Mailtime for we was of particular significance, for it often brought official letters of instruction from the office in Great Fails, bulletins and reports to be read and returned, and calls for information which I was in a position to furnish. Well do I remember tearing open one such official missive in the stuffy little post office and reading, "You will examine and report on stands of timber suitable for poles in areas tributary to Neihart, submitting maps showing location of same, and giving rough estimates of volume." Here was a real challenge. Nothing like it had come my way before, and may I say, never has since.

This was mid-December. Snow was already so deep that only on snowshoes could one travel through the timber. Extensive stands of lodgepole suitable for power poles were rather remote from town and at least a thousand feet higher. However, with the exuberance of a young and inexperienced forest assistant I tackled this job of winter reconnaissance. Snowshoes were hard to come by, but I was fortunate in getting the loan of a pair from a miner living in town. A team was still hauling baled hay from the Ledbetter ranch in Island Park where there was a log house used by the hay hands in summer. The driver of the team agreed to haul my outfit to the ranch on the hay sled, and to keep in touch with me on his daily trips; I was given permission gladly to make my headquarters in the house.

Deep sled tracks were well-filled with drifting snow as we headed up the valley, and it took us most of the forenoon to reach Island Park. Clapping his chilly mittened hands together, the driver remarked that probably this would be the last trip of the season as far as he was concerned. There was just an unbroken expanse of deep snow between the point where the sled turned around for the return trip and the house, which was some 300 yards away, and I had to break trail with snowshoes and backpack my belongings over this final leg of the trip. Long before I had finished this chore, the sled had been loaded with hay and was homeward bound, leaving me absolutely alone in what seemed a vast wintry world.

The old log house was poorly chinked and draughty. The small kitchen stove was totally inadequate to warm the frosty, dismal room, and I soon found that only by sitting close to the open oven door could any semblance of comfort be obtained. The little monster consumed enormous quantities of dry lodgepole which I brought in from the woods which surrounded the park. I soon had a well-packed snowshoe trail from the kitchen door to the woodlot, a distance of 200 yards or more. Small tree trunks were cut into stove lengths with an old-fashioned buck saw which I found on the premises. It was anything but a gay life, eating meals kept hot on the stove top, melting snow for water in a pail improvised from a five-gallon oil can, and sleeping on the top of a table drawn close to the fire. A couple of drapes were pulled from the windows to provide more bedding. The evenings seemed very long; by the feeble light from a kerosene lamp I washed the day's dishes and thumbed over notes taken in the field. Bed seemed the most comfortable spot in that dreary world.

With one exception, it snowed on every one of the five nights I spent at the ranch. On that one evening I poked my nose outside to find the world glittering white under a full moon. Clothed against the cold I put on my snowshoes and walked over to the woods. The air was perfectly still, but every once in a while a snow-laden branch would release itself from its load, giving rise to a small cloud of silvery dust. Flecks of moonlight dappled the shadowy forest floor. Strangely enough it seemed a friendly place, the lodgepole forest on that cold winter night — a good place to be despite the sub-zero temperature. It was with some reluctance that I left the scene to return to my billet beside the over-worked little stove. One thing more clings to memory — the lonely hoot of a great horned owl, telling me that other life was abroad in that cold world.

Finally on a snowy morning almost a week from my arrival at the ranch, I buckled on my snowshoes and headed for Neihart by the shortest practicable route. my bedroll was left behind to await the return of the hay team; when I would recover it was a problem. My trail led through a large stand of over-mature timber north of Island Park and then down the steep slope down to O'Brien Creek a mile or so above the dam.

The to Neihart! No metropolis could have seemed more welcome than the ramshackle little town strung along the hanks of Belt Creek. The friendly human voices which greeted me at Mrs. Mix's boarding house were sweet indeed!

-from the first chapter, "The Way Beckons"