in the habit of thinking before you say something or do something. Then you are more likely to do the right thing, and it makes you a better person.”
There was silence.
“They are nice people. They don’t cause any trouble,” somebody said.
“Have some more to eat,” the hunters invited, before they moved on to their next hunting story.
Bonni McKeown lives in Hampshire County, West Virginia. The monastery is the Bhavana Society near High, View, W.Va.
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