Tatsey rides well ahead with the packhorse in tow. He wants to see how things go on the trail and thinks it prudent to keep some distance between the skittish horse and the rest of the livestock. Leaving the encampment, we enter a dense forest carpeted with blue and purple wildflowers. We are in one of those intersections of nature where the land is a mosaic of geologic features not usually found near each other. Here, the northern plains, dotted with glacial ponds and furrowed by rivers, roll up abruptly against steep mountains fringed with aspen, balsam and cottonwood.
Botanists call the complex an aspen parkland biome.
It exists almost nowhere except along a 50-mile corridor between the Blackfeet Reservation and the Rocky Mountain front. An abundance of food, water and cover make for some of the best wildlife habitat in the northern Rockies. It also may harbor one of the largest untapped pools of natural gas in the Northwest. We have traveled about a mile when word filters back that there had been an accident. The packhorse is down and hurt.