Last weekend I paid my first visit to the Bob Marshall Wilderness. I didn’t go much more than a mile or two over the border, but the beauty of it still struck me.
The area was largely burnt out; my friends and I were near the end of our trek before we saw any living trees. One thinks of dead, burned forests as ugly. One is wrong. A haunting, desolate beauty whispered all around us.
We found huge moose tracks about the size of a human hand. The maker of the print no doubt rested along the river we walked past, but we never caught a glimpse. Just the hint of what we might find someday turned a disappointing hunting trip into a memory.