This will begin a series I have wanted to take on for a long time but didn't quite know how to start and continue on with, until now. This is purely writing that I want to express with the love and care that I have for our public lands and to do proud the great writers of the past like Walt Whitman, Ernest Hemingway, and John Muir. I understand this will not connect with everyone, but I am certainly not one to write like a journalist. I want to write with heart about my adventures and one day publish all of it into a number of books. So, here's the first installment. Enjoy.

We had ridden on this bumpy road for what seems like an hour now, inching closer and closer to the rocky reefs ahead, the stone walls shaped like that of a castle on one end and like wicked teeth on the other. We were heading in between both of them, a gorge with a dam trapping the waters of the Sun River inside. Suddenly, the bumpy, gravel turned to pavement and the flat landscape turned into mountainous walls. It was unlike anything I've seen. As we rode deeper into the canyon, the ground rose up and fell down, revealing wondrous valleys after each rise. To my immediate right, there lay the Sun River, some sixty feet below, at the bottom of a narrow gorge that it had no doubt carved over eons of time. The road rose up and crossed the river, and kept rising as the Gibson dam became as visible as ever. How monstrous it looked, a wall of cement and steel holding back millions of cubic feet of water every day, holding back the persistence of the river. We switched back, and back again, rising further up and up until we made it to our parking destination, Mortimer Gulch trailhead.

Gibson Dam. Photo by Patrick Fawley

I climbed out of the truck and awaited instruction from my boss, Ryan who was a tad shorter than me, sporting a long rectangular beard, a ball cap, and sunglasses. The tinted lenses made it seemed like he was stone cold, never smiling, and always serious. His wife, Keegan, my other boss directed my coworker, Ben, and I to unload the truck. We had seven saddles, four for the horses and three for the mules that would take on our packs and trail work equipment. I had never held a saddle before, let alone saddled a horse until I came to this job. A few days prior, I had gone through a two-day course to learn the basics of horse riding, but prior to that, I had no knowledge or experience, and the horse I was assigned was not meant to be mine.

Sparky was an old horse, ridden many years by many riders and for the most part, he has been ridden many times the wrong way. Bad riders and bad experiences on the job had made Sparky a very spooky horse. I needed to do approach everything differently from everyone else with Sparky. I couldn't tie him to a hitch rail lest he rip it out of the ground from anxiety. I could not simply put the saddle on him or he would fling it back into me as well as quite possibly stomp with his heavy hooves on the ground. I had to be mindful of his sporadic tendencies to go off trail and to remember to not make any loud noises or flail anything near him or I would surely end up on the ground facing his black hooves.

After we unloaded all the gear, we proceeded to place the saddle pads on our horses, mine as gingerly and gentle as possible, making sure Sparky saw what I was doing, followed by the saddle itself. The saddle was made from finely crafted leather and looked rather old, sporting USFS on the back. I could not place how old, not without guessing. I wasn't an expert on any of this. I wasn't even a novice. I felt like a little child again, learning to ride a bike, nervous and afraid of falling and hurting myself, and disappointing my bosses. After the saddle was placed, we attached the bridle, the headpiece for the horse. On came another issue with sparky.

The bridle was a hassle to say the least. For one, Sparky hated the entrapment of thin leather and steel buckles. He would back his head away from the bridle every time I tried to put it on him. The pelham bit, a piece that is supposed to go in his mouth and attaches to the reins to allow me to direct him when riding, kept catching his tongue and I grew increasingly frustrated. Ryan came over and told me to relax. "Hold the top where his ears go. Bring your right hand around his head to the back and hold it there. Now, take your left hand and hold the bit to his mouth. He'll take it with his tongue" Sure enough, that's exactly what happened. "Now pull back a little on the bridle, a little more, and put his ears through the holes." And just like that, the bridle was on him. Now came the task of tightening everything.

My horse, Sparky. Photo by Patrick Fawley

It felt like we spent thirty minutes just setting up the gear and the horses, but it only cost us about half that. After tightening the cinch on the saddle and adjusting it after riding Sparky for a bit, we were ready to make for the trail. Ben and I would trail behind everyone, horses and mules, for the whole ride to our first site--but Ryan and Keegan seemed to give us the first day to just get used to riding horses for the first time, and for my first time, I felt...awkward.

My feet were held in place on the side of the horse by long pieces of leather straps called stirrups and the size of Sparky's backside had my legs spaced so far apart. I felt like I was doing the splits. All of this aside, though, I could handle it after a couple of hours of riding. What I could not handle was Sparky's trot. Ben's horse, General, had a nasty habit of lagging behind, leaving a sizable gap between us and the rest of the horses. To make up for this, General would notice after lagging for several minutes and like a shot out of a cannon he would trot to catch up with his fellow workers. Sparky would follow suit. Sparky, however, would not take soft steps. Sparky was known for his hard trot.

Our two-day class showed us the different speeds of a horse and it did tell us how to handle a trot, but that is far easier said than done. If done properly, the rider times the trot and rides the motion of the horse's steps. The rider and the horse move together in a way that shows off the bond between rider and horse. If done wrong, the saddle one uses to ride the horse becomes a hard leather spanking machine, and Sparky spanked me all seven miles up and down the trail. When we stopped for a lunch break at the end of Gibson Reservoir, I came down hard off sparky with sore knees and a rather tenderized bottom. I fell onto a log and ate my trail rations as I cherished the few minutes on the ground. Then, we pressed on to our destination, only six more miles, three more hours.

Mountain reefs give way to the Sun River just before it empties into Gibson Reservoir. Photo by Patrick Fawley

Besides the punishing my body took from a first ride, I was able to take in what I was surrounded by. The trail we took brought us alongside the Gibson reservoir, making its way up and down the hillside as we traversed boulder fields and grassy meadows along the waterline. Besides the obvious destruction that the dam's creation had caused, there were still wonders to behold in the trek. When looking to the front, one can see the reefs, the walls of rock that form the Rocky Mountain Front. The rock exposed shows a grand story millions of years in the making, showing granite, sandstone, limestone, and various other rock types all stacked together. Looking across the body of water to the left, one sees more of the reefs along with dense coniferous forests stacked all the way to the top of almost every peak. To the right, every now and again, we pass trail junctions that lead into the glacier-carved valleys that exist between the reefs, showing how expansive the region can be, each valley showing a small stream that we cross without the slightest issue thanks to our horses and their tall legs. After five or so valley intersections, we came across a junction and instead of crossing it, we followed it to the right, riding into a densely wooded forest, dense enough to block out sunlight. After about five minutes, we stopped for lunch at a wooden sign, that read 'Bob Marshall Wilderness', and a register below.

After a well-deserved lunch, we saddled up and continued the last half of our ride to the Cabin Creek Cabin. Ryan and Keegan were very careful not to describe or tell us anything about where we were going, only that we were riding ultimately to Gates Park and after we get there, we were to branch off and clear several trails in the area. For a decent amount of time, we stayed in the trees, under darkness for a while, then as the trail started to rise again, the trees broke away and we were given a taste of what was to come. A mountain in the distance showed off what the Bob Marshall was famous for, grandeur.

Sheep Mountain and the gate to what's to come. Photo by Patrick Fawley

From looking at the map the Forest Service had given me, I did my homework and showed to my bosses that I had an interest in this amazing place. The way the treeline stops and a sheer cliff rises up out of the green, "That's Sheep Mountain, isn't it?" I pronounced. "Yep! You know your peaks. We'll be coming across more. I'll quiz ya" Exclaimed Ryan. We kept riding and as the trail kept rising, we came to a gate. Ryan got off his horse and opened it and then we rode on past. The trail then stopped and leveled out, hugging the foot of a nearby mountain to the right. As we rode on, I looked to the left to see a steep decline to the Sun River below, some two hundred feet down. The North Fork of the Sun River. Photo by Patrick Fawley

We passed another gate then another band of trees. It lasted for only a bit, but the size of these trees were unparalleled by all I've seen before. They were ancient, hundreds of years old and tall, at least one hundred or so feet, enough to block what was behind them. As we came out of the treeline, a valley was revealed to me and I felt my jaw agape in amazement of what I had witnessed. I felt just like an explorer westbound on his trusted horse. I was stunned, speechless at all of it. Even now as I write, I am finding the words to describe the many peaks to my left and right hard to find. The English language can not find a word good enough to give what I saw justice. To my left, I saw ever present, Sheep Mountain looming in the distance, still some ten or so miles away and eight thousand feet high. After seeing the mountain in various angles, from first spotting it on the trail at Gibson to the gates and now in this great valley, I looked onward more to my front left and spotted another peak, this one unmistakably higher than sheep. Almost all its ridges laid bare as rock, and the last thousand feet of the mountain was without a single patch of trees or grass with the peak itself being covered in snow. Thinking back to my time looking at the map, I matched its bald spots to the one I noticed as Slategoat Mountain, standing at eighty-eight hundred feet, eight hundred more than Sheep. The adventurer in me wanted desperately to explore more of the landscape, seeing where the Sun river hid behind a rather large gorge and noticing every now and again a thin line of rock beyond the mountains, I was confused as to what it could be.

Another view of Sheep Mountain. Photo by Patrick Fawley

The miles seem to stretch now, unending in my body rocking with the motions of Sparky's walk as I continually try to remember what I had been taught. Keep pressure on my legs. Don't let them hang. Be sure to keep up with the group. Remember to scan your surroundings for potential obstacles, then I saw a rather large brown spot in the distance off to my right as we were lowering into a gulch with a creek. I called out to what I knew couldn't be anything else. "Grizzly to the right!" I yelled up to the front. Ryan took notice of it. The hulking mass of brown fur had to have been some two hundred yards off. "good eye. He's petty far off. Keep an eye on him. He shouldn't do anything. Just keep Sparky calm!" Sparky had experienced bears on more than one occasion and remains to scare easily from them. Ironically, bears scare easily when confronting a horse. Keegan explained later that while riding on Sparky a few years back, she rode in a dense patch of brush on the trail when a moose burst out of the thicket running for its life from a Grizzly Bear. The bear took almost no notice of Keegan or Sparky but the speed at which everything transpired scared Sparky enough to buck Keegan off and almost flip upside down, which would have meant almost certain death for Keegan. Luckily, Sparky only bucked her off and she got out of the way fast enough. For this reason, it was imperitave whenever on Sparky to look around thoroughly and call out whenever I spot any large animals. The challenges that came with riding Sparky should have terrified me, but I kept riding him regardless. I had no other option. I had no time to be scared, I had a job to do and this horse was just a part of it.

After a long stretch of open grassland in the valley I recognized it to be named after the river we traveled along, we ventured away from the Sun river and took a fork to the right, toward Cabin Creek. The soil here started to turn dark and the hooves of General turned the same color as we entered a spot of mud, one of many that we encountered on our journey to our cabin. The mud gradually got deeper, and at one point reached Sparky's belly. Not taking to the saturated soil very well, Sparky started to trail off to the left to get out of the mud, to which Ryan told me to bring him back to center. He explained that Sparky's desire to get out of the mud will widen the puddle, causing more erosion and a bigger pit. We shoveled on until we started to see a wooden corral fence to our right and a dark brown cabin a few hundred yards off. We made it.

Cabin Creek Cabin. Photo by Patrick Fawley

We entered the gate and rode the horses to the hitch rail where I encountered my last obstacle with Sparky, dismounting. If I got off Sparky the wrong way, he would undoubtedly buck and fling me into the muddy ground. To prevent this, I needed to pull his face to me with the reins so he could see that I was getting off and thus he would not be afraid, as if some rabid animal was trying to attack him. After I got off, I helped unload the mules and filled the pales with horse feed. The horses and mules did a fine job and we would be rude not to reward them. After all of that was done, we sat for a bit, but before long, I had an itch to explore the area. Ryan and Keegan told me to stick to the fences, which was little more than a few acres. I obliged and took to my camera to capture my first day in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

Slategoat Mountain. Photo by Patrick Fawley

Photo by Patrick Fawley

Photo by Patrick Fawley

Photo by Patrick Fawley

Camas flower. Photo by Patrick Fawley

I was like a kid in a candy store, walking on downed logs, capturing all the flowers I could find, not knowing what they were, only that they were unique and I didn't want to forget them. I walked to the fence's edge and there I saw a great opportunity to show in a picture frame an old fence going the length of the shot and stretching out of the frame. I continued on, traveling on the hundreds of downed logs inside the fenceline. It was obvious to me a large fire swept through here a few years ago and left the trees little more than charred, oversized toothpicks, but I knew better. These landscapes need fire to continue their cycle of life here. There needs to be old trees burned down to let new trees in on the sunlight. I traversed the downed logs all the way to the nearby cabin creek where we got our drinking water from and followed the creek back to the cabin. I took off my pack and took a good look at the map to find out what that wall behind Sheep and Slategoat mountains was. Upon further inspection, I found the wall to be called the North Wall, an extension of the great Chinese Wall, a feature I had known of and wished to see since I made my way to the west.

As the sun went down, I grew tired. I took one more set of photos showing the horses feeding on the pasture in the twilight, then took to my bunk where I fell to sleep, readying myself for another day of riding the following morning.

Photo by Patrick Fawley