By Jennifer Welch
I was recently visited by a dear friend – the kind of friend who swoops in with a bottle of whiskey in hand and leaves you feeling more connected with your sense of being than when he arrived. On this particular visit, he happened to be in town the night before my first-ever hunting season opened. We sat long into the night and talked about farming and hunting and various other things. I mentioned that I was a little nervous about walking into the woods and taking a life. And that is when he began to tell me about the Ainu.