Rise Up Rooted

Provisions for Survival: Meat in the Freezer

A Post by Jamie

Last weekend, we drove 280 miles x 2  to Gardiner, Montana to visit some of our favorite people in the world, the McAllisters.  These four brothers are at once loud and gruff yet full of love and laughter.  On the rare occasion that all four of them are in a room together, you can count on being entertained.   While in Gardiner we hoped to a little hunting.  This tiny Montana town sits on the boundary of Yellowstone National Park and boasts some of the country's best elk and deer habitats.  To the uninitiated eye, the landscape feels dusty and bleak, with a smattering of cactus and sagebrush dotting the surrounding mountains.  But Saturday night, as the sun set on a successful day of hunting, the sky bloomed rosy and cast infinite shades of pinks against the canyon walls and snow covered peaks.  The energy and life of the land was undeniable.  In a field of sagebrush, with baby Moon on my back, my husband at my side, and good friends surrounding me, I felt like the luckiest girl under the Big Sky.   

Provisions for Survival: Wild Beginnings

Sang from the mountaintops by Jamie Herring

My folks raised me as a child of the tundra, river, and the woods.  Although my mom and dad have very little in common (except for their union which resulted in me), their mutual passion and respect for the ways of the wild will always be strong.  As a testament to their belief in the importance of fresh air, feeding ourselves, and hard work, they brought me on my first moose hunt when I was three months old.  Bundled in hand-sewn quilts, my folks and I flew up in poppa Jimmy’s red and white Cesssna Super Cub.  We joined Granny, Poppa, Jack Robert, Olinka Yako, and Trooper Don Richardson who'd made the days-long hundreds-of-mile journey upriver in the two-story cabined 40-footer fiberglass boat to eventually arrive at Sterling Landing on the upper Kuskokwim, below McGrath.  Granny carried me to the tops of the brown tundra hills as Poppa glassed the valleys below.  Mom breastfed me on the water, beside hunting rifles, under changing birch trees, and in the cart of a three-wheeler on the way to Takotna.  Dad carried me in a pack close to his chest, on the hunt and laid me down in the tall grass when and we smelled moose coming close.   These acts of my family were at once ordinary and extraordinary.  They simply raised me to be real.

Provisions for Survival: Hunting for Gold

Dispatched from the Tree Farm by Katie Basile

When we were kids, my brother, cousins and I spent hours trekking through the douglas fir in search of strange bugs and blue-bellied lizards. Recently we found ourselves out in the trees once again, knee deep in ferns, covered in small spiny burs, and back on the hunt. But this time we had golden mushrooms on our minds.