We have lost a treasure with a gravel voice, a shy smile and an endless insatiable urge to keep walking and working on behalf of wild places.

Walkin’ Jim stayed in my back yard a few years ago; deigned sleeping with a roof over his head for his skimpy tent and wandered off the next day, as he had wandered in, following whatever it was that kept him moving. “Whatever,” I suppose, was his absolute, unequivocal, unconditional love for wild places and the creatures that populate them.

Walkin' Jim Stoltz onstage at the Panida Theater in 2008.

Wherever he walked he was touched by what he walked through, and wherever he talked about these experiences, he touched those who listened to his bass treble voice and looked at his incredible pictures. Especially the children.

Earlier this year, Jim came to Thompson Falls and Trout Creek schools to work with the kids in the grade schools. What pleasure it was to watch the kids light up, laugh and learn as he encouraged them to squeak like pikas, howl like wolves, growl like bears and joyously sing with him, “Come walk with me through the big pine trees, from the mountain tops to the shining seas . . . ”

Later, he moved into the classrooms, and the kids were mesmerized by him, a lanky guy who looked as if he had escaped from mountain man times. He told of kayaking with whales and coyote tales of following and being followed by them. He gave endless, patient answers to endlessly enthusiastic questions, and then he drew the kids out, asking for their own wild stories, some of which, I’m sure, may never had been heard before.

Daniele Puccinelli (L) entertains Walkin' Jim with tales of his hikes through the Scotchman Peaks.

He was just recovered from an earlier bout with cancer when he stayed in my back yard. I was amazed at by his skinny toughness, his genuine love for other folks, how much he carried in his heart and how little he seemed to need in his pack. Perhaps his biggest burden was his guitar.

A few days after he made his school visits to Thompson Falls and Trout Creek, I talked to one of the teacher from Thompson. “The kids are still singing that song,” she told me. Yes, and so are some of us adults. “. . . where the critters roam, free and on their own, in the wilderness, we’ll be right at home.”

The cancer came back and got him, as if it had forgotten, first time around. He didn’t want to go, I don’t think. There are too many other passages he wanted to make. But, we don’t really know what happens after the passage he did take. I would hope he will find even more beautiful and exciting spots to wander through in the Great Beyond Wilderness.

Goodby, Mr. Stoltz. Thanks for walkin’ through.

— Sandy Compton

It was a good and proper bushwhack, as Sawtooth always is, no matter how you go at it. We never got real lost, but there were moments of private concern on my part. Being the hike leader does have its bits of responsibility. And, I’ve been there before, so I know how sometimes a small error in judgment can lead to way too long in a tag alder patch.

Laddie takes the lead from Middle toward Sawtooth

In fact, I’ve been to Sawtooth so many times that when Daniele asked me how many times, I didn’t know. Still don’t. I’ve been unable to figure it out. Twice this summer. Not once last, dang it. Maybe 3 times the year before that. Like the ridges viewed from the top of said mountain, it all fades off into the distance.

My first attempt on Sawtooth was when I was 19, with my brother Chris. We didn’t make the top, but we did learn a lot. Cliffs are cliffs and just because things are growing out of them doesn’t make them not cliffs. Beargrass is slicker than . . . well, it’s pretty danged slick — especially when it’s growing out of a cliff. Everything is a lot farther away than it looks. And, ignorance is bliss. We made a couple of moves of the “don’t know what we are getting into” variety that turned out just fine. But, I don’t want to do them again, including our descent through a chimney from the top of Middle Mountain that I have looked into several times since and muttered, “we must have been nuts!”

I have since learned that we weren’t that far from finishing. Even though we were afraid we would have to walk out in the dark, we could have made it easily and still been back to the rig before twilight. (And the parking lot was a lot closer then that it is now.)  I’ve also learned not to take the route we used for an approach, which keeps the cliff factor lower as well as the hawthorne and tag alder quotient to a minimum.

Beargrass is slicker than . . .

The first time I actually got to the top of the mountain was 10 years later, when I was 29, with two teenaged boys, a girlfriend and another dog entirely. The 600-foot-plus drop off the west side freaked me out entirely, especially when the dog got close to it.

It’s 30 years later, and not much has changed up there. It is still one of the most stunning views I’ve ever seen, with Scotchman poking its head over the ridge between Mike’s Peak and the Jonathan Crag and the Ross Creek and Blue Creek basins spread out below. Heron is still over there in the distance, a tiny group of miniature buildings surrounded by a huge amount of green.

Mostly what you can see from Sawtooth is other mountains, other members of the Scotchman Peaks, and when I was there 30 years ago, I hadn’t stood on any of them. I can’t say that anymore. I’ve stood on most of them. But the one I’ve stood on most is Sawtooth, and it probably always will be.

That big fall to the west doesn’t freak me out any more . . . even when the dog gets a little close. I think I’ve learned to trust the mountain — and dogs — a little more. And, myself, too.

Sawtooth can do that to a person, I think. I watched one young man climb it this summer (on my first trip) who was  more freaked out by the exposure (”sketchy,” he called the approach) than I was on my first trip. But, at the end of the day, I think he learned a lot about himself and his abilities, and I think he had been underestimating himself.

The lesson then, of Sawtooth, might well be that we can do what we think we can’t if we just give it a try. That is the lesson of wilderness, too.

— Sandy Compton

I use this paraphrase of a verse from the song, A, Your Adorable, (”Alphabetically speaking, you’re OK.”) to make a point. And the disclaimer to make another. Funny how words are sometimes.

First of all, the name of the mountain is Scotchman Peak, not “Scotchmans” or “Scotchman’s.” The name of the peak is singular, as the mountain is; neither plural (there is only one Scotchman Peak, although there is a peak called Scotchman Two) nor possessive (A Scotchman doesn’t own the peak)

OK, I’m being a nitpicky, but just so we’re all on the same page in this movement — which is what this is — to protect the peaks near and including Scotchman Peak, I would like us to get the name the same. I can’t say “correct,” because the word “Scotchman” isn’t even the preferred designator of someone from Scotland. Scots think of themselves as Scots or as a Scotsman or, perhaps, a Scotswoman.

One thing we know about the namesake mountain of the proposed Scotchman (look, Ma: no “s!”) Peaks Wilderness is that it wasn’t named by a Scot, or it would be Scotsman Peak.

From this angle (looking at Scotchman directly across the top of the Elinor Crag), it's hard to see the Scot in Scotchman. (Jim Mellen photo)

It was named by someone with a sense of imagination and whimsy. In my memory, it was my grandmother Mariam Clayton (not Miriam, by the way)  who showed me the Scot in Scotchman Peak, pointing northwest from her yard toward the rugged eastern profile of a mountain scratching the skyline some five miles away. Following her lead, I was able to imagine the profile of a craggy-faced man laying on his back (perhaps in state?) with a ruffle at his neck like an old-fashioned Scot might wear; the top of his head pointed northeast away from Clark Fork.

Part of the confusion might be that we are Friends of Scotchman Peaks (plural) Wilderness. When this beautiful place was inventoried in the RARE II studies of the 1970s, it was designated Scotchman Peaks, for there are surely more than one peak in the 88,000 acres we are working to protect. Star. Spar. Savage. Sawtooth. Clayton. Mikes. Billiard Table. Blacktop. Ross Point. No Name. The Crags. Scotchman Two. Davis Point. I’m sure I’m missing some. Oh, and Scotchman. Singular.

Now for the disclaimer. We have blithely complicated matters by calling the area that includes these mountains (and the valleys and canyons between) “The Scotchmans,” plural, so “Scotchmans” can be proper after all. There are precedents for this — in fact dozens. The Rocky Mountains in toto become the Rockies, the Ural Mountains are the Urals, the Appalachian Mountains are the Appalachians and so on. Cascades, Alleghenies, Catskills, Ozarks, Caucuses, Himalayas, Scotchmans.

The Scotchmans are actually part of the Cabinets, specifically, the Western Cabinets, which are that part of the Cabinet Mountain Range (stretching from the Mission Valley of Montana to the Purcell Trench of Idaho between the Kootenai River on the north and the Clark Fork on the south) west of Bull River and Lake Creek. The proposed Scotchman Peaks Wilderness makes up the southeastern corner of the Western Cabinets, bounded roughly by Bull River in Montana on the east, Lightning Creek in Idaho on the west, the Clark Fork River on the south and Rattle Creek and Keeler Creek on the north.

I suppose, really, that the mountain — being made of stone and all — doesn’t care what we call it. Humans are the namers of things, and we do this so we can keep track of these things, to “own” them in a sense, the sense that we can file a thing away in our heads somehow symbolically differentiated, which gives us something to sort on when some other human asks what that thing is.

So, when someone asks you what that thing is, that gorgeous, 7,009-foot chunk of Precambrian stone just northeast of Clark Fork, the one that from the east looks somewhat like a craggy-faced man lying on his back and wearing a ruffled shirt, please tell them it is Scotchman Peak, in the proposed Scotchman Peaks Wilderness, which is in the Western Cabinet Mountains, which are a far-western extension of the Rockies.

And then invite them to become a Friend and join our movement. For if there is one thing that I wish this place be always called — Scotchman, Scotchmans or Scotsman — it would be “wilderness.”

— Sandy Compton

Others on this adventure confessed they did the same. “I thought there were nine of us,” one would say, and we would discuss the missing, invariably concluding something similar.

The eight of us were a rolling microcosm of art and observation: Two painters (Jared Shear and Aaron Johnson), two film makers (Matt Stauble and Jake Glass), a sculptor (David Herbold), a writer (me), and two “civilian observers” (Jared and Leslie Haas).

Seven and a shadow make eight. Nine makes the shadow.

As for the ninth, an old adage might be paraphrased: there are no atheists in wilderness, either. Something is there, a presence that lives in the rocks and water and sky above, filling the silence with its essence. In the wild, we breathe it in and bathe in it and are renewed. Even as the topography we clamber through daily chips away at our endurance and resolve, we are rebuilt and strengthened.

In this wild place we wandered through, the heart of the proposed Scotchman Peaks Wilderness, going is tough; what isn’t up is down. Forest Service trails disappear, elk trails lead on; and elk are not held to the vague rules of human trail construction. They take the easiest-for-an-elk route available, and easiest is often not easy.

Our first day — seven not-so-measly miles from Ross Creek Cedars to the divide between Ross Creek and Blue Creek — we hiked six hours, with intermittent moments of rest and observation that filled another three. A few of us wondered just what we had gotten ourselves into, including me, who should have known, having been in this place with 40 pounds on my back before.

Laboring up a 45-degree slope late that day, came the impression that the seven folks sweating behind me were hoping that I would fall over dead so they could rest while deciding what to do with my body. But, I didn’t. And, we all made it to the top, and  gratefully pitched our tents in the rays of a lowering sun.

The painters painted. The sculptor sketched. The film makers filmed. The writer wrote. The observers observed, reminding me of a couple visiting a gallery or museum, stopping in front of each piece of art or diorama and making quiet comments to each other.

“What do you think of that?” I imagined them asking. They would laugh, then, and move on to the next observation opportunity. I’m sure the adjective “crazy” was used more than once.

And we might have been, but in a good way. The wild replaces the insanity of the “real” world of wars, worries and the Web with crazy thoughts of abiding peace and freedom. That’s one of the reasons I go there. It is the reason I go there.

Five days and four nights. The first day tries to turn you back. The second day makes you wish it was day five. On the third day, though, the past and the future fade into the background and you are ushered into the now. It no longer matters when you are as much as it does what and where you are. What you thought you couldn’t do yesterday, you do without thinking, except considering the next step and the magnificent place you are stepping through.

Hike, eat, sleep, marvel. Repeat. Make the next 100 yards, the next 100 feet of vertical, the next 15 minutes, the next ten steps, the next breath. Repeat. Do what you think you can’t do. Repeat.

By day four, you have lost your doubts as well as ideas about personal capability. It ceases to matter whether you think you can or not. You just do it. Instead of thinking about the bills waiting at home or your state of employment or what the rest of the world thinks of you, you think of how to navigate a tag alder jungle, or scoot down a cliff on a goat trail, or where to put your foot on that next rock in a field of a hundred-thousand rocks. You get down to just being.

This is, I suspect, why prophets like Moses, Jesus and M0hhamed went to the wilderness. To get down to being. To commune with that ninth member of our party. To strip themselves of all concerns except the next 30 seconds. To rediscover themselves and renew their faith in their own abilities and what they believed. To assimilate themselves.

On day five, I woke hungry and in that feeling was the knowledge that if I had more food I would stay another day . . . or two . . . or three. The wilderness had assimilated me. Us. And the ninth member of the party. We had become one.

At the end, we came apart like any good molecule —  grudgingly — like electrons flying off in different directions to be captured by other nuclei; home, jobs, family; social responsibilities. The ninth member of the party followed each of us home, as if we hadn’t been home all along. It will draw us all back, I hope, to each other and to that wild place where we were welded together by wilderness.

— Sandy Compton

The vision began as a student project, sponsored by Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, with a focus on conservation issues. The film makers also hope to create a film that will inspire and inform a wide variety of groups engaged in many issues by demonstrating the impact that a small, dedicated group of concerned citizens can have in their own community.

Guided by Sandy Compton, Jake and Matt spent a long weekend exploring the inner reaches of the Scotchmans in the upper Ross Creek drainage with our “extreme Plein Air” artists. Meanwhile, on Sunday Joe and I climbed Scotchman Peak on Sunday to interview hikers as well as the most famous resident of our area – the mountain goats!

Click here to see an album of photos, on our Face Book Page, from Sunday that show Joe in action! Or, you can share these pictures with your friends by copying and pasting the url below to view.  (You do not need to have a Face Book account to view these photos):

http://bit.ly/a1Vw9c

Through the rest of this week, they will be talking to a wide variety of volunteers, supporters and people involved in our community conversations about the Scotchman Peaks. We’ll let you know when to get the popcorn ready for the first public showing sometime this fall!

Boy, oh boy! We will be having fun then.

Some of these people are old friends, some are new friends and some are friends of friends, but I nearly guarantee you that they will all be Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness when we walk back out on Tuesday. I think it might be impossible for a person to spend half a week in the Scotchmans without falling in love with them. Even inveterate whiners and wimps might be converted after a couple of days surrounded by rocks who don’t really care if they are hungry, or sunburned, or bug-bitten — or lost.

There is something about entering the cathedral of wilderness, where all things seem to point to the sky . . .

There is something about entering the cathedral of wilderness, where all things seem to point to the sky, that allows a person to claim themselves in a manner more clearly than other acts of self-actualization. Being immersed in a place that gives you no direction, places no strictures on act or emotion, and lies before you unconstrained and invites you to live that way also lets us define ourselves. In wilderness, one has to decide “what is good for me?” in terms unlike more civilized places allow. Whether traveling alone or in a group, a bad decision made with impunity on the street or in the grocery store can easily become damned uncomfortable, or even fatal. A social gaffe that might not even rate a raised eyebrow at cocktail hour might send you to Coventry in the wild.

So, in the face of a wild place inviting us to be wild also, we must become more responsible and certainly more competent, for there is overwhelming evidence around us in the back country that we have to be responsible and competent or it will eat us alive — in the most dispassionate way imaginable. The wilderness doesn’t care, and that is why we care about it. In reality we love this place because it doesn’t love us, but simply lets us be and suffer the consequences of our own behavior without societal buffering.

We go now, into the wild. And the wild will go into us. We will have fun. We will learn. We will love. And all the wilderness has to do for us is just be.

— Sandy Compton

Summer is prime time to show your colors for Wilderness, and we invite you to join in one (or more) of the many events arrayed around “our” wilderness — and beyond — for the Independence Day celebrations.

What can you do for the Scotchman Peaks next weekend? Here are some great options:

In Sandpoint, Noxon, Heron and Clark Fork, we invite marchers and parade watchers alike to wear their Scotchman Peaks hats, t-shirts, sweatshirts and bandannas in and along the parade routes. If you want to march with us, get up a sign that says “Will Work For Wilderness!” and bring it along or just show up in your best Scotchman’s t-shirt apparel!

In  Sandpoint, the Independence Day parade and celebration takes place on Saturday, July 3.  So, you can get an early start on your Independence Day celebrating (and maybe even get in another parade the on the “real” 4th!). Meet us for the Sandpoint parade between 9:30am and 9:45am on Church Street on the west side of 5th Avenue. Look for the Scotchman Peaks banners. For more specific information, contact phil@scotchmanpeaks.org

For the Clark Fork parade, get down to the lyrics of “This Land is Your Land.” Meet near Hays Chevron at 9:00 Pacific on Sunday the 4th. For more specific information, contact neil@scotchmanpeaks.org.

Heron and Noxon hold their 4th of July parades in tandem; Noxon first, and then Heron, with enough time between to get from one to the other. The Noxon parade begins at high noon, Mountain Time. (That’s 11 a.m. for you Idahodians). Gather at 11:30, Mountain. Watch for our banners. The Heron parade begins at 1:30 (Just enough time to scoot down the back road from Noxon. Gather at 1:00 at the Heron Community Center. For more specific information, contact sandy@scotchmanpeaks.org

And for the rest of our Friends all over the country, put on your T-shirts, hats and bandannas and  go to the parade, the picnic, the baseball game and the fireworks of your choice. When someone asks you why you’re wearing the cool swag and where you got it, give them your best 30-second wilderness speech and invite them to visit us at www.scotchmanpeaks.org

From the staff and all the volunteers from the Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness, Happy Fourth of July!

The day began magically, when, about a mile from the parking lot, Compton began to hear a distinctive sound over the white noise of Ross Creek, which was tumbling by nearby. He got Shear’s attention, and after a moment, Shear exclaimed, “Wolves!”

Pointing to two sets of wolf tracks in the main fork of Ross Creek

Compton concurred, and a few hundred yards further along the trail, their opinions were confirmed when they found tracks in the trail of the animals they had heard howling. There were two sets of tracks. One appeared to be made by a mature female and the other by an adolescent animal.

“It was a stellar instant,” Compton said, “definitely a hair-up-on-the-back-of-the-neck moment.”

Compton and Shear encountered more tracks and scat as they ascended the main fork of Ross Creek. They then continued into the upper Ross Creek basin, where the wilderness was in full melt. They waded many seasonal streams and found waterfalls galore.

“It’s melting fast up there,” Compton said, “and the snow was sliding off the shelves in the big cirques along the east side of the Crags. It sounded like jets going over.”

After scouting out a potential camp in upper Ross Creek, Shear and Compton climbed over 24-Hour Pass, dopped into the East Fork of Blue Creek, and then traversed back into the South Fork of Ross Creek, making a long day of it.

Shear, along with Moscow artist Aaron Johnson, be repeat contributors to this year’s Extreme Pleinair. Shear and Johnson also participated in last year’s inaugural event. Their work, as well as art from the “Paint the Scotchmans Pleinair” scheduled for September 24, 25 and 26, will be on display at the Outskirts Gallery in Hope.

Golden, low-angle sunshine slants from the north corner of Billiard Table. The sun is so low yet that much of Scotchman is still in the shadow of Mike’s Peak. Ox-eye daisies and heavy-headed timothy hay nod under a full load of dew and saturate me from mid thigh down as I cross the field, headed for the trail my grandfather built into the Blue Creek canyon decades ago. A big, beautiful, blond dog noses through the field around me, oblivious to the soaking he’s getting.

It’s chilly in the shaded canyon on this first day of summer. The trail is, as it has always been and always will be, steep and only in fair repair. The soggy clay bank sags into the trail at the top and gravel rolls underfoot near the bottom, promising a slide down a 100% slope into cold, clear, deep water for the clumsy or unlucky.

“Who cares?” says the dog. He jumps in for his first swim of the day.

" . . . sunlight filtered by cedar towers . . . "

At the bottom, a rowboat rests bottom up on two wooden rails that disappear into the lake below, held in place by ropes at stem and stern, each threaded through a pulley attached to trees above the rails. It takes practice to flip the boat over and lower it into the lake without sliding in.

The launching proceeds without a soaking, at least until I coax soggy doggy into the boat. He brings a few gallons of Blue Creek’s best with him and gladly shares. I pull across Blue Lake to the mouth of the West Fork, beach the boat and we begin upstream, watching along the east bank of the creek for the old cat road that runs to the top of the point of land between the East and West Forks.

Up the road we go, and then along an ancient trail skirting the east bank of the West Fork to where it intersects a not-near-so-old forest road that runs a half mile north through clear cuts to the edge of the roadless area, where a distinct trail continues into the forest. The dog, in the lead as usual, does not hesitate, differentiate or delineate. He walks off the end of the road and into the wild.

I follow.

On this longest day of the year, we will be gone for a while, that dog and I. When I flip the boat over this evening, it will be just light enough to see the trail up the bank out of Blue Lake, and damned well dark when I get home. The dog will be asleep when he hits the floor, and I will not be far behind.

Before I drift, though, I recall the white noise of the stream in the West Fork canyon, the layered green and burgundy stone where cliffs squeeze the canyon down north of Wiggletail Creek, sunlight filtered by cedar towers, the sweet smell of Syringa, thimbleberries forming, wild strawberry blooms, green berry clusters on head-high devil’s club, flitting shadows of west-slope cutthroat and the bear the dog didn’t chase when it ran anyway.

∞

We got nowhere important on that now-long-ago day; no peak, no lake, no ridgetop view, no waterfall, not even a really good perspective. Certainly, there was no decent trail. There was something, though, an ineffable thing left over from the past and stored for the future. The dog knew. He became something else when we crossed into the wild, moved closer to the ground and paid less attention to me and more to the planet. He understood that he didn’t need to chase that bear

I knew, too.

The boat is gone, as is that old dog. I have other entrées into and other companions in the wilderness. I hope someday that we will put a sign at the end of that forest road that says “Wilderness Boundary.” But, the sign will never be “how” I know. It will be there because we know. And, because we want others to know, too.

— Sandy Compton

This year they have awarded us a $4,000 Challenge Grant. If we are able to raise $4,000 from our supporters, we will receive that amount from Cinnabar, resulting in $8,000 to support our outreach efforts. We have met the challenge in each of the last four years. So if you are considering a contribution to the Friends of Scotchman Peaks to assist us in our efforts to protect the Scotchman Peaks as Wilderness, then this is the perfect time to send in that contribution!

Your individual contribution, no matter how large or small, makes a big difference. Any amount helps.  In fact, small contributions from as a large number of people not only helps to spread the support around, it helps to show that a large community is actively involved and support the designation of the Scotchman Peaks as Wilderness.

Your contribution will help us protect the Scotchman Peaks, for our families, for tomorrow.

We would like to raise this money by October 1st, but the sooner we reach our goal of $4,000 in individual contributions, the sooner we will benefit from Cinnabar’s match – so, don’t delay!

The Cinnabar Foundation was created over 25 years ago by Montanan’s Len and Sandy Sargent and is Montana’s own home grown conservation fund.  The Foundation awards grants to groups like ours, crusading to protect Montana and the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The Sargent legacy lives through the work that we are doing, and we believe they would be proud of our efforts to protect the Scotchmans.

Check back here to monitor our progress in achieving this matching grant, and watch our goat climb that mountain!

Thank you!