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Head of the Minam River, Eagle Cap Wilderness, 1995.

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JACK WARD THOMAS

Foreword byJohn Maclean

A B O O N E A N D C R O C K E T T C L U B P U B L I C AT I O NMissoula, Montana | 2015

Wandering the High Lonesome

Foreword by John Maclean viii

Preface xiii

1. The Old Forest Service Guard Station at Mormon—Snake River Canyon 3

2. No Beginning, No Ending, Only Eternal Turning 13

3. Hells Canyon—Jack’s Cabin and the Old Grimes Place 27

4. A Three-Day Wilderness Getaway? It Can Be Done 47

5. Minam River in the Eagle Cap Wilderness—Red’s Horse Ranch 55

6. New Pilgrims in the Wilderness—Fast Learners Preferred 79

7. Does Wilderness Have the Power to Heal? Maybe 93

8. “The Promised Land Always Lies on the Other Side of a Wilderness” 98

9. Competition Even in the Wilderness—Sharing the Bounty 118

10. If Not Grouse, We’ll Settle for Brook Trout 135

11. Riding Out Front Is Different from Trailing Behind 147

CONTENTS

12. “You Gotta Know What’s Enough” 163

13. Green Pastures and Still Waters 173

14. Wilderness and a Summer of Discontent 190

15. The Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness, Bill Brown’s Pride 202

16. A Return to the Eagle Cap—None Too Soon! 207

17. A Trip to the Wilderness with the Undersecretary of Agriculture—A Chance to Say Thanks and Good-Bye 225

18. One Last Return to the Eagle Cap Wilderness 233

Epilogue 247

Map of Northeast Oregon 252

Appendix National Forest Wilderness Areas—A Try at

Improved Management 255

The Sixth National Wilderness Conference 262

Publisher’s Note 268

Author’s Acknowledgments 271

FORE WORD

down deep I know there is, in reality, no beginning and no ending—only an eternal turning Dust to dust, it is said I think that emphasis is wrong: what lies in between is the essence of everything

Jack Ward Thomas, Wilderness Journals

W ilderness Journals is the personal account of a burly and intelligent wildlife scientist from the Texas outback, Jack Ward Thomas He loves the outdoors—especially

its wildest parts—hunts and fishes, and thinks hard about what he’s doing He also served as chief of the U S Forest Ser-vice during a turbulent period in the life of the agency, from 1993 to 1996 Before, during, and after his tenure as chief he made many horse-packing trips into Wilderness Areas, most often with a sidekick named Bill Brown, and sat alone at the end of the day updating his journal by the flickering light of a campfire

Wilderness provided him solace and refreshment of spirit These are the familiar gifts offered by time spent in the bosom of nature, away from the hustle-bustle of a crowded life And with each mess of brook trout that Thomas catches, dips in salt and pepper and breadcrumbs, and fries in bacon grease, that journal records a philo-sophical rumination or historical summary or meditation on life and

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death It’s his reflections on mortality in particular, and the way the theme plays out in the many years covered by his journals, that give the book an elevated narrative curve There’s plenty of wildlife gazing, trail riding, horse sweat, and fly fishing, enough to create envy in the heart of any fellow lover of the outdoors But quietly and persistently, Thomas evokes the march of time as it plays its inevitable role in the lives of men and women in the book, whom readers come to know and enjoy through his portrayals and then to mourn

And in this telling of human mortality lies an inevitable parallel to the life of wilderness itself Fortunately, Thomas doesn’t hammer the parallel: Earth abides, he tells the reader But wilderness can be ruined and lost in many ways, from the slob elk hunters who leave behind a foul campsite to “range maggots,” the flocks of sheep that overgraze once-pristine slopes, to the greater threats of encroaching development and vastly increased recreational use of the backcountry

Thomas is a lover of wilderness, and as chief of the Forest Ser-vice he also played a significant role in the management of Wilderness Areas As the author of this book, he will continue to play a role as an inspiration to the next generation to recognize the gift that has been passed on to them and to guard and even expand it for future gen-erations For without that support, the Wilderness Areas, the lands “untrammeled by man,” as defined in the Wilderness Act of 1964, face a future in which they may be drilled, grazed, cut up by roads, logged, subdivided, and lost These are not new arguments or senti-ments The strength of Thomas’s journals is that they make the case through force of character, his own and that of others, and lots and lots of hands-on experience

I first met Jack Ward Thomas shortly after the South Canyon Fire of 1994 in Colorado, the fire that killed fourteen firefighters—a dozen of them Forest Service employees I had asked to interview the chief and was surprised at how readily Thomas agreed to see me I had quit a newspaper job to write a book about the fire, which had become embroiled in controversy: two of the Forest Service’s own fire investigators, for example, had refused to sign the official report It was the sort of mess that Washington bureaucrats know how to dance around

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I was familiar with the dance; I’d spent most of my journalis-tic career as a Washington correspondent for the Chicago Tribune I had run into stand-up people in the ranks of the federal bureaucracy, especially in agencies such as the Forest Service or the military where lives are on the line But most had a gift for invisibility in a crisis, and I assumed the chief would give me a quote or two and the “agency perspective” on the event, which meant a spin session After all, the South Canyon Fire had been the responsibility of another agency, the Bureau of Land Management, not the Forest Service: if mistakes were made, let the blame fall on the BLM or on Mother Nature itself

Thomas is a big, imposing man and looks like he could be very tough But when we met in his Washington office, he talked to me as though we were just two guys who understood and respected each other, both of us wanting to do the right thing He said he appreciated someone from the outside committing to tell the story of the fire He knew my father’s book, Young Men and Fire, about the Mann Gulch Fire of 1949, another Forest Service disaster, and said he was glad to have me following in those footsteps

He told me how he was awakened by a late-night call telling him multiple lives had been lost on a fire on Storm King Mountain in Colorado, the South Canyon Fire At daylight, he packed his fire boots, grabbed a plane, and joined survivors of the fire at a bar in Grand Junction, where they had been bused in the aftermath of the disaster He bought the firefighters drinks and shared stories I later heard from survivors that the presence of the chief had been much appreciated, down to the White’s fire boots

At the end of that first conversation Thomas offered me the full cooperation of the Forest Service in my investigation of the fire Frankly, I didn’t believe him

I’ve talked with Thomas many times since then about the South Canyon Fire, and he can’t go over the story with dry eyes Those young men and women died “on his watch,” and the fire grieves him to this day After the fire, he instituted many changes that improved wildland fire safety and remain in place today

During the writing of the book, though, the time came when Thomas’s hand was called The two investigators who had refused to

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sign the investigation report cooperated with me up to a point, but balked at providing the email record of their exchanges with the For-est Service’s Washington office concerning their refusals, which were key to understanding how the agency handled their dissent The two investigators, Dick Mangan and Ted Putnam, objected to parts of the report, but they were loyal employees and rightly concerned about their careers They sent a message to Washington asking what they should do

Thomas sent them back a personal message: “Give Maclean ev-erything he wants ”

When I visited with Thomas last fall in Montana, the twentieth anniversary year of the fire, it was apparent that the march of time had taken its toll on him, but his courage and willingness to face reality remained undiminished He’s a man with the spirit of the wil-derness in his heart

John N. MacleanSeeley Lake, Montana

John N Maclean is the author of Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire and other books about wildland fire

Lack of significant rainfall in the mountain West for the pre-vious two months was setting the stage for the worst fire season across the region since 1910, the year of the infa-

mous “Big Burn” in Idaho and Montana At the time of this trip to the Eagle Cap Wilderness, the Summer of Fire had bare-ly begun, and the scattered wildfires burning in the Greater Yel-lowstone Ecosystem seemed to pose no serious threat—not yet

July 28, 1988 There was a chill in the air at dawn—a contrast to the dog days of summer down below in the valleys On the slopes above the meadow a mule deer buck, a four-pointer with his antlers in velvet, was grazing in the snow-slide area If he stays up this high when the hunting season comes, he has a good chance to survive another year and grow even bigger antlers As I would be hunting elsewhere, I wished him well

As we sat around the campfire and sipped steaming coffee, Bill and I plotted an imaginary stalk on the big buck In the end, we con-cluded that our chances of getting a sure shot at him—the only kind a principled, disciplined hunter should take—lay somewhere between very slim and not much If it were hunting season, we would damn sure give it a try An old poker player’s admonition came to mind: “no guts, no blue chips ”

The tree species that survive and prosper above 7,000 feet evolved over the millennia to withstand strong winds and heavy snow Limber

Compe t it ion E ven in the Wilderness—Sharing the B ount y

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pines are so flexible that their smaller limbs can actually be tied in knots without breaking So when they are weighted down with ice and snow and the high winds come, their branches bend rather than break; they spring back to shape to catch the rays of the sun when the warm days come On steep terrain the trunks of both the limber pine and the subalpine firs sweep downslope (from their roots having been bent with the snow) until they have bulk and the strength to withstand the pressure Then they grow upward toward the sun to fulfill their destiny Maybe there is a lesson here, a secret to living and achieving in a harsh environment: bend when it is essential to survival; then, when time and circumstances are right, reach for the sun!

We rode up the trail from Echo Lake, past Traverse Lake, to the pass over into the Minam River drainage The view from the top of the pass was spectacular Wilderness stretched out in every direction as far as the eye could see One of the packhorses had to be repacked, and the effort of boosting the eighty-five-pound packs produced some huffing and puffing In the thin air at 8,500 feet, it does not take much exertion to cause even a strong man to suck for air

Just over the summit, we encountered a significant snowdrift burying the trail We debated whether to attack the drift with the shovel or buck the horses through or retreat the way we had come But we believed the drift likely covered a switchback in the trail To miss the switchback and go off the trail could well be a serious, perhaps fatal mistake Fortunately, when Bill gave the lead horse her head, she picked her way through the drift and negotiated the switchback without missing a step

Then Meg’s horse, Kitty, who was bringing up the rear, balked This was neither the time nor place for Meg, a relatively inexperienced rider, to dispute the judgment of a recalcitrant horse With Bill sitting on his mare twenty or so feet directly above her, Meg listened careful-ly to his firm instructions She stepped off the horse on the uphill side, tied the reins to the saddle, worked around the mare, took the lead rope, and scrambled up the trail that had been broken through the drift, leading Kitty If Kitty had pitched a fit and gone over the side, she wouldn’t have taken Meg with her But Kitty deemed this new arrangement a decided improvement and came right along behind

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Meg without a hitch There was one thing about Bill Brown—the old horse soldier knew horses!

The trail to Trail Creek dropped 1,600 feet in elevation in five trail miles that switched back and forth across the open granite slope Some stretches through the boulder fields had been blasted out, and a tread of rocks had been laid down by trail crews While today’s trip covered only eight miles, it included a climb of 1,500 feet and a de-scent of 1,600 feet and took a bit over four hours to accomplish Later examination of a detailed topographic map revealed that the distance between our beginning and ending points, as the crow flies, was a bit less than two miles! Where was a straight-flying crow when you needed one? We picked out a camping spot at the edge of a beautiful wet meadow we encountered just at the end of the switchbacks A spruce-covered knob in the meadow provided plenty of dry wood and flat dry ground for our tents The meadow itself was covered with green sedges sprinkled with wildflowers Behind the meadow was the granite slope that we had just descended, gleaming white in the afternoon sun

Bill set the first shift of horses loose to graze near the stream while I sat cross-legged in the meadow with my senses filled to over-flowing I watched and listened and felt without speaking Meg’s call to supper brought me back into focus As we ate, a mule deer doe joined the horses in the meadow to graze, hanging around at the edge of light from the fire until Meg went to bed I loitered by the dying fire for another hour, alternately staring into the fire and into the clear night sky that was alive with stars As the fire died down to coals and then to ashes, I became chilled and it was time to head for the tent As I lay there in my sleeping bag and waited for sleep to come, the clanging of the horse bells seemed to be a lullaby, blending in with the wind whispering in the trees and the night sounds

July 29, 1988We were on the trail by midmorning and in no hurry, as our objec-tive was the Elk Camp on the Minam River—only three miles down Trail Creek to the Minam River Trail and then four miles down the river to just above the mouth of Elk Creek It was a leisurely sev-en-mile, two-hour journey

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The trail from the mouth of Trail Creek to the Elk Camp passed through stands of mature lodgepole pine, white fir, and spruce, with occasional huge yellow-bellied ponderosa pines and larch stick-ing up above the canopy Eight years ago the lodgepole pines were undergoing an initial attack by an outbreak of mountain pine beetles The beetle larvae feed on the cambium layer under the bark, and the tunnels they leave eventually girdle the tree and cause its death The presence of the mountain pine beetle was advertised by the globs of whitish pitch on the bark

Now, three years later, the dead and dying stands of lodgepole pines seemed an example of the proverbial “wrath of God ” Well over half the trees were dead, gray ghosts amid the green Pitch tubes on the bark of most of the remaining green trees foretold their almost certain deaths

Many of the dead trees had blown down as their decaying roots gave way, forming jumbled jackstraws of tree trunks Young spruce and white fir trees were plentiful and racing the seedling lodgepole pines for the sunlight The skeletons of the lodgepole pines lying on the ground were decaying and would eventually, after many decades, melt into the forest floor, providing nourishment for the new stands of trees just poking their heads up through the jackstrawed trunks And, thus, death becomes the facilitator of new life

I wondered, does any living thing ever really die? Or do the el-ements simply reconstitute themselves and appear in other life forms? Is that not a form of immortality?

A forester focused on the production of wood for use by humans would view this scene, especially the mess of dead trunks, and worry that fire could wipe out the newly developing stand The forester’s job would be to minimize the chance of fire, assure dominance of the de-sired tree species for the site, manipulate the stand to enhance wood production, and harvest the result to be made into wood products to satisfy human needs In the event of a fire, young trees would eventually spring forth from the ashes—this time in a stand dominated by lodge-pole pines The process, repeated so many times before, would continue

I am still learning more about natural ecological processes in my wilderness wanderings than I ever learned from textbooks or

C O M PE T I T I O N E V E N I N T H E W I L D E R N E S S

14 W I L D E R N E S S J OU R N A L S

from observations of forests managed to maximize wood production, though such experiences were certainly instructive Human societies need wood—and a lot of it—to sustain economies and provide for human needs But we also need places to observe and learn from nat-ural processes before we become too limited in our understanding of natural systems and too dependent on knowledge gained from silvi-cultural manipulations

In wilderness lies some of our last surviving repositories of the natural process, an ecological treasure house analogous, in some ways, to the great library at Alexandria that was destroyed in a conflagra-tion The loss of that library shut off Homo sapiens from much of the knowledge that had accumulated from earlier civilizations Only a barbarian could have exulted or been indifferent when the library at Alexandria burned If we stay on track, succeeding generations will be able to speak well of our civilization in our preservation of wilderness as a library of natural processes

When we arrived at the very faint trail that marked the turnoff to the Elk Camp, Bill’s mare, Manita, with no guidance, turned off the trail and led us on a short journey through dead, downed lodge-pole pines so dense that it took nearly a quarter hour for her to pick her way 200 yards or so to the bank of the Minam River When we rode into the campsite, we encountered a genuine mess—a painful desecration of a beautiful spot

Since our last visit, the camp had been discovered by slob elk hunters There was a very large fire ring festooned with dozens of burned cans and broken glass Deep drainage ditches that had sur-rounded three large tents had been left unfilled Three meat poles hung between the trees Tent poles were scattered helter-skelter Hors-es had scraped away the soil and exposed the roots around the trees where they had been tied—evidently day after day There were hides and bones from several elk A pile of garbage, including a half-dozen fuel cans and gas canisters, had been scattered about by scavengers

I saw some anger but mostly pain on Bill’s face, much as would be expected upon discovering desecration of a treasured shrine to a dearly beloved This was just such a place, a shrine of sorts for him Without comment, we simply dismounted, tied the horses, and

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went to work to repair the damage There wasn’t much talking in the process

Bill and various companions had camped in this place, off and on, for four decades and left almost no trace So had most parties of hunters in the Eagle Cap Yet there were too many of what Bill called “half-ass hunters” who do not come to such places as this to be one with the wilderness They come to take, to use selfishly, to “conquer ” That is not the pity so much as their not being open to learning the lessons and the code of conduct that wilderness demands and is intended to convey And then they leave behind their desecrations as a token of their passing and perhaps their contempt—or, just as likely, their abysmal ignorance Perhaps all of those despicable characteristics come in a single package

We spent half a day policing up the area and repairing the dam-age as much as we could before we set up our camp To get back into the spirit of things, I declared tonight to be “fish night ” Fly rods were quickly readied, and we were off on our separate ways to make it so In little more than an hour of dedicated fishing, I landed some twenty rainbow trout and two Dolly Varden trout I couldn’t remember the legal limit, but two fish per person for supper seemed about right, so I kept the eight largest fish I caught—six rainbows and two Dollies

While I was fishing, I saw a large battered salmon, more dead than alive, drifting slowly downstream with the current Patches of scales were missing from the midpoint of its back to the tail, and its fins were tattered I hoped the dying fish had accomplished what it had come so far from the Pacific Ocean to do: reproduce its kind It had been on a hazardous 500-mile odyssey journey upstream from the Pacific past fishermen, gill netters, and eleven dams to reach its ances-tral spawning grounds here high in the Eagle Cap Wilderness Such a life force commanded appreciation and respect I caught myself in the process of a salute—a throwback to my military days, I guess

When we met back in camp, I asked Bill, “What’s the limit?” He replied, “Two per person for supper ” That made two of us who didn’t know the legal limit but had figured out a commonsense solu-tion The total of our ignorance produced what is known in north-eastern Oregon as a “fish feed”—local parlance for a no-holds-barred gastronomic orgy In the midst of our fish feed we were joined

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