main takeaways

alright, now we really get into the meat and potatoes of it all. if you're curious, i'm the person in the very bottom right of that group picture with the white beanie! stunting my new carhartt overalls i got for the trip.

this trip really opened my eyes to so many different things. mainly, it reinstilled some hope in me for the human race. that good, wholesome, real people exist in this world of increasing hostility, hatred, and greed. people who understand the struggle of having to live in this world of struggle and pain. at the very least, i know all the connections i made at camp are people who i can reach out to for a kind ear and are more than willing to listen.

a lot of the discussions at camp got very philosophical and spiritual, which i was very appreciative of. lots of discussions about the human experience, cultural evolution, burial practices, and lots of talk of spirit and soul. and, i got a chance to change my perspective on humane slaughter of animals, one where i thought i had a pretty firm grasp.

when it came to killing that deer, it took a very long time. it probably took him like 10 minutes to bleed out, all while we sang and stroked his fur. my philosophy was always to "get it over with quickly" to "put them out of their misery". in talking with chris - a death doula - he really changed my mind on that. in trying to get it over with quickly, we really don't know what the mind or spirit experiences when it's quickly killed. we don't know if they don't feel anything, or if they're still conscious after the fact. just because physical activity stops, doesn't mean brain activity does. when it comes to the spiritual aspect of death, if killed too quickly, the spirit may not even realize it's been killed. which, makes it harder for them to leave the body and this plane of existence.

even though the process of this deer bleeding out was very slow, we were there for him the whole time to guide him off to the next life. singing songs, whispering thanks in his ears, stroking his face. this is the important part. being there for the death to guide the spirit out. giving them the time to die, to realize it's happening, so they come to peace with the fact that they are dying. there's a reason why he started thrashing again when we stopped singing to him.

i think this is something that anyone who eats meat needs to experience. it wasn't pretty, it was sad and i did cry a shit ton while singing to this deer. but this is what we need to do if we want to eat meat. this is part of us, and always has been. our ancestors thousands of years ago were doing this. i've made the decision that if i'm going to eat meat, i need to be comfortable with taking the life of that animal.

and on this topic, if we are going to eat meat, the very least we could do is use every part of it. it was incredible the things i learned you could do with the normally discarded organs of an animal. we made balloons with the bladder and intestines. beautiful spiralling balloons that we hung up around the kitchen tent and dried out until they were hard. lanterns with the pericardium, the sac around the heart. i made a whole bag with the leg of an elk, normally thrown away by the garbage bag-full during hunting season. we made delicious stews and chili and broth from all the little off cuts of meat from the animals we harvested.

everything on the body has a use. in this modern culture of disposing of everything once it's been used, it was so relieving to see bone tools the camp made years ago still being used. every cut of meat on the animal being used, in this culture of "only prime cuts" and "only tender meat". yeah, we had to chew our meat at camp! they weren't the tender, soft cuts you get at the grocery store. there was gristle and tendon, and that's okay.

there were lots of people at camp. that group picture above i think accounts for everyone who was there. and this made me realize, that it really does take a village. this work of scraping hides, butchering animals, cooking, cleaning, maintaining camp, taking care of kids... you need a lot of fucking people! this is coming from someone who wants to run away into the woods alone and survive off the land. it's a lot of fucking work! and it made me realize something else. the amount of time a typical 9-5 takes from a person, it leaves you with no time for anything. it was incredible how long the days felt at camp, because we were up early and working all day until 8pm. we got so much done in one day. because that was the work. scraping hides and butchering and canning and cooking and chopping wood and hunting. that was our work.

which used to be the norm for so many thousands of years. you did the work to sustain yourself and your family and village. and i'm not saying it was easy work. it was physically demanding work. but, you were working for yourself. not working for "the man" and making someone else richer. everything you did was in support of your village and your own wellbeing. i don't know, maybe i'm not articulating myself well enough. but essentially i mean, i would rather do this physically taxing work if it meant i was doing it for the ones i love and myself, and not for some random rich person who doesn't care about me.

i already had a deep appreciation for nature, but going out here and seeing how everything relies on each other to survive made me appreciate it even more. the buffalo are such an essential part of the ecosystem there. and it's so fucking sad that there's so much red tape around the hunt, the migration, the buffalo themselves. there's argument that with the rounding up of buffalo right outside of the park, we're breeding out the instinct to migrate. if all the buffalo that make the move get rounded up in a pen and shipped to slaughter, we're discouraging the very act of migration.

red tape and tension was something else i did not expect to learn so much about on this trip. there's beaurocracy around absolutely everything that concerns animals. and i understand some of it is needed to prevent abuse, but my god it's a little ridiculous sometimes. mainly the case of roadkill deer. i wanted to start doing this on my own, picking up roadkill deer to process at home if i was confident they were fresh enough. only to learn that you can't do anything with roadkill deer in michigan because of fears of chronic wastings disease. a disease of which, to this day, there has not been any confirmed cases of transmission to humans. you can't transport skulls, pelts, teeth, or bones of deer past county lines. you can't use any part of a roadkill deer for business purposes. CWD isn't an issue in montana apparently, but even still there's so much red tape. there go my ideas for doing a little deer leg bag workshop in town...

while we were there, one of the native hunters actually got a ticket because of this red tape. he shot at an elk - within the boundary of hunting land - only to find that just this season, they moved it up by 10 yards. fined $300 and has to go to court to fight it. i'm someone who will always advocate for better protections for wildlife and the environment, but when those guidelines start restricting people from food, and putting any kind of outdoor recreation behind a glass, that's when i start to take issue. there's a difference between selfish abuse of the environment, and being aware of your impact on your local ecosystem.

i never understood the hate on hunting, except of course for big game trophy hunters who only care about the clout and another mounted head in their study. if everyone who hunts operates under the principle of "use every part", this is great. i know it's unrealistic to think that, because there are still some truly shitty people out there, but again, camp has reminded me there are good people out there. a whole deer is so many pounds of food. like, this is food. this can feed a family easily for a good couple months. camp fed 30 people off of 4 elk and 2 deer for a week, and they were probably eating those elk even before we got there.

i don't know, i hate to sound like a prepper and a conspiracy theorist, but i'm so happy i learned these skills with the state of the world right now. i'm at least confident in being able to prepare an animal for food if and when i'll need to.

i could go on and on about what i learned at camp, but i think i've said the main points. it was an experience i learned so much from; things i never thought i'd be able to learn because no one else in my life is into these things. people who grew up hunting and learned to do this from a young age. i know i probably wouldn't have appreciated it, but i think that's how most things go when you're a kid.

but anyway, if anyone has any questions about what i learned, wants to learn something, or just wants to chat about spirituality and animals and the human experience, pleeeeeease reach out to me!!