Distinctly Montana Magazine

W W W. D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA NA . C O M 23 It was a clear and still day with a hint of wood smoke in the air from the season's waning fires. By mid-morning we had shed our long-sleeve shirts, the daybreak chill a distant memory. After a couple miles from the trailhead, we had stepped over more than one pile of bear scat stained purple with the last of the summer huckle- berries. We talked nervously to avoid surprising anything above us on the food chain, but went silent again as the trail guided us above the tree line and visibility improved. We ate a late lunch high on a ridge and in awe of the sweeping Scapegoat Wilderness in front of us. at afternoon we climbed higher and found a scree slope that looked as if it had been recently plowed. We began our nervous chatter again as I recalled from a col- lege course that army cutworm moths fly up from farmlands at night and land high in the Rocky Mountains, where they burrow under boulders during the day. A grizzly can eat thousands of these moths in a single day, an essential source of calories before hibernation. Back at the trailhead, with the last light leaving the sky, we peeled socks from our blistered feet. My body was tired, but I was filled with gratitude. I was grateful that Montana is endowed with mil- lions of acres of public land where we can have experiences like the one my wife and I had just had. I also felt thankful that someone had the foresight to set aside the Scapegoat and other places like it. It would be years before I knew whom to thank for the Scape- goat. His name is Cecil Garland... Montanans have what people in most states lost long ago and now envy—a vast amount of wide-open, undeveloped country to get lost in. Long alpine ridges like the one in the Scapegoat, steep moun- tain cirques cupping turquoise lakes, and unbroken prairie that eventually gives way to the buttes, breaks and badlands of eastern Montana. Untouched since the unimaginable tectonic forces and ancient ice ages created them, these wild places are now the fabric of the Treasure State and the setting of stories that define who we are as Montanans. Many of these places will endure just as they are today because they are protected as wilderness. e stories of protecting these vast landscapes are often as inter- esting as the stories of traveling through them. After the Second World War, in the midst of a booming economy and sprawling urban growth, our forests were disappearing at an alarming rate. We needed a response to that unfettered loss of our natural heritage. A uniquely American idea, the Wilderness Act was that response. e legislation defined and recognized wilderness as an "area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." When most people think of wilderness in Montana, they im- mediately think of "the Bob," a 1.5 million-acre tangle of moun- tains, rivers, and grizzly bears pieced together by three different wilderness areas—the Bob Marshall, Great Bear, and Scapegoat. But Montana is home to 16 different wilderness areas totaling 3.5 million acres of unspoiled backcountry. Wilderness protects Granite Peak, the highest in Montana at 12,799 feet, and lower-lying land- scapes such as the short grass prairie of UL Bend and the pothole country of Medicine Lake, close to the North Dakota border. e Mission Mountain Tribal Wilderness, with its dramatic waterfalls, high alpine lakes, and perpetual snowfields, became the first tribal wilderness area in the country when the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes set it aside in 1982. And Bear Trap Canyon, one of four units comprising the Lee Metcalf Wilderness, was the first Bureau of Land Management wilderness area designated in the nation. Each of these 16 areas has an origin story—a creation myth, so to speak. And each of these wilderness areas comes with its own set of heroes, people who relentlessly pushed for its protection and took on special interests and powerful individuals along the way. S EVERAL YEARS AGO, MY WIFE AND I WOKE BEFORE DAYBREAK AND SET OUT TO WHERE THE BLACKFOOT RIVER STARTS AS A TRICKLE. From Highway 200, we bounced up a rutted Forest Service road with our coffee sloshing in our truck's cup holders. We ar- rived at the empty trailhead parking lot just as the sun was coming over the Continental Divide. JESSIE LEE VERNADO Montana wildflowers in the Scapegoat wilderness and Helena National Forest. by JOHN TODD

• Cover