my experience

hoo boy... where should i even start! this was a week long excursion, so there's lots to tell. i went alone on this trip, as my partner is a bit squeamish when it comes to blood and gore, so i was all on my own. i had a long day of travelling to montana, as my flight left at 5am and i had a connection, so i was exhausted when i got to camp. we were all picked up at the airport by a guy named johnny, who is probably one of the most awesome people i've ever met. he is a self-proclaimed "recovering tech bro" who grew up completely off-grid in a very traditional yakama village in the PNW. it was wonderful getting to know him and talking about all the work he does for indigenous groups all around the world.

dinner was waiting for us at camp, elk tongue tacos! for being buffalo bridge, we certainly ate lots of elk. the crew would patrol the area multiple times a day looking for roadkill, and in total we picked up 4 elk and 2 mule deer, which made up all the meat we ate at camp. it was delicious!

camp was a wonderful, bustling little village full of activity, children running around, and constant action. people in the kitchen cooking, skinning of animals, pressure canners going, chopping wood, dishes and drinking water runs. there was a sign-up sheet where we could sign up for everything we wanted to do during our time there, but honestly this was all pretty loose. we could just as easily jump around to other things we wanted to check out and hop into.

first and foremost, the landscape of montana was BEAUTIFUL! the mountains were unreal. rolling hills, long, winding valleys, the yellowstone river was right alongside our camp and was so loud with its rushing. with all this nature too, it was pretty sweet that we were just a 2 minute drive to town! but we didn't have to go much, as we had pretty much all we needed at camp. and the WILDLIFE! everywhere there were giant herds of elk, mule deer, and pronghorn. it's incredible how they all just wander alongside the roads and into town in these huge groups. quite the difference from the UP, where the most we see is 2 or 3 deer who then wildly bolt into the street.

day 1 was a very eventful day! it was my very first time seeing a dead animal this big and handling it so closely. our training subjects this day were 2 mule deer that were picked up on a roadkill run. a buck and a doe. they were so beautiful, their fur so thick and warm. we learned how to skin them, remove the legs, and break them down completely into quarters. these quarters we then hung up in the meat tent to further process later.

hey look, that's me in the white beanie! here we were learning where along the spinal cord to cut to remove the head from the rest of the carcass. harmony actually told us a wonderful little story about the most effective way to break down an animal...

a butcher was breaking down an animal, and his student watched as he danced around the animal, his knife flowing seamlessly through the body. in an instant, the animal breaks apart into all of its respective parts. the student asks "how did you do that? you have a completely dull knife!". the butcher replies "the first 500 animals, i saw the whole animal. the next 500 animals i saw the muscles. and the next 500 animals, i saw the bones. on the last 500 animals, i only saw the space between".

and so, "find the space between" became the motto to follow when working on any part of the animal. harmony was a big game butcher for 15 years, and she has broken down thousands of animals with simply a boning knife, no saw. and honestly, after working on a couple animals at camp, i can see it! working between the bones and using gravity to pull and pop things out of place is so much more conducive than trying to force your way through with a saw. the parts almost WANT to come apart when you know where to cut.

after completely breaking down the animals, i actually worked on removing the brains of the deer! a guy named lucas helped me out showing me how to do it. there were actually a couple ways to do it. the main way we did it was with a metal wire shaped into a hook, inserted through the back of the skull. with the hook, scraping along the skull cavity to loosen the brain, and then scooping it out. this method preserved the skull, but also was really tricky to get all the brain out. the second method, was just taking a cleaver to the back of the skull to open the brain case, and you can cleanly remove the brain.

why did we need brains, you ask? well, for brain tanning of course!

we spent the rest of this day working on hides! on the left is the hide of one of the roadkill elk, and on the right is a buffalo hide! this one was about 7 years old, and harmony was keeping it to one day work and finally keep for herself. the buffalo is the one we used the brains on, and the goal was to saturate as much of the hide as possible, and rub in the brain to soften it. this process took a couple of days, but by the end it was so soft, supple, and pliable! the elk on the other hand, we strung up and were scraping the membrane and remaining meat off of. we used tools made of elk femurs that were sawed to create a point at the end, as well as stone knapped tools! it's incredible how sharp those stone tools are, it scraped and sliced off the membrane from the hide so seamlessly.

for sleeping arrangements, us students all slept in a big communal tent with a wood burning stove inside. it was very cold and windy while we were there, so keeping the fire going through the night was imperative. i will say, i slept pretty cold that first night, because our fire went out in the middle of the night and no one woke up to fill it back up! as the trip went on though, we got the hang of it and we didn't suffer any more frosty nights.

the next day of camp, we woke up bright and early to go patrol around the entrance of the park and see if any buffalo had passed through. it was a really nice drive through yellowstone! the sun still hadn't come up over the mountains, and it was beautiful seeing the light peek over the hills and into the valley. through binoculars, we could see a bunch of buffalo had ended up in the trap, which wasn't a good sight to see, but we were hopeful that more were on their way. once back at camp, we learned how to debone each of the quarters of the deer we skinned and quartered the day before. this was a lot more difficult, because you have to try and keep each cut of meat as intact as possible, but it gets easier once you get the hang of it.

this day i also chopped firewood! which was, honestly, so much harder than i thought it was going to be! i used a bunch of different sized axes to see what would work best for me, and they were all really fucking hard! i got a good amount done, but dang was i sore the next day...

which, this next day was one of the most incredible, memorable days of the trip. we were all up early again, because we were going on a hunt with some tribal hunters! it was 2 guys from the crow tribe; one was a reservation game warden, the other was a firefighter, who brought his 2 kids along! i rode along with ceivert the firefighter and his children, and i'm glad i did, because his 14 year old son hezakaya was the sharpshooter!

we were just out looking for anything we could find, not just buffalo. our hunt took us up one of the mountains across from yellowstone, and we came across a small herd of mule deer. we stopped the truck, hezakaya took aim, and he got one in the hind leg. it fell, and we all had to quickly swoop into action. i brought my knives with me, and i'm so glad i did, because they were in need of a knife to sever the artery of the deer, and my knife had the honor of doing so.

what happened in those next 10 minutes, was nothing short of pure magic. we all surrounded the deer, a couple held him down so he wouldn't kick any of us, and chris - harmony's boyfriend, who is also a death doula - used my knife to quickly go in and sever the artery. immediately when this happened, we all burst into song. and for me, and a couple other people, the water works started. we all sang and cried together as this deer bled out. we pet and held him and thanked him for his sacrifice, tried to make it as comfortable as possible for him. it was crazy, every time we stopped singing to talk or say something, he would start kicking and thrashing again. once we all went back into song, he laid there and just slowly faded away.

once we all regained ourselves, and the deer was confirmed gone, we all got to work in field dressing. or as one of the other students said was more accurate, "undressing". which, yeah, makes a lot more sense! we watched as harmony made the initial cuts through the pelt, being careful not to pierce the guts. we opened up the body cavity, and i had the immense pleasure of being the one to pull the guts out of the body. it was really cold this day and my hands were covered in blood and freezing, so being able to warm my hands inside that deer was a treat.

we separated the heart, liver, and kidneys, the latter of which we saved for hezakaya, as apparently for the crow it's symbolic to eat the kidneys of male deer. the liver and heart however, we all took bites from raw! they were still warm, and honestly, did not taste as irony and "gamey" as i thought they would! the liver had a very powerful, meaty flavor. it wasn't my favorite, but certainly not bad. the heart however, was delicious! pure muscle, tasted like taking a bite out of a raw steak. i actually went in for a second bite on that one, it was so good.

and so, we packed up the deer in the truck, ceivert, his kids, me, and another student named brandon joined him to continue looking for more animals. we stopped by the gas station to get coffee before continuing our journey up the mountains. he told us stories of other hunts he's gone on, his work as a firefighter and how little snow they'd gotten this season so it's bound to be a bad summer for fires, and translated the names of some of the animals and birds we were seeing into the crow language, apsaalooke. fun fact, the name "crow" for their tribe is actually a mistranslation! in apsaalooke, it means literally "children of the bird with the large beak". this was supposed to be the raven, and not the crow!

we continued driving around, and at some point ceivert's truck broke down in the middle of nowhere and we had to wait for someone from camp to come give him a jump. we took the time to get out and explore, and lookie lookie what we saw!

wolf tracks! they were huuuuuge, like the size of my palm. it was nice to see that predators are still hanging around. finally, we jumped ceivert's truck, but we had to continue doing so for the whole drive back to camp, until they decided to just tow him back. once we returned to camp, it was time to begin breaking down the kill from the day. we all helped with skinning, blowtorching the hair off the meat, all the stuff we learned. harmony actually showed us an amazing little secret hidden in the eyes of the deer.

when you make an incision into the eye of the deer and squeeze, two things will come out. one is this egg white looking liquid, which apparently has been used in the southwest to make cave paintings! so, it can be used as a sort of paint base. the second thing that comes out, is this little jelly, crystal looking thing! i'm not sure exactly what part of the eye this is, but it's this oblong little jelly, that reverses the image of what you see when you look through it! it was so beautiful, and harmony says she makes a tincture of them and calls it her "vision of the forest" tincture. finally, when you invert the eyeball, the inside is this beautiful aquamarine shimmer! it almost looks like abalone with how iridescent and sparkly it is. we removed the head of this lovely buck and placed it at our animal shrine, and i placed his lovely blue eye on his forehead.

so at camp we had this large shrine of all the animal heads and legs we collected during our time there. it was all framed with bones and skulls, and we would leave offerings at it every once in awhile. be it some of the sagebrush growing around camp, cool rocks we find, or other things we deem important.

i particularly loved how it looked on the second day when it snowed overnight, and all the heads had a sweet dusting of snow. it looked like they were peacefully sleeping in the cold of the snow.

later in the night, it was dinner time and we were all starving after the long day we had. dinner this night was pulled elk barbecue with roasted potatoes! it was really yummy with a homemade barbecue sauce drenching the meat. even now, weeks after leaving camp, i'm craving elk meat every single day. plus this, ceivert made us all fry bread! it was the most delicious, fried, fluffy, little dessert. i had about 5 pieces: 3 just plain, and 2 slathered in some blueberry jelly. really, really fucking good.

while in his truck driving around, ceivert told us about crow fair, which happens on the crow agency in montana in august. he invited us all to come and hang out, maybe camp out there, and join in on the festivities! apparently that time of year marks the new year for the crow, so it's a wonderful time to celebrate. i'm really trying to plan to go. one, because montana was beautiful and i would love to see it again. and two, because it's so important to foster these relationships we created while in camp.

according to harmony, they had JUST met ceivert two weeks before we got there, and he was already a solid bond. the hunt that we got to go on, was apparently something that has never happened before. buffalo bridge usually shows up after the kill has been made, for any animal. be it elk, deer, or buffalo. but they have never had the honor of actually being there when the kill happens. so the fact that we were able to be there and experience that was something really special.

next day rolls around! but, this day was amazing because i got to go to the hot springs! they were right up the street, and it was so amazing. it was about 43 degrees out, so pretty chilly, but the hot springs feel so good on your skin when you're that cold! and it also felt good because it was going on 4 days since i showered, but we don't need to talk about that...

anyway, i soaked in the hot springs for a good 20 minutes, and i asked everyone else with us if anyone dared to do a cold plunge. one guy named john said he would join me. so we walked out of the hot springs and made the quick walk to the cold pool. i was really hesitant to step in just because i wasn't looking forward to the shock of cold water, but i braced myself and just did it. because who knows when i'm gonna be in montana again to soak in hot springs and do a cold plunge?

i took a deep breath and just stepped straight in. i squealed like a baby, but i got neck deep and started doing deep wim hof breathing. wim hof breathing is basically taking a really deep breath and immediately letting it out completely from your lungs, and just doing that over and over. your hands and feet will start to tingle, because you're essentially over-oxygenating your blood. this really helped with the cold feeling of the water. after awhile honestly, you don't feel cold. if you move, you can feel the cold water on your skin, but if you sit still, it was honestly fine. we sat there for 2 minutes before jumping out and getting back in the hot pool to warm up. this was great! my body honestly felt so much better after this. it was good to just get wet and warm up after being cold all day.

this day we also did two things that profoundly changed me as a person. the first was a guided trance meditation with chris. we all got a hollow buffalo bone, and filled it with water as an offering to our guardians and guides. we meditated for awhile, before he started the deep trance. you imagine yourself standing up from your body, and a staircase of 10 steps appears descending before you. you're to imagine your feet on each step going down. once you're at the bottom of the steps, you're in a room of white void. you then announce, "i would like a door to meet my guides and guardians to appear". a door should appear, and you must notice what it looks like. is it made of wood or some other material? are there any signs or symbols that appear on it?

from there, you walk up to the door and open it, then step inside. you can then announce, "may my guides and guardians show themselves". i may go deeper into what i saw in the spirituality page, but needless to say this was a truly mind opening experience.

the second thing we did today, was everyone went out to the killing fields. everyone gathered up all kinds of bones, pelts, and offerings to create a giant "spirit buffalo". we all sat around it, and one by one took turns talking about what brought us to buffalo camp, anything we're grieving over, and how this experience has changed us. once we finished, we took a swig of homemade mead, and poured some out into the bone circle. it was a beautiful moment to spend with everyone, and reassuring to hear that we're not alone in feeling this deep grief over the state of the world, and the life we could have had.

next day! for breakfast was by far the most memorable meal i had on the whole trip. and once i've been craving since coming back home. elk congee! it was made with leftover elk broth from some pho we had the night before, with some wood ear mushrooms, soft boiled eggs, pickled red onions, bacon, furikake, and some delicious raw elk! i swear to you, this meal healed me from the inside out. a cold was going around camp and i finally came down with it, and it was like this congee brought me back to life. well, enough so that the first morning i was back home, i made my own rendition of it. not as good since i unfortunately did not have raw elk meat, but it did hit the spot.

this day was also the day i learned to make cordage! i spent the better part of the day making a ton of it, because i was working on a little project to take home! we learned how to skin the legs of deer and elk, and the pelt comes off in one big slab. with this, we made some cute little bags! i will have to share an image of mine once it's 100% ready, but it's really cute, and even more satisfying because i made everything on it! i stitched it together using the tendon from the same elk, the handle is cordage i made, and the lid is buffalo hide we were all free to take from a big pile of scraps they had. i'm really proud of it!

the next day was our last, i honestly may have been mixing days together because the days felt so damn long while we were out there, but in total i was out there for 7 days; wednesday to tuesday. the drive back to the airport was long and sad, because we had to say bye to everyone at camp who essentially became like family to us. we exchanged numbers, hugged, sang, cried, and promised to keep in touch.

this was the whole of my experience! it's something i wouldn't trade for the world, and i'm so honored to have been a part of it.