Hunting guide shares tales at Paradise Center

Smoke Elser from Missoula has a story to tell. Several in fact, according to Eva Marie Maggi, who co-authored Elser's book Hush of the Land.

Arnold "Smoke" Elser began his journey as guide and conservationist in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. In 1962, Elser worked as a hunting guide in the Bitterroot while attending college at the University of Montana in Missoula. Along the way he met many people and made many friends. Elser has taught packing classes at his home in Missoula. That is where Maggi met him. Ironically, they are neighbors, she explained during their book tour at the Paradise Center last month. Maggi moved to Montana from Germany with her husband. She decided that she wanted to learn about packing mules and wilderness camping.

"I listened to Smoke talk about his adventures as a guide while he taught the class. It was magical how he would tell you how to tie a knot, then tell you a story. So I asked him if I could write some of his stories down," Maggi said. "Along the way of listening to over 800 hours of stories, I thought about putting his stories in a book," she recalls. "This way people will be able to travel in the Bob if they are unable to actually go there."

Elser said he came to Montana as a young boy from Ohio, just out of high school, in 1955. "I couldn't ride a horse or pack a mule, but I met the love of my life (his wife, Thelma) and never left," he explains in the prologue of his new book. Elser further explained that the Wilderness Act of 1964 has created 111 million acres in 803 segments of land set aside in the United States to be left untrammeled by humans. A place for animals to live, rivers to flow free, and mountains to be kept intact from drilling and mining. On his guided trips through the Bob, Elser asks clients to leave their watches behind. "Without watches they can let go of the time in their worlds and fully live in the slower rhythm of the land," he said. His guests don't have to worry about anything. Elser's crew sees to their needs. "At night after dinner around the campfire I tell them stories of the land that I had heard and some that happened to me. Stories bring us closer and connect us more deeply to the world around us. My stories travel home with them and my love for the Bob Marshall Wilderness becomes their love for the land," he concluded in the prologue.

In the 60 years that Elser has been guiding he has also been teaching. He is a professional animal packer and semi-retired instructor of wilderness outfitting at the university. He has been featured in National Geographic and in the PBS documentary "Three Miles an Hour." Elser is the co-author with Bill Brown of Packin' In on Mules and Horses. The book gives detailed instructions for packing horses and mules and tips for a safe and pleasant pack trip.

Elser and Maggi spoke to a full house at the Paradise Center and answered questions from the audience. The two were introduced by John Errecart from the Plains Back Country Horsemen chapter, who invited them to share Hush of the Land in a fireside chat setting. Elser said most people need to take his packing class twice to get the hang of it. "Errecart needed to take it three times," he joked. This gets the audience's attention.

Elser makes sure to acknowledge the help from Maggi and his wife for her proofreading. Then a story comes to mind and Elser tells of a group of young Japanese students who took a five-day trip into the wilderness with him. "They didn't speak English, and they didn't know anything about horses or riding. But they chattered constantly," he recalls. Before the trip was over, Elser gave the group instructions to go find some memento, a small object like a rock or pinecone and bring it back to him. When they returned with their objects Elser said he told them through their interpreter to take the object back to the exact place they found it and put it there. "The idea is, take nothing and leave nothing behind," he said. Elser said many people do not know the name of their horse or mule when they start out, but by the end of the trip they know them well and every place they visited.

The book has 19 chapters of stories along with several photos that include clients and family members. In the first chapter Elser explains how he became known as Smoke. "It was Smokey, actually," he recalls of the time he was attending college at the Ohio University in Athens. "One late evening in November I walked into the dark dining hall with the hope of finding some dinner. I had just left the hospital after a couple days of recovering from breathing burning poison ivy in a nearby forest fire. When the U.S. Forest Service asked students to help fight the fire, I had signed up right away. But working one night in the thick smoke sent me to the hospital short of breath. "The food was awful," he added. Elser said his hope was to find something edible in the closed dining hall kitchen. "Suddenly the lights went on and the entire football team and some friends started singing Smokey the Bear." He explained how the Forest Service had just publicized the song to educate the public about wildfires. "We ate and laughed and after that everybody called me Smokey," Elser said. Later, back in Montana, Howard Copenhaver thought it wasn't much of a name for a packer and changed it to Smoke.

The book is full of these stories that tell of Elser's life and experiences in Montana but mostly of the Bob Marshall and his love of the wilderness. He has spent many years working to preserve areas such as the Scapegoat Wilderness in the southern region of the greater Bob Marshall Wilderness area near Ovando. "Helos flew in every day with people trying to build a silver mine," he recalls. "We are nature worshippers: the mountains are our cathedrals, the stars our candles, the sun is our gold, and the moon is our silver."