NEWFANE — When Deborah Lee Luskin first “heard this call” to go hunting about a decade ago, she knew she would write about the experience.
That’s how she makes sense of the world, Luskin said as she prepares to talk at upcoming events (including this weekend’s Brattleboro Literary Festival) to promote her new book, “Reviving Artemis: The Making of a Huntress,” which will be published Nov. 4 by Sibylline Press.
“I guess I’d like to set the record straight about certain things,” Luskin said in an interview. “I was told menopause was going to be awful, getting old was going to be terrible, and hunting was disgusting. In my experience, none of those things is true.”
After the death of her parents in her early 60s, it became clear to Luskin that she had less time ahead than time behind, life is a gift, and death is inevitable.
At the age of 60, Luskin writes in the new book, “I had nothing to lose; my three daughters were grown, my marriage intact, and my fertility complete. I was no longer tugged by the moon; I was now in tune with the sun. Being unmoored from the tides of fertility was profound.”
“This annual rhythm is slower than the lunar tide that once ruled me. This solar rhythm allows me a deeper experience of the seasons and a longer view, both backwards into the lived past, and forward, toward death,” she writes. “It’s from this vantage point that I see how insignificant I am within the vastness of the natural world. Or maybe I’m just willing to take risks I wouldn’t have taken before I became aware that my time’s finite: it will run out. Either way, I feel liberated in the face of death, as if this is my season of autumn foliage, ablaze and gorgeous before I return to the earth.”
Luskin, a resident and its former town moderator, usually writes novels. Her first, “Into the Wilderness,” which was published in 2010 and won the Independent Publishers Gold Medal for Regional Fiction, will be republished in 2026. She has a prequel completed and another novel in the works. She also writes essays and columns, a practice she started in a parenting column for the Reformer in the 1990s. She also reviews books.
One of her first commentaries for Vermont Public Radio was about how she wasn’t a hunter but she learned to respect those who do hunt. She said she would stay out of the woods for 16 days of rifle season not because she feared being shot “but because these people who hunt are called to hunt.”
Having lived in Vermont for 41 years, she’s met hunters.
“Vermont has a very robust hunter population,” she said. “It’s very unusual for east of the Mississippi and much higher than the national average.”
A friend had taken her out hunting earlier in her life.
“She carried a rifle, I carried a camera, and I got really cold and all I could think about was how nice it was to sit in a garden and weed tomato plants,” Luskin said.
Luskin enjoys rural life and local food. Previously, she had a fear of getting lost in the forest. When hiking the Long Trail with a friend over 25 years, she decided she needed to learn how to navigate through the trees. She said she figured out she would do that by learning how to hunt.
No longer does she get lost.
“I find my way out,” she said. “It’s very empowering.”
While firearms weren’t a part of her upbringing and she has strong feelings about gun safety, Luskin said she became “very intrigued” about them.
“I think that a lot of my friends are appalled that I own a rifle,” she said. “As many friends are in awe that I’ve gone into the woods in the dark carrying a rifle. But that was a really hard thing for me. I thought, maybe secretly hoped, I would be so bad at it that I had to give up before I had to do this.”
Luskin said she discovered she’s “a really good shot so she had to go through with it.”
About four years went into writing and editing the memoir about her experience. Luskin said she had two “phenomenal mentors,” a nearly 80-year-old Vermonter and a new Vermont hunter who used to run a school for women and people of mixed genders to learn the spiritual and ethical connection to hunting.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Luskin suddenly had plenty of time to work on writing the book. She spent about a year revising it then another finding a publisher.
Major themes of the memoir include the “environmental impact of our food and our choices for how we live,” Luskin said. Aging is another.
After writing several versions of the book, Luskin “met” Artemis, the daughter of Zeus. She’s also the goddess of the hunt, and of fertility and care for Earth.
“With her by my side,” Luskin said, “she really helped me write the book and see great connections between my becoming a huntress at 60. For a long time, I thought I was trespassing on male turf and it turns out women have been hunting at least as long as men.”
Hunting helps manage deer population and the health of forests, Luskin said. She learned a lot from foresters and going to lectures.
“For me,” Luskin said, “hunting is also a way of eating wild, local, organic meat. I didn’t even have to drive to the grocery store to get it.”
Luskin and her husband raise their own chickens and slaughter them. They also have a laying flock for eggs.
Acknowledging that she’s not a “purist,” Luskin buys chocolate, wine and coffee from outside the local area.
Her hunting adventures have resulted in her taking two deer, she said, with each involving a single bullet. She also obtained a bow license.
Last year, Luskin decided against shooting an 18-buck deer. She didn’t want to wound him, she said, as she didn’t think she could take him down with a single shot.
Her plan at the upcoming readings is to read sections of the memoir and tell different stories to keep it fresh.
From 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday, Luskin will participate in the Brattleboro Literary Festival Write Action Spotlight Reading.
From 4 to 5:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 2, Wild Book Company in Newfane will celebrate the book with a Q&A and book signing. Phoenix Books in Burlington will hold an event at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 4.
Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro will host the official launch party from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 7.
Other events include 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 13 at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, N.H.; 6 p.m. Friday, Nov. 14 at Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vt.; and 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 13 at The Norwich Bookstore in Norwich, Vt.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.reformer.com ’
