In August, Sprunger died, leaving Bigfork to find its way without the wisdom of his wit.
On Friday, a community gathers to walk, quite literally, in the footsteps of these two men, to hike a two-mile loop through old-growth forest.
“We thought this would be a wonderful way to celebrate Jack and Elmer's lives and their love of the Swan Valley,” said Arlene Montgomery of Friends of the Wild Swan. Her group built and maintains the trail, leasing the land from the state of Montana.
“This place was very special to them,” Montgomery said, “and they always wanted to share it with others.”
Both men, she said, were lifelong conservationists, sharing a tremendous respect for life, human and otherwise. For Sprunger and Whitney, the fight for what's wild was not a philosophical abstraction; it was simply what you do.
“Jack,” Sprunger said after the death of his friend, “knew what was important in this life. His personal philosophy was that life was a gift, and the mountains were part of that.”
“I've always been a conservationist,” Whitney said shortly before his death. “I guess I was born that way. This place takes care of us, so we need to take care of it.”
And Sprunger, well, in the words of his son, Jerry: “He hated the greed that was stripping away everything that mattered. For dad, nature was extremely important, and it had to be respected.”
Respect was the path both men walked, sometimes far off the trail. It was as the poet Gary Snyder wrote - “you first must be on the path, before you can turn and walk into the wild. ... There is nothing like stepping away from the road and heading into a new part of the watershed. Not for the sake of newness, but for the sense of coming home to our whole terrain.”
That coming home, in fact, is exactly why Montgomery is gathering her community around to walk the Sprunger-Whitney Trail.
Whitney was a man who knew the woods, who could make a whistle from a willow branch, could make elk thistle salad, could tie a fly and build a bow and hunt a grizzly bear.
Sprunger, a humble artist, humorist and satirist, could fish and hunt and hike and hold his own through Whitney's woods. His political cartoons, sharp as his hunting knife, changed the way Montana looked at itself and its relationship to wild lands.
They shared an old-fashioned idea that a fellow ought to give more than he takes, and that it doesn't pay to get too greedy, that it's only respectful to leave something good for the next guy.
Together, Montgomery said, they saved many little pockets of wilderness, including the treasured Jewel Basin. It was imperative, Whitney said, to act - not just to talk, because someday, he predicted, “from Bigfork to Kalispell it's going to be one big town, and people are going to be wishing more people had seen fit to set some space aside.”
Space such as the Sprunger-Whitney Nature Trail, lined with interpretive signs that identify plants and habitats and special forest features. Botanist and naturalist Anne Morley will be along for the community walk, too, to lead the way down the path, and off the trail, in remembrance.
To join them, be at the trailhead this Friday, Oct. 5, at 10 a.m.
Getting there
A memorial walk along the Sprunger-Whitney Nature Trail is set for 10 a.m. Friday, and is open to all. Take Highway 83 into the Swan Valley, and 7.1 miles south of the Swan Lake Trading Post turn at the Point Pleasant sign (a half-mile south of mile marker 64). Follow the signs to the trailhead.
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