Old Smiley, who had walked with a limp from a famous encounter with a mad mule, but who covered up his infirmity with a hop as he walked that told the world, "Hey, it's great to be alive!"

Old Smiley, who had named his only son after Jedidiah Strong Smith, the legendary fur trapper who, with a string of pack horses, had been the first white to cross the Basin and Range country of what is now Nevada and Utah; the first to climb California's Sierra; the first to discover Oregon's hidden, but tallest, and most beautiful snow capped peak-Mount Cascade.

All that was left of this mountain tradition of freedom, was the legacy of his name, Jedidiah. At the start of the 60's, Mt. Hood, to the north, and Crater Lake, to the south along the Cascade Mountain cordillera, were developed into a mammoth ski resort, and national park, complete with crowds, lodges, and paved roads. Jed's dad had been thankful that logging, gas stations, and condominiums, hadn't reached Mt. Cascade. It was just as wild as when Grandpappy Smith had settled the homestead among centuries old Douglas Fir.

But, this in itself, had brought about an end. Since Mt. Cascade was so pristine, so wild, in 1964 the U.S. Forest Service had declared the surrounding high alpine meadows, lakes, and streams, as a Wilderness Area- where man was to be just a visitor.

The idea was noble! Yet Smith & Son lost the contract to supply remote forest fire lookout stations when observers from airplanes took over the task of spotting a smoke before it became a holocaust. Gone, too, was the challenge of breaking down a prospector's mining equipment so that the awkward shapes could fit on a pack horse. And their bread-and-butter job of hauling stock salt to cattle grazing upon high alpine summer pasture.

Old Amos had spent the past few years hiring on as a guide for hunters who seemed more interested in killing a "fifth," than the ritual of the stalk. Summers found him baby-sitting groups of over-enthusiastic nature lovers, who picked wildflowers to "preserve them."

All of this was "progress," of course, and half-way understood. What wasn't were the masses of backpackers who overran the mountain in search of wilderness solitude, and then complained whenever the Smiths came along, leading a party of paying tourists ("doing it the easy way, on horseback!") up the mountain to share in the beauty of a high-country camp. It didn't matter that Jed's grandfather had built the trails these "pilgrims" were hiking upon. It didn't matter that these "flatlanders," as his dad described city dwellers, only lived for sunshine weekends, and retreated at the first sign of rain. Collectively, it was "their" land; they had the voice of a demanding public.