Jack Stimpfling-The Voice from the Wilderness

Abstract

The wilderness whence Jack Stimpfling's voice has been heard during the past 23 years is not the “hideous and desolate waste” feared by Nathaniel Morton, secretary of the Plymouth Colony; neither does it necessitate, as in the case of John the Baptist—as recorded by St. John from Patmos—a diet of “locusts and wild honey.” Instead, it is, in Justice Douglas' words, “the murmur of brooks and the chatter of squirrels—the refuge for automated man.” It is the wilderness of the Missouri Canyon, the “beautiful clifts” (sic) seen by Merriwether Lewis, apparent as one floats down the river during a warm August night, the moon rising above Eagle Rock, and deer watering at the river's edge. The river meanders northward, and enters the vast plains under the Big Sky. You see Square Butte to the left. Yet further to the West, past hillocks carrying clumps of scraggly juniper and clusters of black Angus cattle, you see Haystack Butte and the shining mountains of the Saw Tooth Range of the Rockies.