Later that same evening, hiking back to our vehicle, the clouds cleared and the moon broke through the trees to reveal us walking through large fields of waist-high grass covered with flowers. It was so beautiful, the surrealness of it all, how easy it would have been to forget the living hell we had just seen not more than a few hundred yards away. What saddened me the most was that none of those mink would ever know the beauty that existed just outside their cage.

Spring ended, then summer, and all year long I visited fur farm after fur farm, each time watching mink, fox, bobcats, lynx and chinchillas pacing their cages, bouncing off their wire walls and generally just displaying the type of behavior anyone would who is forced to live in cramped conditions their entire lives. I'm a warrior, and unaccustomed to witnessing such cruelty without doing something about it, but Friends of Animals who had hired us for this undercover investigation had convinced me that more could be accomplished by documenting what I saw than taking any other kind of action. Still, it broke my heart, because I knew these animals knew who I was, and that is their human brother who had never turned a blind eye to their suffering and always taken whatever action was necessary to stop it. But as their wild eyes revealed what my true spirit was, their hearts must have been confused as to why I did not set them free, and why I would only point my mechanical eyes at them, taking something else and leaving them to die.

Then the killing season began. By this time I had befriended many fur farmers and one I was particularly close to welcomed me on his small farm as he began to slaughter his mink. While my friend videotaped, I carried a 5-gallon bucket which was quickly filling with the dead bodies of mink that had had their necks broken. One by one the fur farmer would pull a screaming mink from its cage and wrestle with it until he held its body in one hand and its head in the other. Then he would bend the animal's head back grotesquely until the sound of vertebrae popping ended the mink's cries. Other mink could plainly see what fate lay before them and would begin to scream and emit their musk as they attempted in vain to escape from their death. This lasted all morning and many times I hid my face from the pleading eyes of the mink awaiting death who knew who I was and awakened to the betrayal that yet again their human brothers had forsaken them. Sure, we as humans with our "higher" intelligence can rationalize the benefits of obtaining this kind of photographic evidence which today has been viewed by literally millions of potentially fur-buying consumers - but what is the cost to our spirit when we compromise our compassionate hearts to our rational minds?

I made a promise that day. I made a promise that I tried to telepathically send to those mink before they died, and that promise was that I would do whatever was necessary to destroy the industry which had created their death. I vowed to attack the mink farm industry with regard only to the sanctity of life, and at the expense of the instruments and machines used to wage war on the Mink Nation. As a warrior, I knew the promise I made could lead only to two places: either prison or death. Before this war without quarter could begin, friends and I had promised to attend to a few living survivors.

We raised $9,000 and bought out the remaining 60 mink, 2 bobcats and 2 lynx from the fur farm we had witnessed the neckbreaking on with the guarantee that this fur farm would never operate again. We moved the animals, their cages and feed to a friend's land in Washington state where for the next 5 months we begged, borrowed and stole to rehabilitate these few survivors. One by one we began to take these animals, who had slowly ceased their neurotic behavior and began to display the behavior of truly wild animals, from our sanctuary to their new homes in the Pacific Northwest wilderness. First the lynx were carried 15 miles into the heart of a roadless area and released. Then it was the bobcats, followed by the mink. The mink were very rewarding to watch being released. For the first time, the mink would exercise their inherent ability to swim effortlessly and acrobatically explore the streambeds with their paws. When the last animal was released, I stood overlooking the now empty cages on the sanctuary. I cried for the first time now that there was nothing I could do to protect these animals we had nursed back to the wild. True animal liberation had been achieved and tomorrow the mink might get eaten by a coyote or great-horned own, but at least they were free, in a world without cages.

Now it was time to fulfill my promise. The next night found me gazing across at the U.S. mink farm industry's largest research and development experimental fur farm on the Oregon State University's campus in Corvallis. This laboratory, which housed 1,000 mink, was funded by mink farmers hoping cheaper and more efficient ways could be developed to raise mink for their fur. Laying alone out there that night, I knew what I was planning to do would most certainly mean serious prison time. I had become increasingly vocal in my opposition to the fur farm industry, and fur farmers' knowledge of my undercover investigation would lead me to be a major suspect in any crimes against them. But my promise kept me from stopping now just to save my own ass. I remembered those minks' eyes whose life I had watched fade out of the, with their last gaze focused on me. I remembered the screams, the smells and the sight of thousands of mink bodies stripped of their fur and dumped like so many victims of Nazi concentration camps. And I remembered the mink I had witnessed go free, beginning their lives as they were meant to be. This was one of those moments in my life when I knew what I must do in this physical realm of man's anti-nature laws would change the fate of my life. It was time to abandon my concern for laws that I could never understand or abide by. My spirit told me that I must make my stand in this dark day for the animal people and prove myself either an ally of theirs or a complacent co-conspirator in their death by doing nothing.

That was the last summer the OSU experimental fur farm was in operation. In June of 1991 a fire had destroyed the experimental feed building and decades of research records stolen or destroyed in the main laboratory. Five days later a $800,000 fire ripped through the mink farm feed distributor which supplied OSU and dozens of other northwest fur farms. In August, the mink farm industry's primary fur farm disease researcher was struck at his Washington State University experimental mink farm where six mink were rescued from experiments and years of research destroyed. Back in Oregon a mink farm's pelt processing building was destroyed by fire, and finally in February 1992 the last major recipient of Mink Farmer Research Foundation funding awoke to find 32 years of his mink farm research and development work in ashes after a blaze destroyed his offices on the Michigan State University campus. his experimental fur farm was also struck with research equipment destroyed and 2 mink used in experiments rescued.

Almost 3 years later I was chained and dragged in front of a federal judge after the U.S. Cavalry had captured me hiding out on an indian reservation. I was charged with the above crimes in a five-count indictment which was later increased to a seven-count indictment, the charges of conspiracy and interstate racketeering added. At my arraignment the judge read each count, listing the years I faced in prison if found guilty, the final count being 70 years. "Do you understand the seriousness of these crimes?" he said, "Yeah, I understand..." I ended up plea-bargaining down to a 3-4 year sentence, refusing a one-year sentence if I would reveal the identities of other members of the Animal Liberation Front as we called ourselves. Less than a year later I walked down from the sacred mountain, Mt. Graham, and surrendered at federal prison and began my 57-month sentence. The judge having given me the maximum sentence allowable by law plus 6-months having failed to believe I was remorseful for my actions despite statements I made in court to that effect. A series of media interviews I had done prior to my sentencing were held up as evidence of this which ended with a quote I made, "I am proud of my service to the Animal Liberation Front and the Mink Nation..."

That was 16 months ago, and though I sit here in prison writing this, I am a man at peace with himself. I'll be here for another 2 1/2 years, but with me I have my memories which can never be taken away. Memories of freedom, of mink swimming in cool forest streams and their torture chambers, going up in flames. Memories of animals destined for death to provide rich capitalists with a status symbol, who found freedom at the hands of humans desperate to prove that some five-fingered people have not forgotten their brotherhood with all life. I know who my family is and I know who is trying to kill them. I will never succumb to the values of the Invader who has darkened our mother earth with the blood of my people and the Animal Nations. If sacrifice is necessary to protect what is left, and to reclaim what was lost, then each one of us must ask ourselves what it means to be an Earth First!er, an Animal Liberationist, or a Indigenous Warrior. I know who our enemies are, and I always keep my promises.