I had to shoot a sheep today and I had to get a new rifle to do it properly.

Standing at the gun counter at a Wal-Mart in Vermont Thursday, I was suddenly surrounded by half-a-dozen gun owners who went out of their way to talk to me, help me, guide me, even speak  up for me.

I don’t know where all these people came from, or why they all wanted to help me.

All I did was stand at the rifle counter and asked to see a .22.

I knew I had to shoot Izzy, our old Romney,  who was suffering terribly from Huntington’s disease.  I needed a gun that would be quick and efficient, I don’t ever want to have a wounded animal in my care suffering from gunshot wounds that weren’t fatal.

I’ve learned to use my old .22 with accuracy, but it was getting old.

People just came up to me, they smiled at me and offered to help. There was suddenly a community all around me, and they wanted to help. I have had trouble all of my life finding community, most of the time I give up on it.

One man came up to tell me the .22 rifle I wanted to buy was a good one. Another said, “oh, you want a coyote or rabid raccoon gun,” and he made a wise recommendation to me.

A woman came over and told me I didn’t need a scope, I wasn’t shooting long range. “You just won’t use it,” she said, “not on sheep or skunks.” She was right and saved me $100. I have an expensive laser scope on my gun, until she talked to me I didn’t realize I’d ever used it.

Another man appeared out of nowhere and asked me where I was from, and when I told him I was from New York State, he said it must be horrible to live in a state run by Communists.

I didn’t ask him what he meant, he seemed friendly and wanted to help.  And I welcomed the help. There are lots of choices when it comes to buying a rifle. He seemed very nice.

I’ve only bought one rifle in my life, but I use it often, mostly on rabid creatures, sometimes on deranged roosters and sometimes, and sadly, on sick lambs and sheep. Where I live, there is no 911 handy, or animal control in a big and shiny van, you have to deal with things yourself, things I never imagined dealing with for most of my life..

After a half hour of studying different .22 rifles, the salesperson asked to see a license and told me she couldn’t sell a gun to me because I lived out-of-state.

She wasn’t allowed to sell guns to people from another state, something Wal-Mart is doing in response to the shootings in their stores.

This incensed my new friends who felt my rights were being violated by clueless politicians. I said it was fine, I would surely be able to buy a rifle.

My friends commiserated and wrote down various gun stores and gun brands. Two of them gave me slips of paper with their cell phones if I needed more help.

I did my own research online and found  a funky little gun store in Vermont that sold older guns (when I called and told them I lived in New York State, they said “so what, we’ll be happy to sell you a rifle.”)

They were unbelievably friendly and patient in the store, showing me several options, including a beautiful Remington .22 that was 30 years old and had a beautiful wooden stock and was semi-automatic, important for shooting animals that might move.

This gun was perfect for me, the stock held nine rounds and my new advisers all agreed it would be perfect for shooting coyotes, rabid  raccoons and skunks and the occasional sick sheep or nasty rooster.

The men in the store told me hunting and rifle stories and showed me how to work the older bolt mechanism. They gave me safety tips and free ammunition.

I have to say they seemed to get me and what I needed, and I was very grateful for their concern and advice, both at Wal-Mart and at the vintage gun store. They were careful not to sell me anything I didn’t need or want.

They all volunteered that they didn’t own machine guns or want or need them, although some of their friends did.

I ended up getting a new .22 – my old one disintegrated – for $125 and I was surprised at how happy I was with how beautiful the gun was, and how easy and safe it would be to use.

I don’t shoot things at a long distance, for the shooting I do, I get close to the head and heart and mostly shoot from the waist at a distance of several feet. Over the past decade or so, I’ve become a good shot and learned how to kill sick animals quickly and humanely.

It’s important to me to do it right. The point is to ease suffering, not to cause it.

Maria says goodbye to the animals before I shoot, then leaves.  She doesn’t want to see it.

After it’s over, she comes right back and helps me move the body. We don’t take this work lightly, but we both have learned that this is far more humane for the animals than wrestling with strangers who stick IV’s in their legs and neck.

I had crossed some bridge Thursday I felt, I saw a bigger truth.

I was standing in the shoes of people who would have hated me online I imagine, and wanted nothing to do with me.

I liked them, and they seemed to like me. We joked and laughed with one another, even if we all understood intuitively that we were different, and had different points of view. We came from different cultures, but face-to-face, we had no difficulty talking to one another, connecting to one another, liking each other.

We are all humans, aren’t we, I said to one of the men. “For sure,” he said, shaking my hand. When I left, I shook everybody’s hand, and thanked each one of them for helping me.

I felt we had a great deal in common, and it mattered as much or more as the things we didn’t have in common.

Up here, all you have to do is look at me to know I am not from here, and that I am likely to share political views and values that are different from most people. I am a refugee everywhere I go, I truly belong nowhere.

What surprises me is not that I am different, I have always lived outside the  tent, but that I so often connect with the people around me in the country, especially when I meet them face to face and talk to them as humans, not as labels.

Community is a faith to the people here, it seems to transcend everything, especially if you’re in trouble.

Before I shot Izzy this morning, I called a neighbor and told him I needed help disposing of the body. Maria was going to Belly Dancing class in the afternoon, and in any case, I wanted to spare her dragging this sheep through the pasture and into the woods.

It’s not something I could help much with anymore, we both know that.

I shot Izzy in the morning, and we dragged her to the pasture gate and covered her with a tarp. In this cold weather, she would not deteriorate.

My neighbor Jack asked if I needed help shooting the sheep and I said no. He said no problem, he would be there at 4 p.m. At 4:10 the dogs barked and I looked out of the window and saw a big orange tractor roll into the driveway.

“You sure I don’t need to bring a rifle?” he asked, perhaps wondering if I was up to shooting my animals, I am, after all a flatlander.

It was cold and Jack had driven his tractor – there was no cabin – a couple of miles to get to the farm. We opened the gate together and he lowered his big shovel and we wrestled Izzy, a big and heavy sheep onto it.

He lifted the sheep up in the shovel, told me he would take care of the body, and motored off and down the busy road, tractor lights flashing in the cold,  Izzy’s legs sticking up in the air.

I had to smile at the sight, if this happened in most of the places I have lived in my life, everybody on the road would have called the police. they might have sent a swat team.

Like so many Americans, I have an odd relationship with guns. Like most of the people reading this, I’m horrified at the slaughter of children and other innocents by disturbed young men with easy access to murderous weapons of war.

I am frustrated and saddened by our inability as a culture to deal with it or even try to stop it. Yet talking to these people all day at Wal-Mart and the gun shops, I could see and feel that anything was possible. I know I could sit down with them over the course of a day or two and work something out.

I don’t have the answers to problems like this, but I know how ugly it gets when people give up on talking to one another.

Hating people and arguing with them is a social disease, it has never solved a problem in the history of the world, it just makes more problems and keeps us from resolving them. It leads only to bad things.

Just look at the news from Washington.

Empathy is important to me, it is the pinnacle of humanity. It requires me to stand in the shoes of others, rather than simply judge them or hate them for being different. That’s when things that are impossible become possible, just ask Gandhi or Mandela or Martin Luther King.

That was the message of my day with rifles.

Unlike many of my readers, I live in rural America, where gun ownership is sacrosanct, a much loved and essential culture that people feel passionately about, and will never give up.

In my own life, my relationship with guns has changed. I need a rifle, I wouldn’t want to live here without one. In my other life, only the bad people had guns.

In this life and this palce, all of the good people have guns.

And I felt the power of talking with them and liking them. I think some of them even liked me.

This gives me great hope about the future of our world, even in the face of so much rage and disconnection. I don’t  have to be like that.