By MICHELE MURRAY

I’ve never had to cut up a wild animal other than a fish for food. But I’ve rehearsed the process in my mind, especially when imagining the lifestyle of my Ojibwe Indian ancestors. 

Recently, opportunity arose when my husband Doug came home with a frozen quarter of a cow elk, a young one about two years old.

Doug's brother Dale had hunted it near Gunnison – a primitive region in central Colorado that seems almost as remote as Alaska due to its extreme climate, stark elevations and sparse human population. With two elk and a deer that wouldn’t all fit in his meat locker, Dale – whose family only eats meat if he hunts it – gave the frozen quarter to Doug.

For two days I looked in on the enormous animal shoulder as it thawed in our spare bathroom tub under a tarp. I was fascinated by the elk smell and partially visible fur – a smell and pelt that seemed strong in my memory, as if from an ancient time. 

When Doug finally deemed the meat ready, I was ridiculously giddy with excitement. I followed him like a child as he carried it outside and hung it from a tree. After an hour of skinning and removing large muscle groups from the bone of the hanging leg, we had two coolers full of meat to bring into the kitchen for further sectioning and packaging. We devoted the rest of the evening to making the portions smaller for storage in our freezer. 

Doug had sharpened large buck knives and a cleaver for the job. We wore our Carhartt coveralls, rubber boots, and rubber gloves and drank beer while listening to folk music on the CD player. 

As we worked, the dogs pressed against a slatted partition Doug had built to keep them out of the kitchen. They clearly were excited with craving for the elk meat, and we kept a cooler just for them. It held the bones, sinew, and other gristly scraps. Occasionally, I tossed them a piece. The cats also focused on us like panthers.

We were well into gently slicing and carefully separating what seemed to be obvious steaks from tidbits or unrecognizable cuts when I thought I heard the dogs humming a song to themselves:

We know this animal. We know what it is. Our ancestors chased it. We bit its stomach. We ran the Elk from the herd. We disemboweled her. Oh, happy hunt! We didn’t care if we got kicked. We brought the great animal down. We killed it for our pups. We were happy. We would live another day. 

I looked at the dogs and saw them grinning with their eyes, lost in a reverie of ancestral memories. In their eyes I saw the light of an ancient campfire.

Then I noticed the cats hovering above my shoulder from the top of the freezer. They too were singing:

We know this animal. We know what it is. Our ancestors stalked it. We sprang from ledges above to land on their backs. We were powerful and could break their necks. We dragged the Elk to hidden places and buried it in leaves. We pulled great pieces up high into branches of trees. We were happy. We would live another day.

The cats grinned, their eyes also reflecting the light from that ancient campfire. 

Then I opened my inner heart, and this time I heard the voices of an ancient family singing in the language of Anishinaabe. I saw a man wearing leather with beadwork of leaves and flowers on his puckered moccasins. He sang:

I know this animal. I know what it is. We call this one "Omashkooz." I bring Omashkooz to my family. My soul is lifted to see my old grandmother, my daughters and my babies take Omashkooz from my hand and work beside each other laughing. They are all happy and rub the jelly on their skin and eat fat as they work. 

And the old grandmother grinned and held the scapula – the shoulder blade she would use to scrape hides and dig for edible roots – to the sky and she sang:

I have a new one – my old one is so worn! Thank you, Omashkooz! We are all happy. We will live another day.

In my mind’s eye I saw an ancient campfire, the people around it satiated and appreciating Omashkooz. At their feet were sleeping wolf-dogs (ma-iingan). Outside the ring of fire’s light, wild-cats (gidagaa-bizhiw) watched from shadows. The crows that slept in the branches would be here outside our home tomorrow morning to scavenge the leftover hide and ribs. 

Then, more visions came.

I saw an ancient herd of elk. They had migrated down the spine of the Rocky Mountains during the Pleistocene along prehistoric valleys and survived climatic changes. They had evolved to survive in modern forests before humans came. I saw their ancient bones in the ground. It was then that it occurred to me that this young cow elk had been quartered up and divided – spread out unnaturally. I knew there was something else we must do.

"Doug, do you know where Dale killed this elk?"

My husband turned and saw emotion in my eyes. He knows his wife is kooky, but he is also a sensitive person with strong instincts. He trusts my insights. 

"I’m pretty sure I know where he hunted it. But, it’s way over by Gunnison – why?"

"Because I think we have to return some of the bones to her ancestral grounds. The elk herds have been migrating the same regions for generations – eons. Her bones need to lie where her ancestors' bones lie and where her family’s bones will lie when they fall. These bones should be picked over and eaten by the mice, crows and coyotes who also die there. That way, her spirit will go on." 

Doug understood. He promised we would take some of the bones to Gunnison.

Last weekend, we made pilgrimage to the young elk’s birthplace in Gunnison Canyon. We took her ribs and scapula (Old Grandmother didn’t need it anymore). We hiked up a ridge that overlooked a steep, grassy valley on the other side. It was the place Dale had waited before morning's light in the bushes beside an elk path. He knew the herd would soon descend from the high forest to graze in the meadow. He had waited patiently, and when he saw a young, two-year old cow elk step into view, he shot her.

Now we buried her ribs shallow in the ground and left the scapula on the surface for the mice, the crows and the coyotes. 

"My ancestors also hunted elk, you know," Doug said quietly. 

At first, I thought he was referring to a lineage of fur trappers and hunters in northern Europe and, later, pioneers of the American frontier. Just hunting the animals, I thought, wasn’t the same thing as sensing a spiritual connection with them. But then I realized that the Nordic hunters of subarctic Europe also crafted fetishes of elk, caribou, fish and bears – that they must have shared a similar spiritual connection to the one the North American indigenous people had with the migratory herds that sustained them.

We were about to begin our return descent down the ridge, when a large herd of elk moved into view from the shadows of a thick aspen woods on the other side of the valley. They emerged slowly, with visible caution, into the glade below. Lifting their heads, they eyed us with apparent alarm; yet they didn’t run. Instead, they seemed to stand frozen in time, riveted by the sight of something far more compelling behind us.

We carefully turned to look. 

A lone female elk, about two years old, was stepping carefully, exploring, listening. 

She was looking for a herd she had been separated from two weeks before.