Episode 1 : Communities of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, part 1: an interview with Sarah Walker [transcript]

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:28:19 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Welcome to the Subway Bitterroot Wilderness History Project, which is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The University of Idaho, and Washington State University. Part of the project’s mission is to collect, preserve, and make public oral histories documenting the history and people of the subway. Bitterroot wilderness. For more information, please visit our website at SPW Lib argue Idaho edu.

00:00:28:22 - 00:00:54:21 Sarah Walker: And then I thank people. I think people get so much out of being in a wilderness setting. Once you take away cars and money and telephones. People are different and they are different to each other, I think. and, and then they draw on things in themselves that maybe are a little rusty from our crazy life out here now.

00:00:54:23 - 00:01:24:22 Sarah Walker: I think the ways that people get along when they’re isolated in a place like that, that they place that they want to be, are really it’s a wonderful thing.

00:01:24:24 - 00:01:53:08 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Thank you for joining us today on the first episode of the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness History Project, who attach themselves to the Selway Bitterroot. And why? What about people’s practices and beliefs and their interaction with the land itself preserved its wild character. What do people’s stories tell us about relationships between people and wild land that might be applicable to the future of U.S. wildernesses?

00:01:53:08 - 00:02:29:29 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: More broadly? The oral histories gathered for the Selway Bitterroot History Project will attempt to answer these questions. Such stories are critical to capturing specific fields of information relating to the Selway Bitterroot. Oral history. Interviewees include those who were raised on or who owned early homesteads, as well as outfitters, packers, trappers, farmers, fish and game conservation officers, pilots, early river runners, smokejumpers, early trail crew members, and wilderness workers.

00:02:30:02 - 00:03:07:23 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Many lived and worked in the Selway Bitterroot. When the 1964 Wilderness Act was passed, and were some of the first people in the U.S. to interpret the legislation as it played out on the ground. In this episode, titled communities of the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness, Part one, we hear reminiscences from Sarah Walker, who worked for the Forest Service in Idaho and Montana as a wilderness ranger from 1977 until 2002, and who is close to the communities of people living in the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness.

00:03:07:24 - 00:03:09:23 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: During that time.

00:03:09:25 - 00:03:44:22 Sarah Walker: The first one I met was the community of the people who lived along the Upper Selway, especially Punkin Carolyn and Northstar Ranch. So through them and through that experience, I met Freddy and Everett Pierce, who lived at Silver Lodge. That was a fascinating thing for me, to see how people lived there for a year. And I got to go in there because, Dick knew those people and because he could fly there because the access was by foot or airstrip or plane.

00:03:44:24 - 00:04:17:05 Sarah Walker: just to see how they, how they did day to day to day life was really. I just loved it. there were lots of visitors in the summer, and then up in, in hunting season was nuts. And then after that, things kind of settle down into a dull routine. And I got to go in sometimes there and two in the winter when the strip was opened and Falcon Terrell and just they had their woodcock range and their little, little place where they lived, the low ceiling and the hissing Coleman lantern.

00:04:17:05 - 00:04:40:12 Sarah Walker: And Carolyn made sourdough pancakes right on the top of a metal stove. And, she made gallons and gallons of wine from fruit that she packed and, you know, when you make fruit wine, it usually tastes pretty sweet and awful, like cough sirup kind of things. But this was and it was dry and it was delicious. And we all drank tons of homemade wine.

00:04:40:12 - 00:05:08:05 Sarah Walker: And Carolyn was a great storyteller. And isolation. Not that she drew the stories. She used to memorize the humor sections of the Reader’s Digest and spout stuff, which sounds funny now in here, but at the time it was just extraordinary anyway. And she also wrote poetry and read a lot of poetry and was very widely read. She was a very interesting person.

00:05:08:08 - 00:05:31:02 Sarah Walker: and, and, so, so, so they were sort of the elders of that community and then, younger parts of it, like my niece Sarah Sweat, worked for punk and Carol and I always had to help her. And then she, married a guy named Ian Barlow. And they were caretakers at the ranch next door called Running Creek.

00:05:31:05 - 00:06:00:07 Sarah Walker: And so they lived there together for 4 or 5 years. And that 1981 to 85 or so. And, and then, before that, Dolly Terrell, another helper of punk and Carolyn’s, and her husband Alan lived at Running Creek, and they even got married there and had a wedding there. So part of this community was, going in there and going to a wedding and in the wilderness.

00:06:00:10 - 00:06:24:03 Sarah Walker: of course, I had already my own wedding in the wilderness, but that’s later. But, so and we went there for Thanksgiving once to Running Creek and, so it’s just, once you were there. it’s a community feeling. It was. That’s all there was. It was the only people who were there who were shut off from the rest of the world.

00:06:24:03 - 00:06:31:11 Sarah Walker: And really, really remote spot. And it was fun.

00:06:31:13 - 00:06:42:20 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: So, is there are there any examples that you can think of besides the line in the pantry? It’s food and stories.

00:06:42:23 - 00:07:07:01 Sarah Walker: Well, people loved to go there and, poke and Carolyn had a lot of friends, and they would come in to and see them and they would come in and stay usually, There were there were endless stories about a lot of people that I never met, told about also, and saw some good ol boy and, you know, like she’s a pistol or something.

00:07:07:03 - 00:07:18:11 Sarah Walker: For somebody like me coming from back east, this was a real eye opener because I had not met people like that. That’s how they were to me. In a way. They were these wonderful characters. Yeah.

00:07:18:14 - 00:07:23:05 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Well, can you, So you were at the wedding that you mentioned.

00:07:23:08 - 00:07:24:09 Sarah Walker: Dolly and Alice?

00:07:24:11 - 00:07:35:03 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Can you describe. It’s like something that you remember specifically, or even something that was peculiar or interesting about it that particularly sticks in your mind?

00:07:35:06 - 00:07:59:25 Sarah Walker: Well, they have the the people who were invited to the wedding were interesting group because, for we had gone into pomp and Carolyn’s the day before or something and stayed up late the night before, and I’m sure the men were all mourning Dolly’s marriage because everybody loved Dolly, the whole thing, all of us. So by the time the day of the wedding came, we were all kind of shocked.

00:07:59:25 - 00:08:31:14 Sarah Walker: But we did hike over there and, Running Creek ran just another small low ceiling to building stick and staying inside with a polished, old but polished up wood range to cook on in the kitchen. And this little kitchen. Not much room in there. And, everybody’s all signed up for the wedding, and there was a minister who flew, and I don’t remember how that worked out, really, but.

00:08:31:16 - 00:08:54:23 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness History Project, which has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Idaho, and Washington State University. The project coordinator is Debbie Lee, recorded and produced by Aaron Jepson.

00:08:54:25 - 00:08:58:16 Debbie Lee or Jane Holman: Worship.