I can close my eyes and see it, and I can smell it, too, the pine smoke from a campfire, pungent perfume to the nostrils of a Rocky Mountain horseman. I can feel the quickening of my horse's fluid muscles as he perks his ears forward and whinnies to his buddies in the valley below. I can visualize the scene as I've many times enjoyed it, stopping my impatient horse on the ridge above to look at my wilderness camp.
In the valley below, there's a wall tent perched in a small grove of aspens 100 yards from the creek, and a highline rigged on rocky ground, Major and Redstar waiting patiently tied under it for their turn to graze. My human companions sit on stools around a campfire, carefully constructed as requested by our local district of the United States Forest Service. The cooking area is a couple hundred feet away from the tent, marked by a protective tarp fly rigged to a trio of aspen trees, its location chosen by the direction of prevailing winds.
Two more horses graze at the ends of their picket ropes, their freedom limited by a line attached to a hobble-half on one front foot, a swivel, and a picket pin driven securely into the ground. Both had been hobbled to graze freely, but were wisely secured when I took off on my solo ride, lest they attempt to follow me.
When asked to visualize paradise, some people think of a beach on a tropical island. Others think of the exotic cities of the world. But the backcountry horseman is more likely to think of an ideal camp - a comfortable home constructed only of those things brought to the wilderness on the backs of animals.
And a key ingredient to satisfaction with such a camp is the extremely slight footprint it leaves on the wilderness when camp has been broken. Our presence in the location must be as close to the "leave no trace" ideal as we can possibly make it.
'Leave No Trace'
A generation or two ago, less thought was given to long-term effects of humans and animals traveling through pristine country. Fewer square miles were paved over at that time, and more backcountry remained. Further, many Americans were still caught up in an inherited philosophy that could be summarized as "use it and discard it, because there's plenty more."
But we've found out through hard experience that there isn't "plenty more." We've reached the western ocean, we've converted backcountry and ranch country into suburbia and mall parking lots at an alarming rate, and it's dawning on us that we'd better take care of the pristine country that remains. Gone is the old-fashioned horse camp, with its extremely heavy equipment, its caches of gear left in the backcountry for the next trip, and its garbage dump.
The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics (800/332-4100; www.lnt.org is an international nonprofit organization based in Boulder, Colorado, that promotes responsible outdoor recreation. The wing of instruction specifically aimed at equestrians resides at Ninemile Wildlands Training Center, in the Lolo National Forest, Montana (www.fs.fed.us/rl/lolo/resources-cultural/nwtc). This center certifies instructors and teaches an array of additional backcountry skills.
