Fair Trade for The Unacquainted
“There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot”—Aldo Leopold
“I’ve a feeling we ain’t in Kansas anymore…” my buddy Michael says as we stare out at the epic landscapes of Colorado. His old Ford is gassed up, loaded down, and winding back and forth through the Rocky Mountains. As my ears began to pop, I couldn’t help but get excited about the adventure that lay ahead.
“Yep…we sure aren’t in Kansas,” I replied with a smirk. It should be mandatory for a couple of southern Kentucky boys to utter such a cliché. Why? For once, there is nothing truer. Yes, the obvious being we finally made the long monotonous drive through Kansas, but more importantly—we are entering into a world unknown. For the next three weeks we have left the world of comfort and safety to endure the discomforts and unknowns of backpack hunting the most badass beasts of the West—bull elk.
To me, there’s knowing about elk and then there’s knowing elk. For instance, if you told someone you were hunting bull elk most likely they would have the image of it in their minds. It appears grazing in a meadow surrounded by those white aspens out West. Most people might even recognize the sound of a bugle; these are the ‘knowing about’ parts. To truly know elk, it takes much more out of you.
Nothing quite opens your eyes (and lungs) to the life of such an animal like pursuing it in its element—one in which you’re unequivocally unacquainted. The level of fatigue and suffering a person faces in weeks of backpack hunting is difficult—if not impossible—to convey, especially in such few words. Quite simply, the mountain breaks you down. Are you prepared physically? She will challenge you mentally (and vice versa). Each and every day you will climb very high, you will hike very far, and you will sleep very little. At some point, typically halfway through the trip, your pants will sag down and require the tighter belt notch adjustment. Your feet, back, and legs will scream and ache at four in the morning only to be dismissed with some ibuprofen, a black coffee and a hurried stretch as you lace up a pair of cold, damp boots and set off into the starlit landscape.
I say all of this not to discourage a potential elk hunter—really, it’s just the opposite. You see, in the midst of all of the blood, sweat, tears, hunger, and fatigue, you have moments of total bliss. There are those breathtaking mountain vistas that appear above alpine at just the timeliest of water breaks. There are those moments you notice the black bear foraging in an avalanche chute or the bachelor group of mule deer bedded on a nearby hillside, and you think of what their day-to-day life must consist. There are those cold, overcast days that at just the right time are pushed away by a forgiving sun. There are those changes in wind, the rise and fall of thermals that you begin to notice almost effortlessly; where you once reached for your windicator at every turn you now feel it across the back of your hands like the flow of a mountain stream.
The truth is this, you have to give a part of yourself to the mountain to gain something in return. It’s a trade that at the start seems dreadfully unfair, but later balances in scale. You trade sleep, automation, and the comforts of society for things you never came for in the first place. Initially, you believed all of your time and effort was dedicated toward harvesting a legal bull. It’s not until later you understand that you traded all of that stuff for much more; you traded it for days of inner dialogue, self-reflection and wisdom. You traded it for harmony among all things wild. You traded it for more experience and understanding of the creatures you hunted.
Nearing the end of our hunt Michael texted me from across the mesa miles away, “Dude…I got one!” Words cannot explain how ecstatic I was to know that we would be packing meat off the mountain. We worked so hard to achieve this end goal that I nearly cried, and it wasn’t even my bull tagged!
The rewards the mountain provides far outnumber the miseries dealt. And even in some bizzarro, altitude-sickening way, the miseries start to become the reward. With our packs loaded down (nothing short of eighty pounds each) and hours from camp, I yelled out my best Ronnie Coleman impression “LIGHTWEIGHT, BABY!” for the mountain to hear. Michael half-chuckled and said, “we ain’t in Kansas anymore.” We both knew what that meant…Staring off at the steep game trail below, we acknowledged the direction of travel with a nod and walked off in silence.