In 1955 a young man, fresh out of high school, left his home in Ohio and travelled west to Missoula with a tenuous dream of working in the mountains. With little money to his name and no experience riding horses or packing mules Arnold “Smoke” Elser would quickly learn the ropes of forestry and outfitting. By 1964, he and his wife, Thelma, had their own outfitting business, leading people on horseback into the Bob Marshall Wilderness, a vocation that lasted nearly 60 years. Those decades of leading guests into the mountains and championing the preservation of wilderness — and the stories that bind them — are now available for a frontcountry audience thanks to his memoir, “Hush of the Land: A Lifetime in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.”
Elser co-authored the book with Eva-Maria Maggi, a German immigrant and professor of political science at the University of Montana. Maggi also happens to adore horses and wild places, and years ago took a packing class Elser offered through the university. Enchanted by Elser’s stories of spotting grizzly bear tracks in an August snowstorm and the many different groups of people he led over rocky passes and through alpine meadows, Maggi decided to record them for posterity. The project then evolved into co-writing a book, after Maggi recorded more than 800 hours of Elser’s oral history. Their collaborative storytelling endeavor mimics the collaboration Elser brought to his expeditions: providing opportunities for a diverse group of people, ranging from Navy SEALs learning the trade of packing to New York City dwellers with a unique spin on the cowboy dress code, to experience a place free of roads, hotels, or motors.
“Hush of the Land” chronicles Elser’s life — including how he became known as “Smoke” —from his early years in Montana while he attended forestry school to how he and Thelma began their outfitting operation. His story often parallels the establishment of the Bob Marshall Wilderness since the passage of the Wilderness Act and starting his business occurred in the same year: 1964. As his memoir reveals, both Wilderness and outfitting rely on similar convictions: a reverence for place, attention to detail, and a willingness to speak up in a defense of the wild. He learned these lessons early from his first years working as a packer for Whitetail Ranch, operated by Tom “Hobnail” Edwards and Howard Copenhaver. The cousins instructed Elser on the different facets of outfitting and hunting camps but also shared a critical lesson, and one that Elser carries with him: the constant need to protect the land. “Working for them showed me that the places we traveled wouldn’t stay wild by chance but by the hard work of people who cared about them,” he said. Together with Hobnail Tom and many others, Elser would advocate for the Lincoln Scapegoat backcountry area to become a Wilderness area. Although Hobnail Tom would die before the Lincoln Scapegoat got its protection in 1972, Elser went on to defend other tracts of wild places in need of protection, including the Wild and Scenic River Act of 1968 and the Great Bear Wilderness, and remains a staunch advocate of the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act, which would add 80,000 acres to the Bob, Scapegoat and Mission Mountains wilderness areas. The long path to protecting these landscapes is a reciprocal pilgrimage for Elser, who notes, “Wilderness sustained my family and gave me so much throughout my life; it became my cathedral, my spiritual home. Protecting it is my way to give back.”
The memoir is a joyful chronicle of the hundreds of trips Elser took leading guests through the Bitterroot Mountains and 1.5 million-acre Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. From leading troops of Boy Scouts who each dared to pack half a case of soda pop in their packs and had trouble keeping up on the trail to leading a family who brought suspiciously large metal boxes on a trek in July of 1969 in the later-revealed quest to witness lunar history atop Mount Jumbo, “Hush of the Land” is the best kind of armchair adventure journey. We may not be on horseback, but the stories deliver us right into camp, eager to hear Elser spin another tale while the coffee brews. There’s also no trace of scorn or disbelief for the many antics his city-slicker guests attempted while on the trail; despite their foibles, some of which were quite serious, Elser doesn’t deride the wilder-curious who haven’t spent their entire lives atop a mule. There is a sense of enduring joy for Elser to introduce people to a landscape where grizzly bears roam, roads are left hundreds of miles behind — along with the guests’ watches, a rule of his — and there’s time to swim, fish, and share a story or two around a campfire. “Hush of the Land” is a heartwarming collection, a tribute to both the landscape and those who traveled with Elser, forming a connection that only wilderness can offer.