“In Montana’s Northwestern corner, centuries-old trees rise to a late September sky: ancient cedar, giant hemlock, shaggy sharp-needled spruce. Western larch, which can live for 1,000 years, tower above. Early mornings light, filtered through the multilayered canopies, shimmers green and iridescent as it hits the forest floor, where bright ferns and mushrooms sprout from a carpet of blue lichen and emerald mosses…Deep in a remote and rugged region known as the Yaak, this 192-acre expanse I am walking, unceremoniously called Unit 72 by the U.S. Forest Service, offers a rare glimpse of an original arboreal landscape. This is what the forests that cloak the surrounding mountains and valleys looked like before the axe and the chainsaw…”