kelsi shay: A True Tale

First Camp

Kelsi Shay — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 20:37:34 GMT

This was the first morning I crawled out of my tipi and couldn’t see my breath as I stood next to the pond and listened to the birds and let the sun warm my face. Kevin’s nude morning exercise routine had become a permanent feature of the landscape at this point, but as the sound of a school bus trundling down the gravel drive echoed across the feel I giggled as he scrambled for cover, throwing himself behind a bush just as the sea of children’s faces peered out the bus windows.

Today was our first day of kid’s camps and bus carried fifty plus school-aged students from Bozeman. While it is rumored that Bozeman used to be just like the rest of Montana (rural and low income), it was now apparently a haven for transplants reigning from wealthier parts of the country. We watched as a whole lot of REI’s finest synthetic down jackets and expensive snow boots clunked their way down the bus stairs and gave our scraggly group of adults a once over. I too looked down our line up: Michael in a ripped and dirty button up shirt and his buckskin loincloth and leggings, Kevin (now thankfully dressed) in his homemade buckskin overalls but still with no shirt on, myself and Jack dirty and tattered, Ed once again with barking dog in one arm and toothbrush dangling from his mouth, plus the camp owner and his Swedish girlfriend, Vera, who I was meeting for the first time. The Bozeman kids didn’t look particularly impressed with our rag tag group, and I grimaced as Ranger trotted proudly past the line with a rotted deer head in his mouth that he had clearly unearthed despite our best efforts to hide the carnage.

None the less, once the activities began, judgment was cast aside. This was a big day camp, so each pair of “instructors” (I use that term loosely as we were thrown into this with no official training) ran a different station. Michael was the best at friction fire, so he was volunteered to run fire making. He told an excellent “fire origin” tale, demonstrated the process, then frantically ran around a group of twenty kids trying to teach them how to rub sticks together without poking each other in the eye. There was frustration, chaos, and (with much assistance) the occasional fire bursting into flame in a child’s hand.

I was paired with Jack, and our station was admittedly much less exciting. We were teaching cordage making, another recently learned skill of mine. We would sit in front of the group and show them how to peel apart a dogbane plant to get to the inner fibers and how to separate the fibers and twist them together to make strong, natural rope. Since this was way too intensive for the kids, they got to use colored raffia from the craft store. Even so, aside from a few of the more dexterous older students, most of them ended up with knotted piles of fibers that they had shredded into a tangled mess, complained about it not working, and then we’d help them form them into some semblance of a sloppy bracelet they could wear home. Honestly, we should have combined stations with Michael as despite their best efforts, our kids were making excellent fire starting nests..

Next to our station was Kevin leading archery and rock throwing, and during moments of quiet I could hear him coaxing the pre-teen boys on his anarchist viewpoints in between shooting arrows. I caught the parent chaperones glancing sideways at each other and while I tried to smile at them to show that we weren’t all exploring the key takeaways of Ted Kazinsky’s manifesto, it may have come out more of a grimace. But in all fairness, Kevin didn’t allow any of the kids to retrieve their arrows in front of the shooting group (rule number one!) so I’d say it was a raving success.

At lunch time the kids all ate their sack lunches in the field and I found Michael. He immediately gave me a deadpan stare that said, “what the hell have we gotten ourselves into?”

“Going well, is it?” I said, showing off my friendship bracelet by waving it directly in front of his face.

He grabbed my wrist, not very amused, and said, “I’m with Vera, so no, it’s not going well. Every time the kids get close to getting a coal she rushes in to steal the show and the last time she knocked the nest out of the kid’s hand and I had to stomp on it before it caught the rug on fire,” he said. “Ughhhh,” he groaned, and I passed him a piece of dumpstered cheese. We didn’t have time to make our own lunches so the hangry vibes weren’t helping.

This was my first time meeting Vera but I could see how her and Michael’s personalities may clash. She was quite loud, a busty woman dressed in a very provocative buckskin outfit that was dyed magenta, and very much enjoyed being the center of attention.. Needed to be the center of attention, rather, even in a group of fourth graders.

“Sorry darlin,’” I said, as the clang of the iron dinner bell rang across the pasture and signaled our reprieve was over. At least the stations were done with and the afternoon was dedicated to just playing games. We all tucked bandannas in our waist bands to mimic having tails and ran around ripping them off of one another, which may not sound very exciting but it’s actually quite fun — there’s the thrill of the chase and sneaking around, and with Michael being one of those annoyingly naturally athletic types he was an instant target for all of the kids. I’d laugh as he’d sprint, spin, and dive into a summersault and get back up to keep running while hoards of children screamed and chased him full speed through the pasture. Ranger would also take a break from gnawing on his deer head to chase and tackle Michael to the ground, which the kids thought was the most entertaining thing they’d ever seen (I may have to agree). We were all acting like kids, running full speed in a giant field, laughing hysterically, surrounded by snowy mountains and Sandhill cranes flying overhead. This was fun, pure and simple.

We loaded the kids back onto the bus that afternoon, each of them donning bigger smiles, pink cheeks, and much dirtier clothes then when they arrived. Some even gave us hugs on the way out, and you could see it in their faces that they had experienced just a small a taste of the wild and were elated by their time here. Even though I barely knew these kids and would likely never see them again, I loved those moments.

We had a big group dinner that evening in the Shed to go over the day and learned of the month’s schedule — we’d have a few more day camps that week (to Michael’s disappointment the stations and partners would remain the same) and then we’d start the overnight adventures. The weather was warming, there was no time for ruminating on the more painful aspects of adult life during the constant action of kid’s camps, and we were all going to sleep well that night, Ranger included.

Rocks

Kelsi Shay — Sat, 28 Dec 2024 21:30:52 GMT

With kid’s camps starting the next day, one of the assigned prep tasks was to collect rocks that wouldn’t explode if put in an open fire. Apparently that’s a piece of information they don’t teach in school these days, that your common round river rock can explode when placed in fire, and since we didn’t want pieces of shrapnel hitting any children in the eye we needed to find an alternative. Michael and I immediately volunteered for this job as it gave us an excuse to leave camp — there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for alone time when every private structure was made of grass or canvas. So we took my truck up a nearby mountainside, parked near a rocky hillside, and began filling five gallon buckets with just-bigger-than-fist-sized rocks. Once we had three buckets filled we decided we had earned the right to take a little hike so we ventured onto an old cattle trail and headed up the grassy, hilly terrain.

Halfway up foothill I stopped and said, “Whoa, hold on,” as a wave of dizziness came over me. Michael rushed over to me as I slowly lowered myself onto the ground to sit.

“What’s going on?” He said, worry etched onto his face.

“It’s nothing, I just got another dizzy spell.”

“What do you mean, another one?” He asked. I took a couple deep breaths, keeping my eyes closed and my head completely still as the world settled back into place and the nausea passed.

As I opened my eyes I felt him gently place his hand on my back, waiting for me to respond.

“Well, right before I left the farm I woke up one morning with absolutely terrible vertigo. Ugh, I don’t even want to think about it,” I said, the feeling of sickness creeping back up. “If I moved my head even the tiniest bit the room would be so off kilter that the floor would tip completely sideways and then upside down and then I’d be throwing up from the motion. It was so intense. I spent five days like that in bed, barely eating, and barely moving for fear of the spins.. I’ve never been sick like that before. I went to the doctor and they didn’t have a solution for me, so I just rode it out.” I closed my eyes again and tried to brush off this current spell, not wanting to make it into a bigger deal than it was and not wanting the attention. I didn't know what caused it the first time at the farm, but it was absolutely terrifying and I wasn’t thrilled that it was back. I’d never been sick like that before, and it was the first time in my life that I felt like something was inherently not okay with my body.

“Damn, that’s really intense,” Michael said, still looking at me with concern in those sweet brown eyes. “And nothing helps?”

“No, not really,” I said, “I just have to try not to move,” I laughed halfheartedly, annoyed at myself that this was happening now.

A few moments of silence passed while I sat there with my eyes closed. “Didn’t you say the other day that, uhh, your ex was also sick on the farm?” Michael clearly remembered this detail but I could tell he wasn’t thrilled about talking about the ex-boyfriend subject. “What did you mean by that?”

I exhaled slowly and opened my eyes to see if the world had stopped spinning. It had.

“Well… It’s a long story… Are you sure you want to hear it?”

“If you’re up for telling it,” Michael said, resettling himself in the grass and leaning back on his elbow, getting ready to stay a while.

I readied myself to tell the story I’d told countless times to anyone who ever asked about my ex-boyfriend’s health — it was a pretty routine script at this point, as I shared just enough to not start crying and to also give the impression that things were optimistic and going okay rather than the honest truth which was that they really weren’t. Real or imagined, I found that if you talk too much about a young person being terribly ill, most people start feeling uneasy and welcome a change of subject. That, plus needing a way to survive the conversation myself, had led to me crafting a story in my head that was easy enough to repeat and keep my audience comfortable at the same time.

I began: “So, we went on a trip to India years ago and he got really sick when we were there, and then when we got back he was put on really intense antibiotics for what the doctors thought was a parasite. This actually made everything worse and he saw a bunch of specialists and they couldn’t figure out what was causing it but he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis,” I glanced at Michael, and since he clearly didn’t know what this was, I went on, “which is when you get ulcers in your intestines and they cramp and bleed.”

“Geez,” he said.

“Yeah. He was so, so sick. I’m mean like, losing toilet bowls full of blood, he lost a ton of weight, and sometimes he would just lie in anguish because the pain and the cramping was so intense.” I cleared my throat to keep my voice from cracking. “He saw a lot of specialists over the years and the doctors were little help other than prescribing steroids and other drugs and wanting to prepare him for surgery to get most of his intestines removed and wear a colostomy bag for the rest of his life.” I paused and shuddered at the memories, a chill passing over me as the breeze off the mountain picked up for a moment.

I kept going. “But he was one of the smartest and most stubborn people I’ve ever met and he refused to accept that as an option. So he did a ton of research and changed his diet to eat super clean and then we.. Okay… It’s gonna get weird,” I paused, as this was part of the story I didn’t usually share, “We tried a fecal transplant at home,” I glanced up to see Michael’s reaction and blushed.

“I don’t know what that is,” he said.

“Well,” I said, chuckling, but being too far in to turn back now. “Umm, so the idea is that you put the stool of a healthy person into the sick person’s colon and let the beneficial bacteria recolonize itself, because he basically had no beneficial bacteria left from all the antibiotics,” I shrugged awkwardly again.

“Wait, did he have to eat poop?” Michael said, aghast.

“No! No, but… We decided that I was the best donor since I’d never really had antibiotics and was healthy.” The next part I rushed through: “Basically, I’d poop into a sterilized blender and then transfer it into an enema.. He would insert it and hold it in for as long as possible and then.. Well, that’s it. We just knew to never use that blender again,” I laughed awkwardly and felt my cheeks burning. Here I was sitting on the side of a mountain telling this guy I was hardcore crushing on that I voluntarily shat into a blender. I tried to make it better by adding, “It totally worked! The morning afterward was like night and day — he went from being super sick to having normal, blood-free poop. We used to joke that my poop saved his life.”

I glanced at Michael and he seemed nonplussed and almost impressed by this story. “Okay, that’s crazy but I believe that it worked,” he said.

“So anyway, that was all great until we were on the farm and the sickness came back. Then there were many more trips to the emergency room in the middle of the night — I remember there were times when I felt like it was completely on me to get him to the hospital or he might not make it through the night, and of course these flares always happened when it was snowing and icy and we were also running the farm by ourselves — we had forty cows, twenty sheep, fourteen goats, chickens, a big garden, the whole thing. We were super isolated out there, I was taking care of all the animals by myself and was a caregiver to my very ill boyfriend and the cows basically became my only friends, and… yeah,” I muttered, having gone off script and shared a little more than I intended to.

He looked at me patiently, giving me the space to go on.

“He did get better, more or less. And I didn’t leave when he was sick,” I added sharply, my face burning again. It was important for me to make that clear, even though it ultimately would have been fair to myself to have left then too. “Like I said before, we just kind of... unraveled. And we didn’t know how to put it back together.” I swallowed hard.

Michael looked at me for a moment before saying, “Kelsi, it’s okay. I’m just, really, really sorry,” he shrugged. “Maybe you got so dizzy because of the immense amount of stress and the heartbreak and from making the really difficult decision to leave,” he added. Then he reached out and took my hand in both of his.

We sat there quietly on the mountainside for ten minutes, tears gathering in my eyes as we watched the light turn golden and the grass sway in the wind and let the moment settle. That wasn’t the usual story I told, I thought to myself, but a sense of relief came over me as I had finally released some of the words I’d been clutching on to for so long.

We both started shifting in our seats as the wind picked up again and Michael said, “Come on, let’s go back down, it might be the elevation making you dizzy.” He helped me up from the ground and hovered right behind me as we made it back down to the truck — I could tell he wanted to be there to catch me if I lost my balance. I didn’t get another serious dizziness wave though, and by the time we got back to the truck the mood had shifted and we were laughing as usual and were ready to take advantage of being alone in the wilderness, away from prying eyes. The hood of the truck was still warm from the sun when we laid down on it.

When we got back to camp, we pulled up next to the group and they asked what took us so long.

“We had to drive way up there to find the rocks,” Michael said, grinning at me as he heaved the buckets out of the truck bed. Clearly he was reminiscing on our romantic time spent together, not on the fact that we had sat on the hillside and talked about serious illness and my ex-boyfriend for a solid thirty minutes. I smiled back, because while the romance was nice, it was the vulnerability, the safety, and being listened to that I was recounting. And in that shared smile I think we silently agreed to keep our budding romance just between us for a while. This felt like something special, and even though I told myself that this was just a casual spring fling, I had a feeling in my gut that it was going to be much more than that.

Hot Spring

Kelsi Shay — Sun, 03 Nov 2024 19:42:43 GMT

The next day, I was so close to finally finishing my hide that mine and Michael’s blossoming romance was forced into the back seat. Instead of cuddling up next to him, I spent three hours sitting next to a metal bucket filled with rotted wood that was lit on fire — this created a small, intentionally damp fire that smoked profusely as my hide hung above it from a tree branch. I couldn’t leave it unattended, because if the coals burst into flame I needed to be there to rip the hide from the smoker, otherwise the whole thing would literally go up in flames and be ruined. I meticulously watched the thick smoke billow up and penetrate the hide, one hand on a second bucket of water next to me just in case something went wrong, the white material slowly transforming into a deep golden yellow from the smoke.

When my faithful teacher returned my eyes were burning from the focus and the smoke exposure, but he gave it a peek and announced that it was finished. I carefully pulled it off the smoker and held in my hands a buttery soft, golden piece of finished buckskin that was pliable, bouncy, and in my eyes, perfect. It was hard to believe that just a week ago it was a sopping wet pile of fur and skin, and before that, a living, breathing creature. I thought of the deer I witnessed getting hit by that truck on my drive to Montana, which now felt like a moment from another lifetime. I took a deep breath and touched my finished hide again in reverence.

Even more impressive than my hide however was how undeniably disgusting I had become. I was covered in deer hair, mysterious hide juices, grease, sweat, and smelled like a combination of wood smoke and very ripe body odor. I was used to getting dirty on the farm, but I always ended the long days with a nice hot shower. Rivercamp was different. While everyone else was satisfied with jumping into the freezing cold pond on the property, I declined that offer and instead had mastered the art of the sponge bath. This was still a rare treat however, as it consisted of many steps: warming the water on the wood stove in The Shed, carrying it back to my tipi, working up the nerve to peel off my many layers in the still crisp air (would it ever warm up in this Arctic tundra?!), and then usually shivering there naked as I waited for the boiling water to cool down enough to use (the flip side of which was finding the water was barely warm by the time I got it back, which was the worst). I would then awkwardly wash my hair hunched over like Gollum while trying to dump it on my head (sometimes missing) and then used whatever water was leftover to wipe the stinkiest parts of me with an already dirty washcloth. It was debatable if it was more of a smearing of the filth around than actual washing but when finished it at least felt like I’d removed a layer of grime.

When I emerged from the tipi shivering with dripping wet hair that might not have actually been any cleaner despite my best efforts, I saw Michael coming across the field towards me.

“Do you want to go to the hot spring?” he asked casually.

“Wait.. what? You mean to tell me there’s a hot spring close to here?” I could not believe that this news was just now reaching me.

“Well yeah,” he said, “But it’s kind of a long drive down a dirt road, and I don’t know, I was thinking if you were okay with it maybe we could all pile into your pickup and go together,” he rattled on tentatively, as if asking me to drive would have been a deal breaker.

“Are you joking? Yes! Let’s go! Now! Let me get my keys!” I ducked and scrambled back into my tipi, all plans for the day now mute, with the glorious thought of immersing myself into hot water now the only plan worth pursuing.

We gathered around my truck and Jack and Kevin crawled into the bed, ducking beneath the old truck camper and getting situated while Michael coaxed Ranger to hop in and join them. I swear that Ranger visibly glared as he realized that Michael was sitting in the front with me and as I closed the camper shell I heard Jack say, “Okay Ranger, stay over there and don’t bite us now.”

We bumped and rattled along for forty five minutes down a very precarious dirt road, passing several hundred-acre ranches with domestic bison running alongside the truck, a thin electric fence the only barrier between us and the giant hooved-beasts that were literally the same size as my pickup. The snow-peaked Tobacco Root mountains loomed overhead, and as we rounded another bend I could see the steam rising from a collection of pools nestled into the side of the Jefferson river. I parked the truck on the side of the dirt road, released the passengers locked in the back, and followed suit as we scrambled down a steep hill to get to the water. There sat three steaming shallow pools of varying degrees of temperature and cleanliness, two of them clear but the last one a slimy puddle of mud and algae. At this point I didn’t care what the pool looked like as long as it was warm. I had already changed into my bathing suit at camp but was curious what the boys had planned — Michael and Jack donned their boxers and to no one’s surprise Kevin opted to go naked so I averted my eyes as the nude and partially clothed boys dropped into the pools ahead of me. We all chose the deepest and cleanest pool, the water piping and shockingly hot, and while it took me several minutes to ease my way into it the others adjusted the temperature by using a resident bucket to scoop cold water from the neighboring river into the hot pool. And then there we were, steam rising all around us, sitting in a gloriously hot bath as the snowmelt-fed river rushed past us on the side. Ranger roamed around the bank, visibly contemplating if he’d like to put his muddy feet in the hot pool or take a dip in the frigid river first, coming to visit Michael on occasion to give his cold ears a friendly lick. I felt my muscles fully relax in the warmth and took in the beauty of it all — Red-winged blackbirds twittering in the pasture on the other side of the river, the breeze moving through the newly leafed-out Cottonwood trees, the steam from the pool filling my lungs. I glanced at Michael through the steam across the pool, caught him looking at me and smiled, and a familiar sense of being home came over me. This was exactly where I was supposed to be. Ranger snuck up next to me and gave my head a gentle sniff, surely a sign of endearment, and then I sunk down and finally immersed my hair in the gloriously hot water.

The Earth Lodge

Kelsi Shay — Sun, 06 Oct 2024 00:18:35 GMT

The next week was a quiet one. In between my hide tanning lessons I spent my time cleaning up camp as we were informed that the kids were arriving soon. I let my brain wander as I picked up plastic buckets and random bits of fur and discarded deer legs from the camp yard — hiding the evidence from the children that there were dead animal parts and scavenged pieces of garbage from the local dump (the usefulness of which was highly debatable) strewn all over the property. There was also no real way to wash your hands with hot water unless you heated it up on the stove, which made my internal past camp counselor for the City of Seattle cringe at the thought of the amount of regulations that were about to be broken with these camps. But this was rural Montana and apparently they did things differently out here.

I slowly slogged through tanning my first hide and was finally at the point where I could soften it, which entailed stretching it over and over again with my hands and even using my knees to pry the fibers open when my arms were too tired to do it anymore. This was one of the final steps in the process and I had to finish it in one setting without a break or I’d have to go back and repeat multiple steps and I was not about to do that. Thankfully it was best if the hide was kept somewhat warm, so I got to do this inside the Earth Lodge instead of out in the middle of the cold and windy pasture. The Earth Lodge was the only other permanent structure on the property other than The Shed and it was a large circular creation made from rough wood beams and cement plaster. It imitated an ancient roundhouse made of clay, with a four foot wide hole in the ceiling to let out the smoke from the open fire pit in the center of the room.

With a steady fire burning in the pit, Michael agreed to help me that evening after dinner with the next step. We tied the hide up in a rack and he showed me another way to soften it by pushing and dragging a thick pointed wooden stick along it to open it up. It was remarkable to watch as this previously wreaking, sopping wet piece of dead animal skin was slowly turning into soft and supple buckskin that was white and fluffy and inviting to the touch. It was still a laborious process however and by ten o’clock at night I still had an hour or two to go at this rate and Michael was yawning loudly.

While I softened, he sat in the corner of the lodge playing his guitar and softly singing made up lyrics to “Boots of Spanish Leather.” I paused to watch the light from the flames dance across his face and guitar while he played. I put down my softening stick and walked over to him, sitting down criss cross in front of him. When he finished the song, I gently took the guitar out of his hands and laid it down next to him. We met each other's gaze, and he got up on his knees. I did the same, the edged a little bit closer to him so we were facing one another, just inches apart. I grinned, giving him permission, and the next moments were a beautiful blur of grasped faces and clutched bodies as we kissed and kissed, finally giving in to the feeling in my gut telling me that this was right. While I felt the familiar guilt rear its ugly head again, I didn’t invite it to stay, and I wouldn’t let it ruin this moment too. We clung to one another, two forms glued together like they were made to fit. When we pulled away, we both beamed and blushed and he helped me up from the ground. Then I tracked his eyes as they spotted my abandoned hide and he ran over to it to make sure it wasn’t dried out and ruined.

“You have to keep softening it,” he said, running his work-blistered hands over it. I rolled my eyes, but knew he was right.

“Are you still going to bed?” I asked sweetly, hoping that he might just stay and finish the damn thing for me. He knew I was determined to finish it myself though, and wasn’t going to let my sore arms and tiredness rob me of that eventual satisfaction. He laughed, “Yes, I am,” and leaned in to kiss me once more, then pulled away and pushed aside the heavy bison hide that was hanging over the doorway to keep the heat in, gave me one last glance, and walked out of the Earth Lodge. I turned back to my hide and spent the next two hours softening it, humming and smiling to myself as the fire warmed my now aching back. By the time I finished it was late, the fire was long dead and I could see my breath, but the stars were bright and vast against the pitch black sky as I jogged to my tipi and nuzzled into my sleeping bag.

The Grass Hut

Kelsi Shay — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 18:19:28 GMT

I replayed the departure in my mind: climbing into the truck and putting my purse and sunhat in the front seat next to my basket of snacks, the lump forming in my throat before I turned to meet his gaze as he stood at the rolled down driver’s side window with tears in his eyes.

“Okay, I guess this is it,” I remember saying, my voice breaking.

“Yeah. Take care of yourself, kiddo,” he said. He always called me kiddo even though I was his girlfriend, not his daughter.

We’d been saying goodbye for months, grieving our ending relationship and detaching while still together, but this was the actual parting of ways. Tears welled in my eyes as I started the pickup and headed down the long dirt driveway, the apple orchard waving farewell in the light breeze on one side and the cows lifting their heads from their grazing on the other. I locked eyes with Brigit, our big black Scottish Highland cow, as her long bangs blew off her forehead, exposing her wise, soulful eyes. I wasn’t just saying goodbye to him, but also to my life and my identity of the past several years. I chanced a watery glance in the rearview mirror; he was standing in the middle of the drive, waving to me as the goats playfully circled around him, raising his other hand to his face as it began to break into visible sadness.

For over an hour I just drove and cried, releasing an unending river of emotion, the familiar scenery passing in an unmemorable blur. I passed the last small town before entering the wilderness that laid between me and Montana and as I reached the top of a mountainous hill I pulled off to get out and breathe. I watched as the red sun set over the wheat-filled plains of eastern Washington, turning the rolling hills to a deep gold while the last rays of warmth touched my face. The breeze shifted, and so did a feeling inside of me: a joy I had not felt in a long time elbowed its way in to sit next to the grief — my heart was so heavy, but I also felt beautifully free.

Fire

Kelsi Shay — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 20:39:23 GMT

After our night of bonding over garbage, Michael and I became pretty much inseparable. He started teaching me everything he knew about traditional skills, which was a lot. The first skill I needed to learn before the kids arrived for camp was how to make fire from sticks. Right, seemed simple enough, I thought.

I did arrive at Rivercamp with my own little knife and sheath, so at least I somewhat looked the part of a survivalist. I believe it quickly became obvious that I didn’t really know how to use it though, as my only proof was a spoon I had carved previously that looked more like a flat, misshapen garden spade than a spoon (I still dutifully used that “spoon” however at every meal, even if the indentation could barely hold any soup because it was virtually nonexistent),

The first thing I needed to learn was a “bow drill fire,” which is essentially cutting a long stick and attaching a string to each end (like a bow) that you smoothly twist around a smaller stick which you then place on top of another, you guessed it, stick. It was hard, and awkward, there was no “smooth twisting” of the string around the stick — in fact it often sprang out of the twisted string and hit me in the face and many times I had the middle stick upside down and my arms kept getting too tired to pump the bow back and forth long enough to actually create any friction. Michael would set me up with supplies and leave me to practice for an hour at a time, coming back to check on his new student to find me sitting with a pile of discarded sticks on the ground, cheeks red in frustration and embarrassment.

But, as all things go, two days of enough practice led to a smoothly twisted, right side up middle stick, a properly placed elbow with all my weight leaned into it, and enough arm strength to draw the bow back and forth enough times to make a small coal. It was a little pile of embers that was sitting on a base stick, glowing red and smoking away. How exciting! I did it! And my teacher was here to witness my success! But as I dropped my smoking coal into my carefully constructed nest of grass that I in theory would then blow on until it burst into flame, apparently I didn’t have the grass tight enough so the coal that took me literally thirty minutes to make immediately went out. As Michael watched me desperately puff air into a handful of loose grass that was one hundred percent not going to catch on fire, he tactfully said, “Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t get a fire once the coal was in the nest.” I glared at him, my cheeks burning much hotter than my failed fire attempt, but found myself laughing anyway amidst the frustration and annoyance. “Too bad my teacher sucks,” I said, a poor attempt at a comeback, and he laughed as I threw one of my sticks at him.

I did get my first fire a few days later, after hours of trying, and it was immensely satisfying. I had accomplished quite possibly the most important, albeit long forgotten, human skill of our existence. A skill that our people, no matter where they hail from, have been doing since the very beginning. I was sweating, my arms burned from the repetitive pushing and pulling, my back hurt from hunching over, and my brain hurt from the focus and unwavering determination, but right in front of me sat a beautiful, red smoking coal — the coal that could keep my family warm through a dark and frigid night, the coal that could cook all of our food, the coal that could boil our water. I ever so delicately placed it in my (this time) properly bundled nest and held it up like a taco, then blew on it lightly from underneath, just like I was taught. The grass began to smoke, then smoked a little more, then really got going, plumes of smoke coming from the magic I held in my hands. “Keep going,” Michael said quietly next to me, “It’s gonna go any second now.” I kept blowing on it, not too hard, and the smoke billowed out until one more deep breath and the wad of grass in my hands gloriously burst into flames.

“YES!!” we both yelled, ecstatic. Michael beamed as he quickly showed me how to put the burning ball of grass in the fire pit before I set my hands on fire and how to add small sticks to it to build it up and keep it going.

“I made fire! From sticks!” I exclaimed to Michael, as he supportively nodded in celebration. I had tears in my eyes, feeling emotionally overwhelmed from my huge recent life changes, from sleeping on a bed of straw in a tipi in the middle of a field in Montana, and from the innate feeling of belonging you get from making fire from sticks. I’m hoping Michael didn’t notice, and as he held out his hand for a high five I think electricity shot between our palms when they touched.

Dumpster Date

Kelsi Shay — Sat, 07 Sep 2024 00:11:20 GMT

It was dark and cold as I stood on the sidewalk around the back of the Safeway and watched packages of meat fly out of the dumpster and hit the asphalt with a thud. I could see Michael’s headlamp reflecting off of the metal dumpster walls as he rummaged around in there, completely immersed in both the giant dumpster and his task at hand. I had the much cleaner job of keeping an eye out for employees coming to dump more trash, ready to sound the alarm, and gathering what he threw onto the sidewalk to put in the car. I picked up fully packaged steak, ground beef, a pack of pre-made kabobs, another steak, a slightly crushed box of granola bars, and three blocks of nice cheese. Ranger was roaming around the area sniffing and peeing on the grass, ignoring me completely. Michael climbed out of the dumpster and came to meet me with his hands full of apples and slightly bruised tomatoes and a dented but sealed gallon of milk.

“Dang! That’s a lot of food,” I said, excited to be doing something that felt a little dangerous but that in reality was just taking stuff out of the trash that was bound for the landfill. I had heard of the concept of dumpster diving; rescuing food from grocery store dumpsters that’s thrown out because it’s blemished, the packaging is damaged, or it’s met its arbitrary expiration date. But I hadn’t expected it to be quite so prolific.

“We’re just getting started,” Michael grinned, the light from his headlamp temporarily blinding me as he gave me a friendly slap on the shoulder and whistled for Ranger to stop messing around and get back in the car. Ranger trotted over from around the corner and climbed in, still ignoring me but keeping his nose in the air as he got a delightful whiff of steak.

Next we went to a small, high end grocery market where the dumpster was right outside the back door of the business. Michael climbed right in and started scavenging while I stood in the dark, again keeping an eye out.

“Last time I was here an employee came out and I thought for sure he was going to yell at me, but then he said hold on, went back inside, and came out and passed me a box full of cheese!” Michael exclaimed delightedly as he stood in the dumpster and passed me multiple pre-made sandwiches, packaged chicken salad, some fruit salad, several containers of yogurt, and a big packaged cake. He lifted himself up and out and I couldn’t help but notice how graceful and agile he was as he moved, clearly a natural athlete. As we got back to his car he cracked open the cake and we ate it with our fingers and laughed at our good fortune. Ranger stuck his nose in our faces from the backseat and I let him lick a tiny taste of frosting from my fingers. I caught Michael watching us, “He doesn’t usually like other people,” he said, giving me a look I can’t quite describe before putting the lid on the cake and throwing the car into reverse.

Next stop was Walmart, where they had normal sized garbage cans lined up outside for all their unsellable produce. I decided to participate this time, and opened a can to find it full to the top with whole watermelons.

“Michael! Look at this!” I said, now really getting into the hunt. I was more enthused when I didn’t have to climb into a full sized dumpster, mainly because I was afraid I wouldn’t have the upper body strength to get myself out again. Last thing I wanted was to be discovered stuck in the bottom of a slimy dumpster, leaping and grasping for the rim as more trash came raining down on my head. But this was easy. We each grabbed a watermelon and checked the other bins. There was one full of tomatoes, another full of bananas, another full of discarded iceberg lettuce. So much food. And in Montana, where it’s cold nine months out of the year, it was like it was all still refrigerated. Just as I awkwardly closed the lid with one hand and cradled another watermelon in the other, two employees came out the back door.

“Hey!” they shouted, “You can’t do that!”

We held onto our plunder and calmly walked back to the car and got in, but they followed us, cigarettes in hand, blue vests with name tags shining in the light from the street lamps, the man yelling and the woman pulling out her cell phone to take photos of our faces and the license plate. My face burned in embarrassment, as it felt like I just got caught shoplifting, or doing something unquestionably bad. But Michael said to them before closing his door, “Once something is deemed trash, it becomes public property, we’re not stealing and we’re not doing anything illegal.” They didn’t listen to a word he said but continued to bash our moral characters as we reversed the car and left the scene.

We were both quiet for several minutes before I said, “That wasn’t illegal, was it?”

“No,” he said. “It’s only technically illegal if there’s ‘no trespassing’ signs, and there weren’t any signs so we’re okay.”

“Why do they care so much then? All of that food was just headed to rot in the landfill. And they work for like, the biggest corporation of all time that is definitely not as passionate about their low level employees’ wellbeing as those employees are about their trash. And it’s not like we were taking food they were going to donate!” I was getting flustered.

“I don’t know, people are weird about dumpster diving. It’s like they think that by eating waste we’re stealing, because we’re not going in there to spend money on the fresh food instead. Maybe they’re just pissed they don’t have balls to do it,” he said.

“But we’re literally eating trash!” I said, still amazed by the employees’ passionate response. “If it’s just going to rot and we’re the ones putting ourselves at risk by eating food that is supposedly inedible… No, definitely not inedible, just unsellable for the giant corporation they work for… Whatever,” I sighed in frustration.

Michael shrugged and didn’t say anything while he merged onto the freeway that would lead us over the mountain pass and back to camp. I looked in the backseat and admired the pile of food that would feed all of us at camp for the next week.

“Want some more cake?” He asked, grinning wildly as the headlamp he forgot to turn off blinded me once again.

Rivercamp

Kelsi Shay — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 21:47:29 GMT

I pulled into the rural riverfront property, rolled down my window, and was immediately met with frigid spring air and a barking dog. This was spring in southwest Montana, where apparently a day in May had as much chance of getting snow as it did warm sunshine. I double checked the address I had written down and determined this must be the right place, but as I peered out my windshield at a ramshackle shed with plastic barrels and trash skewed all over the yard I felt both a pang of nervous excitement and a pit of worry sinking in my stomach at the same time. Did I make a terrible mistake?

This was indeed my chosen destination, a place called Rivercamp, that was advertised online as an outdoor school for adults to learn wilderness living skills such as how to make fire with sticks, build shelters, identify edible plants, and learn to make real leather by hand out of deer hides. I was arriving in time to help with the spring kid’s camps the school hosted while also learning these survival skills myself. The cooler of grass fed ground beef in the back of the truck was my trade for tuition.

“Well, here we go,” I muttered to myself, squaring my shoulders and opening the truck door. As I got out and stretched, I was more sore than I’d like to admit after trying but failing to sleep in what was supposed to be my new home on wheels. A small terrier started immediately yapping at my ankles and an older gentleman wandered out of the squalor brushing his teeth. I was supposed to be meeting the owner of the school this morning, so I assumed this was him. This was not, but was a man named Ed who shushed the dog by picking her up and cradling her in his arms while shaking my hand as the foamy toothbrush dangled from his mouth.

He jumped right in to giving me a tour of the place which started with showing me “The Shed”; aptly named, as it was one of the only two structures on the property and was a mid-sized shed that was converted into a community kitchen space. It contained a wood stove right in the center, a counter that was currently covered in a bunch of crumbs from a stale loaf of bread that was half cut into and an open jar of peanut butter, a pile of pots and pans and a big sink that didn’t appear to work based on the pile of dirty dishes sitting in it, and an assortment of mismatched thrift store chairs encircling the stove. It didn’t exactly have a woman’s touch, you could say.

We made our way back outside, Ed providing constant commentary about his tent, his dog, the weather, and how he had been hired as the lead instructor for the kid’s camps that were about to take place. I heard a younger voice behind me say quietly, “Ah, so you’ve met Ed… We say he could have his own show called ‘Ed Talks’ because he never stops.. I’m Jack by the way,” the guy said, shaking my hand. Jack appeared to be about my age, late twenties, was tall and bearded and was dressed in completely normal clothing, cargo shorts and a gray t-shirt and aviator sunglasses. He seemed like a normal dude and I felt a little wave of encouragement that this was not a horrible mistake.

Shortly after my introductions to Ed and Jack, another pickup truck drove up the long driveway and parked next to my truck. Two more young men rolled out of the truck dressed head to toe in buckskin leather clothing. They were tan, muscley, and clearly dirty, sporting mountain men outfits and laughing as they emerged from the truck. A big orange dog came slinking up to me wearily, not growling but definitely not friendly either.

“Ranger, stop,” said a stern voice, and I glanced up and was met with dark brown eyes and a very handsome tan face. “I’m Michael,” he said, sticking his hand out to shake and holding my gaze just a little too long. I felt a small flutter in my belly and thought, uh oh, this one is trouble, while I smiled and introduced myself. The other guy proceeded to roll around on the ground and stretch his hamstrings - he had dreadlocks that were half falling apart and I noticed his handmade buckskin outfit was crafted into overalls that were tailored so the crotch was really baggy and the legs were tight at the ankles. Michael looked at him and laughed and said, “And that’s Kevin.” Kevin giggled and waved at me.

“Hey Kevin,” I said as he continued to do yoga poses in the grass. I caught Michael’s eye and we both shrugged and smiled.

I was surprised to learn that there was a small tipi out in the field for me to live in. It was currently unoccupied so I opted for that instead of the back of my pickup - how many times in my life would I have a personal tipi to live in? Michael led me out to the field and explained the layout of the property as we went. Upon seeing my thin, accordion style foam sleeping pad in the back of my truck he suggested I make a better bed to provide more protection from the unforgivingly cold Montana ground. This was the beginning of May, but it was still freezing or below consistently at night. I spent the rest of the afternoon hand cutting a bunch of long dried grass from the field and made it into a shapely pile, then wrapped my blanket around it to shape it into a natural mattress. This new highly allergenic bed (it’s hard to live outside with seasonal allergies but you adjust!) plus my sleeping pad, sleeping bag, and small pile of belongings made the tipi a cozy little space, with a small, rock ringed fire pit in the middle for warmth. I sat on my new bed and looked out the open flap of the tipi to see the golden grass blowing in the breeze and the snow capped Tobacco Root mountains towering beyond. I understood why they called it Big Sky Country now; the endless expanse could swallow you whole. I shivered and pulled my sweater tighter and made my way back to The Shed. It was time to make new friends.

The three walled shed was surprisingly toasty warm when I went in, the wood stove in the center roaring and the guys all sitting in chairs huddled around it eating stew. They passed me a clean-ish looking bowl and I wiped it out with my shirt and scooped out potatoes, lentils, and beef in a steaming hot broth. The conversation was easy and as strange of a place as this little camp appeared to be, it was already starting to feel like home. I was eager to learn their stories rather than share my own, as the wounds of my recent life choice were still terribly raw. They were all there for their own reasons, but the theme was pretty similar for each of us - we were all at a crossroads in our lives and chose this weird little camp in rural Montana over whatever it was we were leaving.

“Ya’ll want some more stew?” Michael said, giving it a stir with the ladle.

“Ya’ll?” I said, raising my eyebrows at the taste of southern flair.

“I grew up in North Carolina, but my parents were New York transplants. I’ve been living out west for the past five years working as a wilderness therapy guide. I came here because I was burnt out from guiding and wanted to learn how to make buckskin and this was the only school for adults that would also take dogs.” He fished a piece of beef from the pot and let Ranger eat it directly from his fork in a surprisingly delicate fashion. The big orange beast that looked like some sort of lab/hound mix was always without a leash or collar but naturally glued to Michael’s side.

When it was my turn, I briefly explained that I was here because I had recently left the farm I was working on and while I’d learned a lot of homesteading and farming skills I wanted to learn some ancestral skills too. What I didn’t tell them was that the only reason I was there was because my long term partner and I had gone through a slow and painful breakup while still living under the same roof, selling off all of our jointly owned belongings and farm animals and the only other options I had thought of were moving home to live with my mom and get an office job or to drive to the southwest to live in my truck and bum around and hike in the red rocks until I ran out of money. I didn’t mention that my ex boyfriend was actually the one who found the camp and suggested I try going there, and that he thought it’d be good for me to be around people. I didn’t want to admit that I was once again doing the thing that he suggested I do, as it was always my tendency to follow his lead. This was a new start as an “independent woman,” even though I felt lost and naked and completely on my own. But I didn’t say any of that.

The fire burned low and it was late, so everyone left to go to their respective sleeping shelters. I walked quickly back to my tipi, brushed my teeth and peed in the pitch black field, and curled up in my sleeping bag on my straw mattress. Then I sneezed. But I smiled as I settled in for sleep, feeling for the first time like coming here was the right choice.

The next morning, after breakfast in The Shed, Michael volunteered to walk me across the field to show me the “composting toilet.” They called it the “Wiki-Poo,” and it was essentially a tipi made from big sticks with a pit toilet in the middle that definitely wasn’t composting and an almost empty bottle of hand sanitizer laying discarded on it’s side.

“Nice,” I chuckled.

“I know, it’s pretty gross,” he said. “If I were you I would just dig a hole somewhere back in the brush by your tipi and have your own bathroom.” I made a mental note that that’s what I would do that afternoon as it appeared that there was not much of a regimented schedule to follow.

“Thanks for taking the time to show me everything,” I said as we left the stinky Wiki-Poo behind.

“Sure, no problem,” he said, and as we walked back across the field Michael blurted out, “So, you got a boyfriend? What’s up with this farm story?” I could see a slight color rise in his cheeks when I glanced at him.

“Well, uh, no.. I guess not,” I stammered and blushed. That was the first time in eight years the answer to that question was a no and it definitely didn’t come out naturally. “My partner, well ex-partner I guess, and I just broke up a few months ago,” I said. Michael seemed to noticeably perk up at that. “We were together for a long time and were managing his parent’s farm property.. But it just didn’t end up working out,” I trailed off. That was the easiest way to explain it, for now at least.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said kindly, while trying to hide the smile on his face. Then in the next breath, “Have you ever been dumpster diving?”

“Nope,” I said, smiling and happy for the change of subject.

“Do you want to go with me tonight?” I smiled and nodded in response.

Dear Deer

Kelsi Shay — Mon, 02 Sep 2024 19:37:28 GMT

I came to a rolling stop as I watched the doe cross the road in front of me. It was early, just getting light, and I was running on adrenaline only after having barely slept the night before at a random campground somewhere in the damp and freezing forests of northern Idaho. It was the first night I’d spent in the back of my 1992 Toyota pickup, sharing the truck bed with the few belongings I now owned. I had a cooler full of frozen ground beef from a cow we recently butchered, a bag of homemade granola, a jar of peanut butter, and dehydrated apples from the farm’s orchard. I had a Tibetan rug from a previous trip to Nepal laid down in the back to give my new “tiny home” some character, a basket with yarn and knitting needles, my hiking backpack filled with clothes, and my sleeping pad, down sleeping bag, and a pillow. I was now a certified minimalist.

The doe stood in the middle of the remote highway, the road heavily forested on either side. The sunlight was just beginning to filter through the trees and warm her brown coat, I could see the steam coming off her fur in the frosty morning air. She was beautiful.

The rural highway was perfectly still as I watched her grace. But as if in slow motion, the moment was broken as a troubling guest arrived - a semi truck emerged around the shady bend. The deer’s ears flicked and she turned from me to watch the truck barreling towards her.

“No, no, no,” I said under my breath, and honked the horn to try to get her to move. I inched the pickup towards her, thinking if I got close enough she would startle and run out of the way, but she stood her ground, frozen and staring blankly at the semi truck. It didn’t even slow down.

BA BAM BAM.

She slammed and bounced off the side of my pickup as the semi barreled past. My small truck shook from the speed and the impact of the deer hitting the side. I sat in shock, then glanced in the rearview mirror, not sure what I was hoping for — I suppose either a miraculous survival or a clean and sudden death. Please, God, don’t let her be anywhere in the gray area in between. That’s what I can’t handle, the mortally wounded who aren’t going to live but who aren’t all the way gone yet either.

She was definitely dead, that was clear. She was bizarrely sliced almost exactly in half from the impact of hitting both vehicles at once. I shuddered and left the scene, then made it about 200 feet before I made a U-turn on the once again empty highway. I wondered if any of the meat was salvageable. That’s what I was going to Montana for, wasn’t it? To learn to “live off the land”? I knew the people at the camp I was going to definitely scavenged roadkill… so maybe if I showed up with some fresh meat this would give me some street cred. I tentatively pulled up next to the poor doe again but there was definitely nothing left to save. Dead, just like that, from a few too many seconds of indecision.

I hoped that this sudden death, this sudden splicing in half, was not an omen for my current life situation. Although that’s exactly how I felt; torn in two — one half of me pummeled from a heart wrenching and drawn out breakup with my partner of the past eight years, the other half tentatively yet guiltily excited for a new adventure and sense of freedom ahead. While it felt like my two halves were messily stitched together with a whole lot of confusion and ragged edges in between, I was still whole, and still alive. So I turned around and kept heading east, still six hours to go before I made it to big sky country.