on not going hunting

     

     Every fall Oldest Son and my husband, Shawn, ask me to come hunting with them. And every year I mull it over: Hmmm, will we be hunting for bacon, pepperoni or pulled pork?
     No?
     Well, then. I think not.
      Please, they always ask, This year will you come with us?
      A hunt with Oldest Son and Shawn is a Sufferfest. Twelve-hour days hiking steep mountainsides while the wind bites through the extra layer you wore and snow spits at your face. Lunch is the gorp and hunk of summer sausage in your pocket. Communication is Cro-Magnon grunts and whispers. Am I even capable of whispering for twelve hours straight?
     I think not.
      In my own defense, when I moved to Montana from Salt Lake City 17 years ago, I was a city girl. A city girl with outfits and an expensive haircut. So the fact that I married a guy and have a son who go all Jeremiah Johnson on me every year keeps things interesting.
      But I know I can’t say no to everything, so this summer when Shawn asked if I would come backpacking with him so that he could show me where he and Oldest Son hunt elk and deer every year, I agreed. And I must say, the place is stunning in August.

Montana's Madison Range with The Sphinx, left, and The Helmet, the pointy peak to the right.
      Wildflowers? Everywhere. Like what your dreams would dream about dreaming. Like Julie Freakin’ Andrews in The Sound of Music.
      There was bear sign everywhere: bear poop, bear paw prints, holes in the hillsides where bears dug for snacks, tree bark scraped clean and signed in bear morse code: I EAT SPORTY-GIRL IMPOSTERS. But no actual bears, which, if you think about it, is even scarier.

Bear paw print, most likely a grizzly.

 
      On the second evening after we set up camp we discovered a near deal-breaker. Most of the wine we’d packed had seeped out — both the red and the white. But because I’m a good sport, I “evenly divided” what was left, had some cheese, and calmed the heck down.

      After dinner Shawn asked if I wanted to go hike up a nearby ridge and “glass” for elk and bear. (“Why, that’s exactly what I was about to suggest! That six hours of hiking today just barely got my blood pumping.”) In case you don’t know what “glassing” means, it means that you hike behind Husband while he carries binoculars. When you get to the ridge you sit patiently next to him while he looks through the binoculars, and says stuff like, “Oh, I think I see one…No wait. No, it’s just a stump. 

      Luckily, we had Angus along. Angus spotted a huge bull elk down a hillside and began chasing the thing like he was Cujo. Shawn dropped his pack and chased Angus from here to next Christmas. In case you’re wondering how long it takes to get from here to next Christmas, it’s exactly 30 minutes. I sat next to the pack, confident everything would be just fine, and when I got bored, photographed some wildflowers.

Indian Paintbrush     

     Shawn says at one point that Angus had the elk cornered against some trees, and that the elk looked very confused. Now, let’s do some math here: 800 pound elk meets 20 pounds of barking dog…At some level, that must have finally sunk in to his canine brain, because Angus came back.Angus is not a descendent of any of Julie Andrews' dogs. Although if you howl at him, he will howl back using the same pitch.
     On our final day, as we were packing up our camp, Shawn remembered that he had a nearby cache of food stashed up a tree from when he and a friend planned a week-long hunting trip that never happened many years ago. It was only after he told me to wait while he found the cache on the way out, then reappeared with an axe, a 50-lb bag full of Minute Rice, Little Debbie snacks and cans of food (with a 2004 expiration date) that it occurred to me to ask just how he planned to get this stuff the remaining six miles to the car.
     Shawn carried the stash on his back and hefted my pack onto his front. That left his pack. His pack which was a whole lot heavier than my pack. It was hot out, and there were biting flies that had just arrived straight from hell, so I heaved the damn thing on to my back and kept moving as best as I could.
     When I mentioned that the pack was hurting my shoulders, he replied, “It’s only a moderately heavy pack.” Lucky for him I didn’t ditch that Moderately Heavy Pack right there on the trail and head for Ennis, the closest town with an icy-cold pop.
     When we passed the only other hikers we saw the whole trip, we stopped to visit, the pack cutting into my usual blabbery nature. “Interest you in a free can of chili, fellas?”
     When I asked Shawn why we were carrying all this stuff out — which I planned to personally place in the trash once we got home — he said it was because hauling his own garbage out was The Right Thing To Do. Yes, Shawn occasionally engages in annoying acts of citizenry which require me to haul a Moderately Heavy Pack, which according to the scale at home was 29 pounds.
     I’m still fatigued as I write this, two days after our adventure. It’s a good tired. (And besides, it earned me a great big PASS on the hunting trip.)

Comments

[FaveAuntie]

LOL! Shawn is SO lucky! There are way too many reasons to say no to that hunting trip.

But - a stash of food from YEARS AGO? Really? He should have left it there for the next hunting trip with Oldest Son and save you from carrying that pack.