Bob Marshall packer shares tales from the trail

Lifelong Montana packer, guide and cowboy Arnold “Smoke” Elser shared stories and memories of his life along the trail to a packed Paradise Center on Wednesday evening.  

The evening’s event was co-sponsored by Back Country Horsemen Wildhorse Plains Chapter and the Paradise Center.  

Wildhorse Plains President John Errecart opened the evenings fireside chat, sharing with the audience the many accomplishments of Elser. Errecart spoke about Elser’s many years teaching the art of packing to a worldwide audience ranging from Navy SEALs, Army, National Park Service, Forest Service personnel, and many thousands of people. For over 60 years Elser has been a teacher, author, conservationist and professional outfitter.  

Errecart said in his opening remarks. “He (Elser) has traveled all the trails in the 1.5-million-acre Bob Marshall Wilderness. He has introduced thousands of people to the mountains of Montana and has been a major contributor to the conservation and protection of public lands for future generations.”   

Elser has been featured in a PBS documentary called “Three Miles an Hour,” as well as in National Geographic, the Guardian, New York Times and the Washington Post. 

Co-author, Eva-Maria Maggi is a writer, teacher and a packer. She holds a Ph.D in political science and teaches wilderness policy and packing at the University of Montana. Moving from her home country of Germany she fell in love with Montana and quickly took a packing class with Elser.  

Maggi would listen to the many stories that he told her and knew that those stories needed to be written down.  

She said, “I needed to work up the courage to ask Smoke.”   

That started a friendship and over eight hundred hours of recordings.  

Maggi said, “The idea was, (with the book) we wanted to have people travel in the Bob Marshall without actually being able to visit it.” 

Elser seemed to feel right at home on the stage as he recalled some of the many stories he encountered along the trails. He entertained the audience about a time he guided a group of Japanese, who could not speak English and who had never ridden horses. Elser said they were a noisy bunch that never learned to control the horses.  

He spent most of his time looking for his stray customers and horses.  

“They didn’t have a clue. They let the horses do what the horses wanted. We had to catch them all and bring them back to camp.” 

Elser spoke about a customer that would come back year after year with his family. He was a CEO from Seatle that said the guide trips were the only time he could get his family together in one place. He said he would take some members of each group and place them, for about an hour, in spots along creeks, where they can hear the water flowing, or against a ponderosa or lodgepole tree. This is where the CEO from Seatle, who was the head of Boeing aircraft company first envisioned the concept of the 747 airplane while he sat under a ponderosa tree in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area.  

The evening ended with Elser signing his autograph for those with his new book “Hush of the Land."

    John Errecart, president of the Wild Horse Plains Back Country Horsemen, demonstrates how to pack mules. (Tracy Scott/Valley Press)