The Missoulian starts an excellent two-part series on the Scapegoat Wilderness today . . .
While camped above Ringeye Falls in the 1950s, Cecil Garland pulled an elk reed bugle from his duffel bag and released a call into the crisp September air.
Within minutes, the calls rang back – big bulls hidden deep in the Lincoln backcountry. Sleep wouldn’t come easy for Garland that night, his heart pounding and his senses alive.
“All through the frosty fall air the calls echoed back and forth and I knew I’d found wilderness,” Garland testified before the U.S. Senate on Sept. 23, 1968. “But all was not at peace in my heart; for I knew that someday, for some unknown reason, man would try to destroy this country as man had altered and destroyed before.”
(See also this related article: Support waning for future Montana wilderness designations.)