wyoming

We Never Feast Alone

October 25, 2014 by The Noisy Plume

We camped within a quarter mile of where Robert shot and field dressed his antelope while we were in Wyoming the other week. In our tent at night, after we had crawled into our sleeping bags, after our friends had done likewise, after the fire had grown cold, after the moon rose, I could feel them coming (a buzzing intuition in my bones), I knew they were following the scent of blood on the wind, noses pointing true with their bushy tails streaming behind them like wild arrows; the coyotes. Nothing goes to waste in nature and what pieces we left behind of our antelope — the yawning curve of rib cages, sinuous neck attached to tidy head, the knobbed line of spine pressed into dirt, tufted hide — all of those remainders serve a purpose.

I lay there in the night, bundled in goose down beside my husband, and listened to a festival of coyotes under ancient starlight. While I listened, I pondered the rites and rituals that hold hands with the act of hunting for food. I thought about my five unsuccessful stalks that day. I recalled my frustration after hard work led to failure. I remembered the successful stalk I had in the evening, every painstaking moment of it. I thought about how cleanly the bullet I shot from my rifle had pierced two lungs and how I had watched, through a scope, as the dust rose up from the sage, displaced into the wind by the impact of an animal that had died a good and instant death. I thought about the warm light from a sinking sun on her magnificent face as I sat in the dirt beside her and held her head in my hands. I thought about the coarse depth and scent of her fur, the softness of her white cheek.

I lay there in moon glow, listened to the chorus of feasting coyotes, and I thought about how wolves hunt. I thought about how wild things tear each other limb from limb while hearts are still beating in broad chests, I thought about the ferocity of fangs and claws, the images I have seen of bison with torn hamstrings sinking down into crimson snow. I pondered how elegant and kind a bullet can be.

I remembered my patient wait for a doe in profile. I recalled why I never want my food to taste like fear. I promised myself, in the dark of the night, under the sigh of wind on a nylon tent fly that I would always do my best to hunt in a way I can be proud of, and not in a prideful way, but in a manner that is free of regret and shame. I want to move through nature like I belong in the forests and on the high plains (because I do belong in those spaces), pursue my prey with boldness, confidence and patience. I want to work my prey like I watch Farley work a bird in the field, tirelessly, intuitively, gracefully, surely and instinctively. I don’t want my animals to know I am coming. I want them to fall without realizing they are falling. I don’t want it to be easy, I want it to be a challenge I take up with an earnest tenacity and full heart. This is the way I always want to hunt.

I lay there in our tent, with my shoulder pressed against Rob’s shoulder, I listened to him breathe, I was aware of our aliveness. I lay there in the night beneath the moon and I listened to the coyotes feeding on the tailings of the hunt. I heard the coyotes yip between bites of rib and hock and I could see the cycle of life fling itself out before me like a beam of light into a night sky.

Once the coyotes have bitten bones in two and licked free the last of the marrow cream, there will be a remainder, the spoils of another meal. Once the foxes, mice and wind have done their nibbling, too, there will be a remainder, once more.

The slow reduction of energy is stunning. The interdependence of the feast is sublime. The body of an antelope is a sacrifice. My family and I feed. What we leave behind is fodder for the masses until the antelope is reduced to particles and molecules that build the sagebrush and wildflowers; the cycle is sustained.

We whittle meat from the bones of the animals we take, but it is always on the edge of my mind that what is left behind continues to be utilized to the fullest degree by an entire ecosystem. This is what I mean by caretake and cull; there is a divinely intended responsibility that comes with taking a wild life for the sake of the living. Here, we feast, but we never feast alone.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: feed the soul, hunting, wyoming

Wyo :: Notes From The Road

July 29, 2014 by The Noisy Plume

For I have seen the wild horse and now belong to a higher cult of mortality.

The potato is to Idaho as the wind is to Wyoming.

Actually, that’s not true. The Idaho potato is the way we Idahoans trick people into thinking there’s nothing to this state except miles and miles of potato crops, stretching forth to the horizon and beyond when in fact, this is one of the wildest, most mountainous states in the Union (seriously, we lay claim to the largest, roadless wilderness area in the lower 48 states) . The potato farming misconception helps us keep the population down in our state which makes for uncrowed wild spaces which is what most Idahoans truly live for. Tricked you, didn’t we! You can think about our secret wild spaces while you nibble on your Five Guys french frys this week. Spud-aluia! But I digress.

It is windy in Wyoming. Wyoming is made infamous by a gnarly breeze.

It is windy in Idaho, too, but over on the high plains and high desert flats of Wyoming where there are no mountain breaks to bust up gale force winds; the air gathers strength and it simply blows, unceasingly.

Take a deep breath right now, hold it in for a moment, now blow it out steadily with as much pressure as you can muster. How long does your exhalation last? Five seconds? Seven seconds if you have exceptional lung capacity? Imagine if you could sustain a strong exhalation for an extended period of time, say a week or a month. Now imagine you are the size of God, exhaling your wild breath across an entire state, scrubbing the sagebrush, scouring the high prairie, tearing lonesome trees up by their roots.

That is the Wyoming wind. God is bent over the state blowing His eternal exhalation across the land there; it tears at the white tufted flanks of the pronghorn as they stand with their backs to it, spooks the wild horses, causes ranch wives to curse the fact that their hair always looks scruffy and unshackled. No hairspray on earth can hold up to that kind of wind unless it is made of concrete and even then, it is slowly worn away.

Wyoming is the kind of place I love: unshackled, open, geographically diverse, spacious, wild, dry, breezy, rumpled, high, empty. It scowls with storms in the winter months, bakes like a convection oven in the summer months. It creeps with pronghorn, elk, bighorns, mule deer and of course, the courageous and tenacious mustang. I have seen moose in Wyoming and not while in the Teton area, I mean over in Wyoming. I looked out the windows as I drove across the high prairie where the ground was rolling green and wavering in the gale, I checked the altitude on my GPS system and it read 7204ft! Incredible!

Wyoming is divine.

Fact: I have never traveled to Wyoming and not seen wild horses. I am not sure if this is normal, if I simply have an eye for wildlife or if I am mustang charmed. I hope I am mustang charmed.

On this trip, between Rawlins and Laramie, while the sun was falling down into night, I parked the truck out on a lonely stretch of two track, in a tawny segment of BLM land where I had spied a mustang band and pronghorn herd from the highway. I crept about in the sage, sat down, and did my watching, felt the red of the sun on my face, stretched my legs and back. The way wild things are seems so normal to me. As I sat watching, the wind blew my hair in my eyes. I shook my mane. I felt the dust begin to cling to my skin and the perfume stink of sage stained my jeans and hands. I ceased to be the girl sitting and watching the wild ones and grew into something else. It was a small tragedy to hop in my truck and head down the highway again. I took with me the memories of a lone mustang eating the Wyoming sun and two curious antelope colts, all legs and wind and white rump.

I stopped to fill the truck with diesel at a huge truck stop somewhere out in the middle of the darkness around 11PM. I managed to lock my keys in my truck and had to ask a long armed cowboy to reach in through a partially open window to pop the lock for me. He did.

“Gee, hun. Glad to help.“

Then, I was recognized and spent a good 45 minutes chatting and sharing with a sweet couple living out of a refurbished Winnebago (hi guys!). Being recognized as The Noisy Plume in random places is always kind of hilarious and strange. For me, I’m meeting strangers. For the strangers, they’re meeting someone they kind of know. It takes a little grace to strip the situation of awkwardness and right the scales so the knowingness is balanced. I tend to ask a lot of questions of anyone I meet, which is a good social habit to have in any situation, but especially good when you get to meet strangers who already know parts of you.

Delightful.

I watered Tater. Had a snack. Watered myself. Drove on. Fell into that night time driving rhythm that requires glasses, music with a good beat and avoidance of swerving semi-trailers. I pulled into Laramie, hugged and kissed my sister hello, hugged my friends, washed my face and settled into bed.

Let me tell you about Cheyenne. It’s my kind of little interior West city. Charming. The old town area is laid with red brick and stone, studded with old hotels, coffee shops, Western stores and a beautiful train station. There is also the Capital building which is tall and golden domed in the heart of downtown — shining white like a beacon of political hope and surrounded by gardens, lush parks, gracious elms leaning in the sun the way gracious elms tend to. It’s beautiful! It’s a beautiful old town. We watched the Frontier Days Parade and it was nothing short of spectacular. I love an American parade, it’s a glorious thing. This one had no less than three incredible marching bands, two marching fife bands, a fiddling band (pulled by horse and wagon — and sounding superb), mounted police, a heavenly host of antique and vintage wagons, carts, buggies, coaches and so on and so forth pulled by magnificent horse, draft horse and mule teams and all the humans situated inside were in period costume. IT WAS FANTASTIC!!! I clapped and cheered for every person and horse that went by, avidly pointed out my favorites, and generally got carried away. In return, many of those parade people shouted out comments about Tater Tot who was magnificent that day and calmly laying in the shade beside me on the sidewalk curb. The only moment he got rowdy is when someone shot off a canon a few times and he started bounding around looking for something to retrieve with his ears perked up and that crazy bird dog hunting look in his eyes. Poor thing.

I had to tell him “No bird.”

And he was heartbroken.

The parade, oh Cheyenne, well done. Well done. My sister and I raved about it for days.

Then there were four girls in a big truck headed for a rodeo which is kind of a special thing, you know? We were in dresses and boots and cute looking all around. There was a Pow Wow, a little fair grounds shopping, the weird carnival night life that surrounds the rides, Lady Antebellum in the stadium, a massage chair that I did not want to get out of, a host of incredibly talented cowboys and cowgirls competing on horseback. Boy did we cheer. It was great.

My sister and I left Cheyenne and went teardropping across Wyoming beginning with scrambling and camping at Vedauwoo which is comparable to Idaho’s City of Rocks — an area rising up in wonderful heaps of granitic rubble against a wide skys. We went to the tops of things, watched the setting sun, laughed a lot, sipped gin and tonics, declined marijuana from a traveling band of hairy bongo drummers, exclaimed at the magnificence of the stars, talked about men, laughed a lot and then fell asleep and did it all again the next day.

[Sisters, exactly as we are: she is the calm in the eye of the storm I create everywhere I go.]

Wyoming unfolded before us in its full and glorious dimension beneath a hot summer sun and the mad raking of the wind. We drove into space, we camped beneath cliffs, we washed our hair in waterfalls, we took a safari through a cemetery to scope out some pretty bucks and spotted fawns, ate Thai food, swerved around highway deer, set up camp again, slurped soup, marveled at the world around us, loved the rain and cherished our sisterhood.

It was the Tetons that eventually split us in two, the Tetons do that, you know; cut things into halves, divide the low from the high — the heavens from the earth, shred storm systems into quintuplet anvil clouds, slice ropes, dice swaths of land into twin states.

At the Tetons, I headed South to Jackson and Toby wound herself North to Yellowstone, Bozeman and eventually home to Saskatoon. I already miss her, sisters make the world go round and create a sort of home for one another. Seeing my sisters is like coming to roost in the nest of their hearts. Who knows me better than my sisters — my inherent faults, the way I have changed over the years, the way adulthood has carved away at me and built me up, my unspoken griefs, my celebrated life victories. There’s a language between sisters, that cannot be defined by the world, a private and untranslatable connection, a thing that taps deeper than the cottonwood root, something ageless and everlasting. I’m always so glad that I’ve got mine and that they’ve got me.Wyoming, I already miss you. You carefully own a part of me, be well until next time.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: sisters, travel, wyoming

Jottings From The River

May 18, 2014 by The Noisy Plume

We are sleeping in a canyon in Wyoming tonight after driving truck and raft up a rugged two track. The walls that surround us are constructed of red rubble, bone and tooth, juniper and sage.

Immediately, upon our arrival, I pointed at the top of the canyon and said “Let’s walk up there!” So we did. About one hundred meters from the truck, while scrambling up a boulder, I placed my hand directly beside a huge impression in damp, crimson dirt. I knew just what it was, an enormous paw print from a big old tom. I called Robbie over and pointed at it. His response was, “That is a very big lion and a fresh print too. There’s been rain or snow here in the past 12 hours.” Then, we walked on. He and I are good at seeing things. Tracking things. Noticing tufts of hair, half prints of hooves or paws in dirt and dust, bald patches of earth beneath brush where upland game has been digging and bathing. We see it all and make note of it. It is good for the soul to see deeply.

We walked and walked, watched for elk sheds, pointed out antelope and mule deer in the distance, called out different animal signs to each other when we were separated by cliffs and clumps of juniper, followed a band of mustangs for a bit, scrambled, explored little caves, sat in nooks, watched the night rise up in the East and the last of the sun blaze the stone beneath our feet to dusty blood. The whole time we walked, I was aware of that big, male mountain lion out there, aware of the fact that he was probably watching us from his perch, from his lair, from the dusky den he calls his own — from his throne. He is king of that canyon; when I first laid eyes on his paw print, my hackles rose up and my heart told me so. So I walked those ridge lines with Robert and a dog, I walked confidently but respectfully, impossibly aware.

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In the morning, the drive out was a mucky affair across red dirt roads turned to slippery stew by late spring snowstorms. Our heavy Dodge with a trailer in tow was squirrely in the thick, soupy slick of it so we drove slow and I didn’t mind. The antelope were dotting the hillsides, curious, fleet, and too numerous to count which was encouraging for us as we put in for two antelope tags in this area come fall. We pray to be drawn, not only to hunt so that we might eat, but because we want to hike the hills and ridge lines here, enjoy the canyons, climb up and down the steep arroyos, and simply explore the space we are passing through. This is God’s country; our very notion of heaven on earth; we want to be tied to the earth here by blood, bone and sinew.

Near the highway, oh joy! I spotted my first badger, which comes as a shock as I have lived the majority of my life (at this point) on the great northern plains of Canada. While I have seen a handful of wolverine in my life, never has a badger come my way. We pulled off so we could watch him, first through binoculars, then we hiked out to his dirt mound and watched closer as he curiously poked his head out of his hole to survey our presence. What a critter. What luck!

We have launched the raft and the river is as beautiful as ever. The canyon positively churning with perhaps the most holy bird chorus I have ever heard; diverse and musical as only the song of the wild can be. Oh! The descending scale of the canyon wren song!

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Whenever I am on the water, I wonder how I ever managed to make myself leave in the first place. I was raised in boats, crisscrossing the rivers and chain lakes of Manitoba and Saskatchewan by canoe. The slap of water on the freeboard of a boat suits me. The effortless work of a waterway, the buoyancy of our raft upon the curious composition of water as it courses through a stone channel, ever flowing towards lower ground makes such great sense to my bones, to my soul. I must have watery marrow.

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My first fish comes in at 15 inches; a long, slim rainbow, a classic catch for the Green River. What a beauty. Three more after that at 14 and 15 inches respectively, then I take the oars and let Robert do some casting. It’s such a beautiful afternoon.

The morning is bright, the birds began before sunrise. I woke up to them, listened for a while and then drifted back to sleep. Robert rose early to fish the eddy in front of our campsite. I can hear the channel narrowing to a textbook set of rapids just down from camp. The water flows smoothly into an elongated, elegant V, white water riffling around the edges and then rising into beautiful, rolling haystacks. I’d love to live on a river sometime and constantly hear the water in summer, steady music in the evenings to accompany the hum of night bugs. Then also, the sound of the ice in winter, popping and cracking, splitting and fusing, shuffling and fussing along the shoreline. Yes. I’d like to live on a river sometime, here in the interior West.

Beavers are good swimmers. I mean, they are sleek as they paddle which is always surprising to me since they look rather like ambulatory anthills while on land. We had a nice time watching two beavers for hours this morning since we are in no hurry to get on the water. It was especially nice to watch those funny animals since the clarity of the water here allows us to watch them swim under the surface should we stand at a good vantage point on the bank, or the cliffs above the water. Tater was overjoyed to swim out to them, play a sort of game of tag (which he invariably looses as he has not yet mastered the submersion technique swimming sometimes requires). It is fun to watch him paddle though, his movement is swift and smooth, even against the current, he looks as good as the animals he is chasing out there which is no doubt why we have always referred to him as “The Little Beaver” whenever he spends hours in a lake or river paddling about like a little fool.

I washed my hair and face with a bit of lavender soap this morning. I laid down across a rock on the flat of my stomach and dipped the river onto my hair with a titanium cook cup. I found myself immediately transported to my youth and all the times I chose to wash my hair in freezing cold rivers and lakes — cold enough to give what we used to term “brain freezes”. How many times have I washed my hair in frigid waters while out canoeing or rafting?

The result is always the same after a shampoo in a wild river or lake; a sudden and vigorous freshness presses its way into and through you. A wash in a lake, a cold lake or river, on a hot morning under vermillion cliffs — now that may be the only thing to challenge a stout cup of coffee. Robert tells me the water is about 44F. Nippy, indeed.

Rainbow trout for dinner with a bit of coconut oil, fresh lemon slices and garlic — asparagus and roasted potatoes to accompany — all cooked over an open fire and delicious down to the last crumb. Tater was given the fins, tail and skin as a treat and spent a good five minutes whining for more afterwards. Fresh, wild caught fish is something I would eat every single day if I had the opportunity.

We have dropped anchor on a sandbar, one of the few on this section of the river. Robert is fishing the pool on the backside of the eddy where the river seems to push all of the delicious little surface bugs and nymphs into a deep emerald pocket. We can see the fish lipping and slurping bugs off the river top. Their fins weaving the surface into smears of minute, contradictory rings of disturbed water. These fish are thriving. It’s like an all you can eat buffet here. Tater Tot is perched like a gentleman on the edge of the boat, awaiting my command to head for shore — thrilled into yips of excitement each time Robert sets a hook and brings a fish to hand. I am splayed like a lizard in the sun while I jot thoughts into my notebook.

The wind has come up this morning making casting a challenge at times. It changes direction periodically and is inconsistent, sometimes blowing softly, other times passing over us in strong gales. Each time it ceases all together we hear ourselves sigh aloud. It’s a relief.

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I got out of the boat for a while to do some land lubbing and walked up to the top of an arid ridge line. It is hot out today, especially in clumps of juniper where the wind is stopped by a wall of conifer. It is hot enough that snakes should be active. I thought about this and stopped walking up the ridge for a moment. I thought about rattlesnakes, one of the only things I am truly afraid of in this world after nearly four years of trauma in the low desert of Arizona. When I realized I had stopped walking and it was because of fear, I slapped the palms of my hands down on my thighs, as if to punish my legs for their stillness, and said, “Jillian, damn the fear.” And I kept walking. I’m glad I did. There are oceans of cacti gardens on the slopes of those ridges and all are blooming or on the brink of blooming and it is a beautiful sight, indeed.

An osprey, one of two we have been watching for a few miles, is flying up river toward where we are parked. It moves on slow wing beats, stopping to hover from time to time as it tracks fish. It suddenly, though expectedly, plunged into the river, fully submerged for a moment while grasping onto a trout with its talons. We estimate the fish was at least seventeen inches long. We watched the bird grapple with its load, beat its wings mightily and then finally heave itself out of the water only to drop the fish after a few wing beats. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak! The fish was too big for the bird to manage. I can see the osprey now flying slowly alongside pine studded red cliffs and can only imagine it must be attempting to dry off in the rising hot air that comes off the face of the stone here.

The river becomes a consistent part of daily life. We ride the water, it holds our gear aloft, we catch our dinner from its quiet pools, we wash our hands in it, we boil pots of it for our meals, fill our drinking containers with it once it is purified. First thing in the morning, we heat it and brew our tea with it. The water is everything.

When I hear the river drip off the blades of our oars and then return, with precision and joy, to the greater thing it came from, I hear home.

I caught a pair of brown trout for dinner tonight, both about 13 inches in length — real nice fish elsewhere but small, skinny things for the Green River. The flesh of the brown trout cooks up in a peachy orange hue, similar to salmon. Dinner was fantastic. I fed one of the fish to Tater Tot, deboned, with his regular ration of kibble. In our estimation, he is running and swimming between fifteen and twenty miles a day and though he is thin and tired, he does not quit moving, ever, until we all go to bed. There are ducks to chase, the sound of rising fish on the river to swim towards, and now sagebrush covered hills to inspect for quail. He is a busy dog, ever driven by his desire to hunt and explore.

We seem to have a rhythm now. Rob rises earlier than I and gets water going for breakfast while I tend to dinner in the evenings. I like it, both the pattern of our river days and cooking dinner over our fires.

There seems to be at least four great blue herons on each bend of the river here. Last night, right before we reached a place to camp, we saw a pair awkwardly building a nest high up in a scraggly old dead ponderosa pine on the riverbank. What I assume was the female bird, was carefully and delicately weaving a nest of brittle river driftwood together — a stick as long as her legs and forked at the tip would not weave like she wanted it too. She was so specific in the engineering of her cradle while her husband stood behind her, lanky and blue in the dusk of evening. It was a beautiful sight and we craned our necks long after passing it to continue watching the homemaking efforts of those beautiful birds.

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This morning, a pair of bald eagles on a nesting platform. Between the adults we could see three chicks, past the fuzzy chicklet phase of life, covered in black grey teenaged feathers with great curving beaks on the tips of their sooty faces. We took turns with the binoculars as we floated past their sky high castle. It was one of the best views I have ever had of bald eagle chicks. They were dreadfully awkward looking little beauties. We talked of them long after we passed them, so much we cherished the sighting.

Glory be! I saw two Western tanagers today! They appeared on different sections of the river but the plumage was unmistakable — bombastic tangerine heads fading into canary yellow bodies with dark wings. Exquisite and exotic creatures. I feel lucky. Also, one little mad hatter goldfinch in the willows by the tent. A chipper little thing. I read somewhere that this river hosts a hummingbird migration at some point in the springtime. I would love to experience it.

Fishing is like any sort of gambling; one truly believes that the next cast will bring the glorious jackpot of a wild fish to hand. We cast over and over again and when we do bring a fish to hand we say, “I knew it. I knew that cast was the one. I could feel it in my bones.” Robert and I are addicted.

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We are sharing Swallow Canyon with a huge batch of pelicans. Robert rows us closer and closer to them. We know at some point they will rise up in a flurry of wings, raising their awkwardly proportioned bodies into thin air, folding their necks into a position required by flight. How is it that something so silly looking can be so graceful in the sky? I cannot wait for the moment when they lift off the water as one and soar past us in a storm of white against red canyon walls. We are nearly at our takeout point now and I don’t want this trip to be over, this week to be over, the spring to be over. There’s too much living and sharing to be done.

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A missed opportunity (A.K.A. A Photograph of the Heart): On the drive home, while crossing the southwest corner of Wyoming, headed straight into a black spring squall with a strong headwind beating on the hood of the truck and a dash of hail, to boot — we looked to our left to see a herd of at least fifty mustangs in every color imaginable grazing on a side slope on the edge of a deep canyon, backlit by a stormy sky, manes and tails whipped by the storm. I will never forget that view and shall be haunted for my entire life by the missed opportunity to photograph it, but am secretly happy the view was ours alone. We’ll remember it as long as we live.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: adventure, birds, explore, nature, rafting, travel, utah, wyoming

To Jackson And Back Again

November 3, 2013 by The Noisy Plume

[please click on this image to see it larger so you can fully gaze upon the texture of snowflakes falling on horses…beautiful]

Oh man.

The world is such a beautiful place. The people I love are extraordinary, in every way. The animals I keep are true lovebugs. The mountains I know, the plains I adore, are pure, wild, ancient gifts from the Father Of Lights.

I am home from Jackson. Rob is home from elk hunting. We are cooking pizza and then we are going to lay on the couch together in the crackling warmth of candlelight, snuggle and tell each other the stories from the past few days of our lives that we spent apart.

I have a broad heart that reaches high and deep, eyes full of snowflakes, and arms that were made for hugging.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: idaho, travel, wyoming

Hunting Antelope

October 2, 2012 by The Noisy Plume

:::EDIT:::

After receiving fifteen comments on this blog post I chose to close the comment section as a few of the comments made me feel tremendously defensive about my current chosen lifestyle — an omnivore who hunts for her own food. I did not want my responses to those comments to come across as mean-spirited or nasty in any way so I simply deleted them and then I closed the comment section as a way to moderate myself, more than anything. My reasons for hunting are intelligent, logical, spiritual, and personal. I don’t want to use those reasons as weapons against a readership I cherish. I don’t want to turn those reasons into ugly things. I think it’s important to discuss how this post made you feel about the way you eat, the way you hunt your food (whether it is at the grocery store or out in the wilds), and your reasons for being vegetarian or omnivore, if you happen to have any. I hoped this discussion could take place without people feeling the need to shame each other or condemn another way of life — I think a respectful dialogue is possible, but it requires courtesy, open mindedness and self-control. I value your opinions and invite you to email me if you’d like to respectfully discuss your opinions with me. Thanks for being here.

I shot and killed a big, beautiful, wild animal. It seems an ugly thing to say. But it’s the truth. The fact is, the act of killing it wasn’t ugly at all and the experience of taking a life, the way I did, was actually rich with meaning for me. There is a way to be part of nature, that involves death, that isn’t without honor, beauty and respect. There is a way.

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I am seated in the Adirondack chairs Robert built from scratch out of scrap 2×4 wood, at the smokejumper base garden where the tomato plants are erupting, crimson and plump. Behind me is a fragrant jungle of lemon basil. Across the base from where I sit, my laundry is whirling about in a washing machine and dryer. There’s all this down time between laundry loads and I’m writing about everything around me instead of what I want to write about because the words aren’t coming to me as easily as I thought they would. All day long I have been thinking about how to tell the story of my antelope hunt in Wyoming, what to say about the experience. I shared some of the details with a friend this morning, she also hunts, and something she said really stood out. She told me, “Not many women do what you do. Not many women live like you do.” It’s true. Very few people, let alone women, go out into the wilderness with weapons and harvest wild animals for food. That realization made me feel strong of mind and body (which is not to say that women who do not do these things are weak in any way). I felt some sort of freshly realized sense of self-worth spring up in me, rooted in the truth of the fact that I know how and am able to get food from the wilds, which is an activity that takes physical and mental strength, self-control and confidence — all things I’m not sure I realized I had, deep within me, until this very day.

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Nobody ever taught me how to hunt. Robert didn’t teach me how to hunt. Robert showed me how to use a high-powered rifle and told me where to aim on the body of a wild animal for a clean, kill shot that will end a life as humanely and quickly as possible. The rest was up to me. The intuitive knowledge of how to stalk and kill a large animal is some sort of secret knowledge woven into my DNA that welled up in me, primal and savage, natural and calm, calculated and logical, stealthy and sure. The knowledge of how to be that way, how to be a hunter, was there to begin with, like it is, I believe, in everyone. Life wasn’t always as it is now. By that I mean we, as individuals, didn’t always outsource our basic needs the way we do now. We hauled our own water. We picked plants, berries, mushrooms for our stone tables in our homey caves. We killed birds, deer, elk, snakes, lizards for dinner. We turned the remains of the animals we ate into blankets, clothing, tents, shoes, fishing hooks, tools, art. There was a complete circle that we lived within, every day, that mostly met our needs, and if it failed to, repeatedly, we eventually died. Simply put. There must be some memory of the past whittled into our bones while we are growing in the womb, like notches on a spear shaft. There must be. How else could I know what I know and how else could I have done what I did? When it was all said and done, the boys exhausted themselves telling me I am a natural stalker. In point of fact, they have named me Master Stalker and I have heard them comb over the details of my hunt and my stalks, multiple times now, and it still feels funny to hear how they describe my movement through the sagebrush, the belly crawling, the way I used the tiny rises in topography around me to conceal my movements.

No. Not me! I moved like that?

Like a she-wolf.

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I went antelope hunting with three boys. Three men. Smokejumpers, all. I loved being with them. We drove together across the states of Washington, Montana, Idaho and drifted up onto the high plains of Wyoming, beneath the majestic Wind River range. The land there is spacious and unconquered — the very definition of wilderness. The human population is a minority and more specifically, is in decline. Wyoming is one of the few states that is decreasing in human population, here in the USA. I like to think the land is taking the space back, cutting everything free from barbed wire and fence posts, a mile at a time. Churning up the wheat fields with hooves, claws and dust devils. You can feel it as you drive through ghost towns, grey and dreary. Eighteen year olds catch a ride on the tumble weed express, roll right out of there after high school, and settle in Missoula, Salt Lake City, Boise. So many have left or are leaving which simply makes more space for the antelope and the antelope herds are vast.

It’s khaki and pale green as far as the eye can see, a scathingly drab, blinding landscape when the sun is high in a cloudless sky. Being there makes my eyes tired. There’s no shelter from anything. Everything eats sage or eats something that eats sage, because that’s all there is for miles. Low, scrubby sagebrush, gnarly and rooted in a powder-fine, loamy soil that cannot resist rising up when the wind gusts. Everything that lives on the Wyoming sage flats is fleet, far seeing, nimble or phantom in nature. The space is filled with ghosts. The whispers of tribes resound, the glimmering plunk of chert, uncut, littering the ground. The prairie dogs have left, their tunnels are crumbling. The earth is littered with bones. It’s desolate. It’s void. According to my personal definition of the word, it is wild.

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From the truck, as we drove a knobby dirt road through miles of sagebrush, we saw a small herd of lopers, white specks on a beige horizon, sentry bucks standing on the fringes of a harem, the does peacefully grazing, relaxed with their heads down low. South of the herd was a small blip of topography. It would have been wrong to call it a hill. The boys were calling it a knob of land. I termed it a pimple, just a tiny rise of dirt that offered a shallow view over the next twenty miles of plains. We parked the truck, hopped out, took up our guns and binoculars and belly crawled to the top of that topographic feature to scope out an approach and make a plan. Antelope are incredible animals. They are capable of running at 55mph speeds over extended distances. Their eyesight is impeccable, it’s as though they have binoculars for eyes and can see perfectly more than a mile away. They have no natural predators, besides humans. They can see coyotes, wolves, bears and mountain lions coming from miles away and they can outrun anything that chases them.

When hunting antelope, it’s nearly impossible to stay hidden on the sage flats which is why some herds cannot be hunted. If there is no rise in ground to tuck your body behind, there is no way to stay hidden, if you can’t hide yourself away, you cannot stalk these animals. There aren’t any trees for miles, on the sage flats, and the ground cover is no taller than 12 inches in most areas. The land is relatively flat in all directions with occasional, shallow ridges rising up, coulees, arroyos and strange, seasonally boggy areas that are rutted and pitted. Herds of antelope are everywhere on the sage flats, but when you choose one to hunt, you have to look at the land they are on and determine if the animals are even approachable. As soon as a sentry buck sees your form crouched in the sage, he will alert his harem and suddenly, the half mile between you and your antelope turns into three miles, as those beautiful animals race away like they are made of the wind instead of flesh and bone. It’s a miracle to watch an antelope run, they move effortlessly, at warp speed, the only evidence they leave behind is a dust plume that dissolves on the breeze so quickly that you find yourself wondering if they were ever there in the first place.

So there we were, up on that little pimple of a hill, in the middle of the Wyoming sage flats, peering down at a herd of animals. Rosie looked West through his binoculars and suddenly said, “Look! An arroyo!” And suddenly I had an approach plan. The boys put me on point and we scurried down the bump of dirt and one by one, fell into the arroyo. It was a shallow sort of trench in the ground, made by spring water run off, and it twisted and turned and meandered directly to where my antelope herd was standing and slowly grazing, a half mile away. I threw my rifle strap over my shoulder, tightened it, and began to crawl, on my hands and knees, towards my antelope. The ground was parched, cracked, studded with dead and thorny plants. It was hot out. But most torturous of all was the slate shards that littered the ground. I liken the situation to crawling through broken glass. I did that for a half mile, popping up every now and again to assess my herd, which was still happily grazing and utterly unaware of my approaching presence. I moved as fast as I could. Sometimes crouching, when the sage around me was taller, and doing a sort of Ukrainian dancer crab walk through the arroyo and so it went, for what seemed like eternity. My antelope moved behind a little ridge and I stepped out of the little water eaten trench I had been navigating and belly crawled to a nice little vantage point above my herd, leaving the boys behind me.

I carefully settled myself in a clump of sage. I popped the tripod of my gun into position, dug the legs of it into the dirt with some pressure from my shoulder, straightened it so my cross-hairs in my scope were even, threw my hat on the ground beside me and peered through my scope to get a good gander at the situation on hand. My sage cover was too thick. I moved my gun. Still too thick. I moved my gun again. I looked through my scope. The sentry bucks, two of them, their heads up, pointed in my direction and looked agitated. They began walking towards their harem. I zoomed my scope. I saw one doe standing broadside, head up, looking right at me. I clicked the safety off. I slowed my breathing. I cursed the heave of my lungs. The pulse at my throat. I snugged my shoulder against the butt of my gun. I inhaled. I exhaled. I put my finger on the trigger. I guided my cross-hairs in tiny increments so they were settled in the proper spot, on the side of my doe, right above and behind where her front leg met the bulk of her body. I saw her move a front leg, as if to take a step. I breathed again. Slowly now. I thought to myself, “This is a far shot. Further than I want to take. Should I wait for a closer shot?” I hesitated for a moment. And then exhaled, centered my cross-hairs again and slowly squeezed the trigger. The rifle recoil slammed my shoulder in reverse. There was thunder in my ears, despite my ear plugs. I didn’t move from the ground and looked through my scope again. The entire herd was galloping away. Except for my doe. She didn’t go anywhere. I yelled. I don’t know what I said. But I yelled and threw a hand in the air. I don’t think it was celebratory, to yell and wave an arm. But perhaps it was. I had spent a day, this being my third big stalk on an antelope herd, the first two were unsuccessful, and I finally had success. My shoulder was aching. My arms and knees were bleeding. I was tired. Sweating. Hot. Hungry. Thirsty. And I was still laying in a pile of shale shards that felt like a bed of broken glass pressed up against my body. I wanted Robert to know what I had done. He heard me yell and ran, crouching, to my side. Again, I don’t remember what I told him, but he patted me on the back and said, over and over again, “What a stalk.” Tragically, my shot wasn’t perfect. It didn’t kill my doe outright. She had to be finished. I was very sad about that and hoped that her body had dropped into the numbing depths of shock and that she couldn’t feel. When I finally stood over her and saw what I had done, I felt these things: Sad, beautiful, brutal, thankful, wild, capable, strong, weak, alive.

Then I cried. Just a little bit. I couldn’t help it.

She was a real beauty. The color of milky earl grey tea mixed with wide vanilla stripes on her neck and face, a white rump, thick fur I could plunge my fingers into. As I touched her beautiful form, so newly dead, I thought about the last newly dead thing I had touched, I thought about Plumbelina and how soft her body had been beneath my hands and there was a sadness there and an honesty that I accessed in being so close to something beautiful and it was all deeply felt. I thought about all things lost and gained in life and death, for a moment, and felt the hurtling force of my pulse in my ears, the spin of the earth, the hands of God wrapped around my shoulders.

My doe had a small, graceful mouth. Straight white teeth. Dark pools of unseeing eyes. Expressive eyebrow tufts and impossibly long eyelashes. Her body was eloquent and it spoke of the land, the wind, the sun moon and stars, the rising and falling away of the sage flats.

The sun was setting now and we had to work fast. The boys helped to cut away at the thickness of her gorgeous, full hide. The connective tissue between her skin and muscle slid pearly white across a wealth of blue-red muscles and it snapped back thick and elastic beneath knife blades. Suddenly, the starkness of exposed sinew and bone was laid out before me, I saw the circle of life so plainly in all its beautiful complexity. I saw her body, her backstrap cut away from the prongs of her spine, her rump cut into pieces of roast, her smoothly sloping shoulders, still twitching, reduced to stew meat. The hidden place beneath the lower spine that holds the tenderloin was revealed and stripped bare. The gypsum of her naked leg bones was beautiful alabaster in the sunset, carved with poetry, quatrains and rhymes like four hooves galloping. We took all that we could of her body, and what was left behind is now feeding the coyotes, the worms and beetles, foxes. The mice will consume the bones, and what is left after all of that will sink into the alkaline desert soil and feed the sagebrush which will feed the sage grouse, house the hares and probably feed the coyotes, once again.

An entire ecosystem will thrive on what remains and I, at my tall, square dinner table in Idaho this winter, will comment on how cold the night is, the snow will fall in blue spools from a night sky, the huge spruce in the front yard will groan in the push of the wind as fists of ice do their pummeling from the edges of the West bench. The dogs will be curled up in various punctuation marks on the floor beneath the table and I will rest my slippered feet on Farley’s back, where he sleeps. I will reach out to hold Robert’s hands, as we utter grace over the hot food on the table before us. Then I’ll reach for a spoon and dip it into the bowl of hearty, savory antelope stew that sits before me and after the first, delicious bite of soul food, I’ll say, “This is so good.”

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