Westrn Classifieds

A vintage Bear Grizzly recurve, assorted fly fishing books, used women’s gear, a room for rent, and a SWF seeking SJM 🏹

The Westrn Classifieds feature items and services for sale, missed connections, opportunities, and more. Contact editor@thewestrn.com to inquire about listings.

For Sale

A LIFTY GIFTY: Despised Vintage Bear Archery Grizzly Recurve Bow

Seller: Gabby Zaldumbide

During COVID, my former employer’s compound bow was ready for pick up at his local archery shop. I happened to be in the office that afternoon. He asked if I wanted to tag along. Ooo, archery store! I love archery, I thought. Plus, a break from these never-ending job duties? Win-win!

While he chatted with the clerk about tune-ups, I wandered over to the minuscule lefty department. A gleaming, sage green recurve caught my eye. A classy, left-handed bow in my favorite color? Sick! The traditional archery world intrigued me greatly and that Bear Grizzly could be my way in. Sadly, its price tag read $250, too much to justify spending given my monthly salary of $1,000.

My boss and the clerk saw me drooling. The clerk asked if I wanted to shoot it. Um, duh, of course. So he led me to a little range in the back of the store where I subsequently failed to fully draw the string and whiffed five arrows. I hit everything but the 10-yard target. Regardless, I was in love. 

“Are you going to buy it?” my boss asked me. 

“I want to,” I replied, “but I shouldn’t.” 

“Well, let me buy it for you. Think of it as a summer bonus.” 

No way, a bonus! 

Thrilled by his sudden generosity, I picked out six practice arrows, a shooting glove, and an arm guard, and brought my $40 bounty to the register.

“Oh, I’m not buying that other stuff. Just the bow.”

The feeling of betrayal was a gut punch. I do everything you ask me to, I thought, but I’m not worth another forty bucks?

I’ve been gifted a bow twice. The first was a Bear Wild compound bow my ex-boyfriend bought, sized, and sighted in with love. I’m keeping it forever, even if it breaks beyond repair. Unfortunately, the recurve bow was not a gift from the heart.

I earned $12,000 a year pre-tax at my previous job. I was simultaneously earning my master’s degree, so I paid for my rent and groceries with carefully budgeted student loans. I managed a team of 35 brand ambassadors, ran five social media accounts, posted on each account three times a day, scheduled email campaigns, maintained the website and blog, traveled to teach people how to hunt, and made my boss’s dreams come true while in school full time.

This job was so overwhelming that my brain blocked out much of my time there. But three events are still clear in my mind: the time we taught Black people to hunt on a cotton plantation, the moment he suggested I abandon my dog, and the day he bought me this bow. I wish my brain would delete all three.

I usually need to contemplate emotional events for a while to fully comprehend my feelings. But this time, still at the register, I knew why I felt betrayed. He was unwilling to spend the additional $40 for me to actually use the bow. The “bonus” wasn’t born from generosity; it was an attempt to keep me from quitting.

But I felt too awkward, too embarrassed by the idea of denying a “gift” in public to do anything about it. Like a proper 25-year-old Midwestern girl, I buried my emotions and put on a happy face. I sunk into myself as I swiped my personal credit card.

The card reader beeped and the bow became a mirror, one in which I would face my own disgust, knowing I would never shoot it again. 

A few months later, my boss asked me to blatantly discriminate against another coworker. I refused. When he accused me of breaking my NDA and threatened legal action, I drew the line.

My two-week notice was accepted with silence. I immediately lost access to my work email and everything needed to close out my job. During that time, he talked to me once, briefly. Then I was gone. A year later, he sold the company and everything else was gone. I guess he took his own advice: “If a business can’t afford to pay for its labor, it shouldn’t stay in business.”

Today, my previous employer bucks lift chairs at my favorite ski resort. Thank goodness ski gear is so physically concealing. 

“Have a great run!” He told me and my boyfriend as we slid into the loading area. 

Damn right I will, I thought. No thanks to you.

Today, nearly three years post-resignation, I have failed to do anything with the bow. I moved twice and packed it with me both times, convinced its emotional weight would dissipate if I held onto it long enough. I’ve hung it on the wall in all three homes, the cursed mirror reflecting my failure to speak up for myself, call out bullshit, and leave a bad job before it got worse.  

Part of me thought I could pull back the string and release my associations with this bow on my own merits. 

The truth is, I can’t. I need help. I need to learn self-advocacy, and I need to sell this bow. 

BOUGHT AND RELEASED: Assorted Fly Fishing Beginners’ Guides, Instructional Books

Seller: Katie Hill

Learn from the wisdom of Gierach, Deeter, and other gods in this like-new stack of educational fishing titles. Amassed over years of listless, slack-jawed shuffling through outdoor sections in various bookstores, these hot tips are bound to help you unlock explosive bites galore. 

I knew the moment I set into a 22-inch cutthroat trout on someone else’s streamer, with someone else’s rod, in someone else’s boat, under someone else’s instruction, that I had achieved angling enlightenment. These novice materials are of no use to me anymore. There’s no shame in being a beginner, and I remember those days fondly. But now that I stand among the greats and look back on where I started, it only feels right to extend a helping hand to the next person in line. 

Besides, pretty soon I’ll be sight casting to permit with the Prime Minister of Belize. Between my trusty bottle of Lagavulin 16 Year and my rhino horn-handled hemostats, I won’t have room in my $400 hip pack for these sacred texts. They’re ready for their next student, and I’m ready for my Fly Fishing Hall of Fame induction ceremony. 

Dram, anyone?

LAVENDER SCAR(E)PA: Women’s Performance Ski Boots and Technical Clothing

Seller: Kestrel Keller

When transgender people start seeking gender-affirming care, our doctors are supposed to give us information about the risks and benefits of various medical treatments. But there’s no informed consent specific to outdoorspeople. And if there’s one thing they didn’t warn me about when I started taking testosterone, it’s that most of my gear would stop fitting very, very quickly. 

Most devastatingly, my calves are now too jacked for my beloved women’s ski boots. I limped through last ski season by taking the tongue out of my touring boots for a last-minute trip to Norway. I left my downhill boots fully unbuckled to make spring turns in the Adirondacks during the total solar eclipse. I pulled over in a muddy grass patch on the side of a mogul field and took them off because my feet were cramping so badly that I became nauseous. 

What was I supposed to tell the ski patrol if they stopped to check on me? 

“No, I’m fine! Just literally too gay to ski today.” 

In the world of problems trans people face, file this one under “the joke’s on me.” There’s never been a better time to be a woman in the outdoors, so it’s ironic that I quit being one. I waited years — decades even — for the market to provide a wide-ranging selection of stiff ski boots in my size, mountain-biking shorts with great style and functionality, and technical hunting pants that have useful pockets and make my ass look great. Just when I’d finally bargain-hunted my way into my dream wardrobe of outdoor apparel, I underwent boy puberty at age 40 and outgrew it all at once. 

If you have a mondo 25 footbed and want some eggplant-colored ski boots, or if you need some technical pants in an 8 or a 10, make me an offer. My gains are your gain.

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For Rent

PRIVATE ROOM FOR RENT: Roommate (Not Really) Wanted

Landlord: Maggie Slepian

I currently live alone with my cat in a spacious house. Let me be clear: this is my desired living arrangement. But regrettably, due to the 11-percent inflation over the last two years and the precarious state of my industry, I can no longer afford to live alone and am being forced by Big Government Property Taxes to take on a roommate at the advanced age of 36. If you, dear reader, are in your thirties and trying to survive in this overpriced mountain town, you probably don't want a roommate situation either. This will work well for both of us. We can live in a shared space while pretending to exist in different (more successful) life stages. 

No longer is house hunting the fun game it was in our early twenties. Gone are the days of cramming four people into a dingy three-bedroom house and digging coins out of couch cushions to pay the $276 rent because we saved money by putting the fourth guy in a walk-in closet. It's a bleaker situation now, and I know you feel it, too. Available houses get snatched up by short-term rental agencies and out-of-state second-home owners. The dream of solo living has vanished with the development of $2 million condos next to the bakery that sells $14 loaves of bread. 

Looking for someone quiet and clean, a little depressed at the state of our town, and open to chipping in for the economy-sized bottle of olive oil. I can't afford to buy it outright, but if we split it we'll save money on volume. Don’t worry, you get your own bathroom. 

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Connections

SEND PICS: SWF Seeks SJM

SWF: Nicole Qualtieri

I’m a 40 y/o single white female living in rural Montana. Out here it’s sagebrush and meadowlarks in the summer, and cow elk grazing on the barren hills in winter. I wake up whenever I want, then work at a job that I love. After work, I ride my two horses, go hiking if the weather permits, read a book, work on a painting, or watch whatever I want on the boob tube. Two dogs and one cat sleep in my bed every night. Only the brown dog snores on occasion. 

Besides the mild snoring, it’s so peaceful out here. The only noise that interrupts my day is an occasional paw scratching against the door, signaling that the brown dog wants to come back inside. When my coupled friends ask if single life is really all it’s cracked up to be, I typically shrug and say that sometimes it’s lonely. But that’s rarely true. I say it to appease their need to feel better about their own situations. I know their unasked question — Would I be better off single? 

I think, for most people, the answer is complicated. I’ve felt lonelier in the company of the wrong people than I’ve ever been alone on this little farm. I never look for those wrong people, only the right — and still I find myself wanting. It turns out, maybe I’m my own right person. I actually like her. She’s sort of fun, tbh. 

What would it take to choose someone else over myself? Perhaps this person would be permanently deployed but excellent at letter writing. Maybe they would live on a neighboring ranch. We would wave at each other once a day at 4:37 p.m. and have dinner twice a week — never causing too much bother at all. Perhaps it’s a wrongfully imprisoned journalist who doesn’t have access to paper. They will spend decades locked away in service of future press freedom. And I can be the woeful, martyred partner living stateside, an elegant but pulled-together woman who gets by on little and asks for nothing more. 

But, you know, if I was really honest with myself, what I actually want is the long-eared equivalent of a quiet, no-nonsense, mountain-safe hunting partner. 

I can see him in my mind’s eye, this big, gentle-hearted, giant-headed sorrel john mule to add to my little family of critters. He’s a cordial sort of mule, who might say ma’am if he could speak, with big ears to listen to sad sack secrets he’ll keep forever. His eyes will be the kind of brown you sink into, and his lower lip will hang a bit always. He’ll chase coyotes, feral dogs, and nefarious men out of my fields. I’ll saddle him up and ride him into the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness with a golden mustang on our tail, two dogs following, a tuxedo cat on his rump. We’ll all plod into the wild together. Come September, we’ll plod back out, with a bull elk in our packs.