Boots, Paws, and Hooves

I pulled my car into the turnout, put it in park, and leaped out in a rush. The sun was already sinking low and who knows how many miles I had ahead of me. Lacing up my boots tight, I tied an extra layer around my waist and set off up the hill into the Pasayten Wilderness. Despite the steepening climb, the first quarter mile or so passed easily, my mind energized by this sudden adventure that materialized not four hours earlier.

"Babe, I got a buck, a beautiful four point." I was at work in the bakery, my hands covered with flour, but that didn't stop me from digging into my apron and pulling out my phone. I was beyond overjoyed to hear from Scott who had hiked out the afternoon before to make his camp deep in the woods and begin his hunt. There was virtually no cell reception up there and an impending storm was said to roll through the valley in the next few days. I worry, it's what I do, and knowing Scott's tendencies to underestimate his appetite as soon as he had left I began imagining him huddled in the rain under a tarp somewhere with no food and a little jar set out collecting rain water, a last ditch attempt to stay alive. This scenario hardly gives him credit, but like I said, I worry.

"Come and find me after work. I'm gonna clean it out, pack up camp, and then start making my way back down the trail." "Sounds good" I reply, my heart quickening it's beat, eager to get the baking over with and meet Scott in time before it got dark. "I get off at 3. I'll drive up to you right away." Filled with new purpose, I breezed through my tasks, wanting Scott to take as few steps as possible with all of those many pounds of camping gear, flesh, and antlers.

So there I was hiking up through the Pasayten, marveling at the sharp peaks, the meandering ridgelines, the creeks snaking down through the folds of canyons and ravines in the mountains. It was a spectacular evening hike and for a time I forgot about the fading light and the oncoming cold, so enraptured was I by this wild place. I wanted to run off trail, to explore the nooks and crannies of these slopes that only it's hoofed and furred inhabitants would know. It's a blessed thing, to know the secrets of mountains. Looking down at my feet on the trail, I see the many explorers of this place that came through the past couple of days. Boot prints, heavy soles leaving deep imprints; paws, arranged neatly in a repeating pattern, left front back right, right front, back left; and hooves, the unmistakable track of deer, two symmetrical prints almost like two commas, curving in toward each other, creating quotation marks. Boots, paws, and hooves. I smile at this interplay, these creatures that use this land and must share together. 

I think about how land use has changed for me within my three short decades of life. Learning first to love nature with family by my side, a campfire and cozy tent in the woods, sausages roasting over the fire. Later in my teen years, nature being a source of spirit and inspiration, a place to get hope and learn lessons about certain inevitabilities of life. Then in college, experiencing the harsher parts of the wilderness, the cold, the wildfires, the predators, the unforgiving elements. Respect and awe was gained throughout it all and an unwavering love for all that is wild and untamed.

Now, perhaps the most difficult of all, learning to take life in order to have life. Accepting and being comfortable with the process and in doing so honoring it. Not carrying guilt about it as though it is a badge that might absolve me of any criticism or finger pointing from those who do not and could not understand. Holding my head high and saying yes, I took that animal's life and no, it was not murder, violence, or sin. It was life at it's most basic. If we cannot accept that and celebrate it, how could we truly embrace other aspects of living? I am by no means saying that that's easy to do, especially in mainstream American culture, where meat is connected least of all to a living animal. I struggle with the taking of life, it's intense, watching a beautiful wild creature die at your hand. There is a sadness there that I almost always feel and yet, also an acceptance and a joy that I am once again reclaiming my place in the nature of things and I am actively taking responsibility by being a part of the process of taking life which we are ALL inherently a part, regardless of dietary or lifestyle choices. All we have is a choice to either ignore it or to embrace it. If we choose to ignore it, it doesn't make it untrue. For the truth in life is that for things to live other things must die. Including us. For a time we are the takers. Then we become the givers. It's tragic maybe if you look at it that way. But it's also genius, and beautiful, this circle that still contains carbon from the bones of dinosaurs and water molecules they say that Caesar and the pharaohs and King Arthur once drank, that contains me and the Pasayten and a buck who lived out several years evading his predators and who will now nourish us and our dreams.

Fighting the urge to grab my head lamp, I can barely discern Scott's bent over shape on the trail not fifty feet ahead of me, resting one of his two massive packs on a large rock. Good lord, I thought, this man is half beast! I rush over, exalted to have found him to help carry his load. "Bear, look at you! You are absolutely insane!" Scott easily carried 120 pounds for five grueling uphill miles from the ravine below before he found the trail and met me. I wondered briefly whether or not other meat eaters would eat so much meat if they had to carry it ten miles out of the wilderness. In my eyes, this meat was pure gold. Scott mustered a smile, so happy was he to get some relief. "I am so glad to see you, THANK YOU for coming out here. I don't think I would have made it out the whole way tonight." "Sweetheart" I said, "This is the absolute least I could do. Plus, it's beautiful out here, can't let you have all of the fun." And it was true, how could I ask this man to feed me and bring it to my table while I just sat and watched? No way! I shouldered the pack with the quartered buck, skull dangling from the top, and started the slow and measured journey back to the car. "Scott" I joked, "If we feed this animal to any dinner guests, we should make them drop and give us twenty. No fifty. They need to earn this meal." 

I have never carried anything so heavy as that pack that night. We ran out of water halfway and the return to the car was like a welcome to heaven. We had dinner with a friend, licked our wounds with a bottle of mead, and woke up from a deep sleep the morning after. It is now the middle of winter and our freezer is stocked with ground venison. We smile to ourselves and relive that chilly October night every time we sit down to some venison tacos or maybe a rich chili heated up for lunch from the day before.