Medicine Walk

Frank wakes and thinks of the contrast between the old man (Bunky) who raised him and the biological father (Eldon) who abandoned him. Frank pities Eldon living with a whore in a derelict flat in a seedy town. Bunky, in teaching Frank how to farm and hunt, “had given him the land from the time he could remember and showed him how to approach it, honour it” (27). Frank had imbibed Bunky’s “teachings and learned to listen and mimic well” (27). Eldon, on the other hand, provided Frank with occasional gifts of money that he sent to Bunky. 

When Frank was growing up, Bunky taught him how to use a rifle to hunt and about the ethics of hunting: One should aim to kill so that the animal does not suffer, and one should thank the animal for its sacrifice. Bunky is not religious, but he thinks everything in nature is holy and deserves respect: “There’s worse ways to live,” Bunky says, “than stopping to thank the mystery for the mystery” (38). As Frank gets older, he studies how to track animals, reading and interpreting the signs they leave behind.