Roaming the roadless

I was bushwhacking through a tangle of shrub and trees, following the Gila River in southwestern New Mexico, when I came across fresh bear prints in the wet, sandy shores.
Big bear prints.

I shouldn't have been surprised. After all, the wrangler who led me on several horseback trips through the Gila wilderness the previous three days packed a shotgun on his saddle.

Alone, unarmed and pushing through a snarl of brush, I was searching for a hot spring along the riverbank.

Aldo Leopold, the legendary ecologist and forester who campaigned for the protection of this untamed land, soaked in this and other nearby hot springs more than 85 years ago.

But I couldn't find it amid the trees and bushes. As the shadows lengthened and the woods came to life with sound, I saw nothing but limb-biting branches and more animal tracks.

To see is to believe

Like thousands of travellers who visit the wilderness annually, I had come to see the hardscrabble patch of New Mexico that became the model for every protected wilderness.
I came to explore the rocky trails cut by the Apache warrior Geronimo, homesteaders and gun-packing fugitives.

But most of all, I wanted to see whether America's first wilderness area — protected 84 years ago from roads, cars and other modern intrusions — was still as pristine and untamed as Leopold had intended it to be.

Surrounded by towering canyon walls and clawing tree branches, I could see that Leopold's vision for this land prevailed; it was beautiful, wild — and even a bit scary.

From a night-time satellite photo, these half a million acres of arid mesas and canyons look like a huge, black hole bordered by the scattered blinking lights of Silver City to the south and Truth or Consequences to the east, and a big nothing to the north and west.

Cars, roads, railroad lines and cellphone towers are prohibited in the wilderness.

To reach this heart of darkness, you strap on a pair of hiking boots or mount a horse. Leopold preferred the latter.

As a forester in the early 1900s, he defined a wilderness as a protected area “big enough to absorb a two-week pack trip''.

Four-day outing

The Gila is certainly that big but I didn't have the patience for a two-week trip.

So I planned a four-day outing in late May, joining a group of about 30 horse enthusiasts from South Carolina who were visiting some of the nation's best riding trails.

They had no set agenda except to explore the wilderness on horseback for several days while camping in the national forest on the outskirts of the wilderness.

They welcomed me into their camp and by the end of the visit, they had me — a native Californian — speaking with a twang.
To get to our campsite, just outside the wilderness area, I drove three hours southwest from Albuquerque followed by an hourlong, teeth-jarring trek along a washboard dirt road through the Gila National Forest.

Meeting Mr Right

Along the way, elk the size of ponies bounded across the road and into stands of ponderosa and juniper trees.

As I pulled into the campsite — a collection of tents, horse trailers and pickup trucks — I was greeted by Ben Marlin, a wrangler and former rodeo champion whom I had hired as my guide through an outfitter called Gila Wilderness Ventures.

Despite losing a thumb in a cattle-roping accident years ago, Marlin gave me a vise-grip handshake and I knew instantly that he was the right man to show me the wilderness.

Wiry and energetic, Marlin rode and roped bulls in Nebraska before he dropped by this corner of New Mexico 15 years ago. He came to visit a buddy and never left.

This land — rugged and genuine, just like Marlin — fits him, he says, like a pair of worn jeans.

Heading to the cave

That night, I wrapped myself in a sleeping bag on a cot in a roomy tent. He slept on a tarp on a patch of dirt next to his horse.

The next morning, Marlin was eager to ride into the wilderness to show me a cave thought to have been used by American Indians as a granary.

We didn't wait for the South Carolinians to finish a leisurely breakfast. Instead, we ate quickly and rode across a long mesa studded with juniper trees and short, golden grass.

Granary or hideout?

At the end of the mesa, we zigzagged down narrow switchbacks to the banks of the Middle Fork of the Gila River.

After two hours of riding a dusty, single-track trail, we found the granary burrowed into the side of a rocky hill.

The opening of the 2-foot-tall cave was shaped by ageing masonry. Marlin was unsure whether the Mogollon or the Apache had stored corn in the cavity.

It might also have been a hideout for Geronimo or fugitive outlaws. After all, Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch were also known to roam these parts.

“There's a world of history in this wilderness,'' Marlin said, as I poked my head into the cave.

The stars shone that night like distant headlights in a coffee-black sky.

I relaxed around a campfire with my fellow equestrians as we sipped hot chocolate and tried to decide whether the tiny red dot just above the horizon was really Mars.

After we turned in for the night, a pack of wolves circled our camp, spooking a few horses and waking some campers.

The culprits, Mexican grey wolves, were released into the Gila by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in an effort to reintroduce the nearly extinct animals to their natural habitat.

The programme began in 1998 with seven wolves. Now they number more than 50.

Some nearby ranchers have criticised the wolf programme, including those who have lost livestock to the packs.

The debate between ranchers and supporters of the wolf programme cuts to the core of how best to manage — or not manage — a wilderness area.

The wolf debate

If the idea of a wilderness is to leave it unaltered and pristine, should wildlife that was hunted and trapped nearly to extinction decades ago be reintroduced? And if so, why is the forest service still issuing permits to let ranchers' cattle graze within and adjacent to the wilderness?

On the morning after the wolf encounter, a small group of us rode into the wilderness. We noticed Marlin had strapped a shotgun to his saddle.

“What do you plan to shoot with that?'' a rider asked.
“Whatever needs killin','' he replied calmly.

We followed Marlin along the Middle Fork of the Gila River in the shade of ponderosa pine, juniper and fir trees to a flat, grassy meadow near Flying V Canyon.

Old homestead shack

Rust-coloured, craggy rock pillars line the canyon walls. In the meadow, we rode up to a collapsed log cabin, blackened by time.

Marlin said the cabin represented the remnants of an old homestead shack, one of only 10 or so in the wilderness.

Many people tried to settle in the Gila, Marlin said, but the land was just too rough to tame.

The next morning, after breakfast, I said goodbye to Marlin and my South Carolinian pals and began the long drive to the end of the wilderness.

A ranger at the monument gave me a map to a secluded hot spring, only a mile-and-a-half hike from a roadside parking lot along the Gila River.

No spring in sight

By mid-afternoon, I had hiked at least two hours through branches and shrub but couldn't find the spring. My water bottle was nearly empty.

Frustrated, I cursed myself for venturing this far alone. As the sun began to sink behind a pine-studded mountain, I gave up on the spring and turned back.

Thick brush cut my legs. I spotted elk, bear and wolf tracks in the sand. Finally, I saw a concrete bridge, near where I had parked my car.

Now that I saw my escape from the wilderness, I relaxed and pulled off my shirt, hat and hiking boots and sank into the river, letting the cool waters wash over me.

In my head, I heard Marlin saying: “This is about the wildest place in the country and I don't think it's ever going to change.
He meant it as praise for the wilderness but I should have taken it as a warning too. That's the beauty of this beast.