So much of the land in this area is tilted at about a 30- to 40-degree angle that one could spend an entire day scrambling around on the slopes and never find a level spot big enough for pitching a tent. From atop the peaks, there is only one way–down–and what a "down" it is: three thousand dizzying, vertical feet to the valley floor below. Water doesn’t just flow downhill; it races through steep cuts that crease the mountainsides and sometimes divide the peaks from one another. Humans are visitors here, not permanent inhabitants except in the lowest valleys.

Most of the area is heavily timbered, but there are a number of open meadows with abundant grass. Mule deer graze on these slopes, as do the elk. Bears are frequently seen in meadows and woods, looking for food. There are pine martens, coyotes, wolves, mountain lions and many other animals in abundance, and moose are often seen in the river valleys between the ranks of mountains. During my autumn visit, snow was already clinging to the ground at higher elevations, telling the animals that before long it would be time to find a den or to head for winter range at lower elevations.

Our days began in elk camp long before sunup. After breakfast and a discussion of the day’s hunt, we saddled up in the dark for a ride that generally lasted about two hours and went straight uphill. I quickly came to appreciate the outfitter’s comment that his horses were "real athletes." They were. I was especially awed by the ability of these remarkable animals to find their way up steep, rocky trails in fog, through slippery snow and in complete darkness.

My glimpses of elk were fleeting. I saw them bounding up impossibly steep slopes as if it were level ground, or running down the mountains at a pace that left me shaking my head in awe of their stamina, agility and balance. I caught glimpses of them moving through heavy timber without a sound–large, hoofed animals weighing 800 pounds and more, silently appearing and disappearing before my eyes like smoke.  And I heard the bugling of several magnificent bulls: a wild and eerie sound that captures one’s heart as well as one’s attention. It’s the call of the mountains and the sound of the wild.

I saw the signs and tracks of other animal inhabitants of elk country: timber wolves, mountain lion, bears, martens, coyotes, deer, moose and others. I saw hawks and eagles flying high above, and peered into pools where trout hide in the icy river waters that flow between the peaks.  I learned that darkness comes early in the mountains, and that trouble can come quickly. One of the wranglers had what the others called a "wreck." He was riding up the trail to take our horses back to camp just as one of the guides surprised a bear that had been feeding on a wolf-killed elk. The frightened bear ran right under the nose of the wrangler’s horse, which bolted and ran as though shot from a cannon. Somehow, the wrangler held on and avoided the necessity of returning to camp on foot. However, he went for the ride of his life and took many cuts and blows from branches his horse was breaking on its terrified run for daylight.

On another occasion, as my partner and I were climbing down through some rocks that seemed to be hanging out into space, it occurred to me that one misstep in such an area could conceivably constitute one’s final mistake in this life on earth. Such events have a rather dramatic way of focusing one’s attention on the simple business of putting one foot in front of another.

In this rugged and beautiful land, the elk and other animals make their homes. And the outfitters, guides, wranglers and hands make their living, too. Up long before dawn and busy well past nightfall, these people work hard to wrestle a living–and they wrestle it lovingly–from what they simply call "the country."  "The country" is much, much more than their home: it is their challenge, their adversary, their partner and their friend. Its beauty awes and inspires them, its secrets keep them searching and seeking, its benevolence shelters them and its harshness tempers them. At some moments one would swear that they are as much a part of this country as are the elk and the bears, the eagles and the moose, or the squirrels that chatter from the trees in abundance. They seem to know it beyond knowing, to simply "feel" it at a level beneath consciousness, shaped as they are by living in the midst of all of the country’s magnificence.