The butcher’s binky

By Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey
Reader Contributor

“It was of a dirty pacifier, plucked from the trail and held up for the camera with Alex’s boots and the changing colors of an autumn forest in the background. Photo by Alex Carey.

A couple of days into this year’s rifle hunting season, my husband Alex sent me a photo. The text notification made my heart race. He’d been gone for a few hours, off to hike a route I knew well. If there were elk bedded in their habitual places, he’d surely have bumped them by now and very well could have gotten off a shot. A text message bearing, “Attachment: 1 Image,” during hunting season is often the first signal that it’s time for celebration.

Upon opening the message, I laughed. The photo wasn’t of an elk or even a scenic shot of Lake Pend Oreille from the mountainside above East Hope. It was of a dirty pacifier, plucked from the trail and held up for the camera with Alex’s boots and the changing colors of an autumn forest in the background.

The pacifier had a direct tie to the reason I was at home rather than beside Alex on his hunt: Liam, our 3-month-old son. A few weeks before, we’d walked the same trail as a family — along with my dad and cousin — on a mission to clear brush and blowdowns in preparation for the upcoming season. The pacifier was clipped to the pack in which I carried Liam, strapped to my chest, during that trek. 

It must have fallen off along the way and it was no surprise that I hadn’t noticed. I brought it along as a sort of insurance policy should the baby be particularly inconsolable on our hike; but, as it turned out, he didn’t let out so much as a whimper during the four-hour journey over logs, under limbs and across creeks. Chock it up to genetics or the magic powers of baby-wearing, but, in any case, it made for a great memory.

“Binky’s big adventure!” I replied.

Even with Liam to consider, I managed to make it out of the house for two days of hunting thanks to help from my mom. On opening day, I found myself in awe of the silence. Among the things that have become abundantly evident about my son since his birth in July is that he doesn’t thrive in quiet spaces. 

I recently discovered that if I need to pump gas, I keep music playing on my phone and place it next to him in the back seat to avoid a stopped-car-induced meltdown. His naps feature background music, and we’ve determined that a white noise machine does wonders to ensure that nighttime sleep lasts.

Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey and up-and-coming hunter Liam Carey butcher an elk from this year’s hunt. Photo by Travis Kiebert.

In the past three months, I developed an inadvertent fear of silence, as I’m sure many new parents do. In the woods, as I anticipated the sound of large ungulate bodies crashing through brush, I embraced the profound hush with new gratitude.

While Alex and I didn’t make a harvest on our opening day adventure, it was a perfect day of walking, listening and using our fine-tuned hunting sign language to communicate and make each other laugh. 

In a few short years, we’ll have to make room for another person in our opening day plans. I imagine Liam contributing his own signals to our secret, silent language, and learning the names we’ve

given different landmarks along our opening day route, based on our experiences over the past seven years of hunting it together: cat crossing, skunk hole, table rock, the spike’s resting place and many more.

I grew up hunting elk in Hope, and it is my intention that Liam will, too. In the meantime, he’ll cut  his teeth — literally and figuratively — on the spoils of my family’s sacred harvests, and take part in the teamwork of butchering in the coming weeks. He’ll be strapped to my chest while we carve roasts and grind burger, just as he was on his first hike. Pacifier optional.

Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey is editor emeritus of the Sandpoint Reader and has contributed a story about her family’s annual observance of elk season each year since 2017.