By Abigail Lauten-Scrivner, UM News Service

MISSOULA – As University of Montana freshman Savannah Deuter stepped into her classroom early one cool June morning, she was met with the scent of a crackling fire and breakfast cooking, accompanied by a lush, dewy meadow stretching out before her. 

“I turn around, and there’s Leota Peak above me and the sun’s coming up, and there’s four cow elk just gliding across the meadow 30 yards behind me,” she said. “It was amazing. I can’t even find the right word for it.” 

Such are the classroom views for those enrolled in UM’s Wilderness Pack Trip course, a two-credit, five-day political science class offered over the summer that takes students across the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex on horseback. 

Led by UM political science instructor Dr. Eva-Maria Maggi, and supported by area wilderness outfitters, the course allows students from any major to learn about wilderness policy and horse and mule packing while also experiencing it in practice.

“It's a pretty unique experience. There's nothing like it in the United States, where you can earn college credits on a pack trip,” Maggi said. “The students throw themselves in uncharted waters. The trip is usually a life changing trip for all of them.”

“It’s really a heart and soul project for me,” she added. 

Maggi, an international relations specialist, began teaching Model United Nations at UM eight years ago. Part of her research interests lay in wilderness and public land policy, leading her to enroll in a packing class taught by Arnold “Smoke” Elser, one of UM’s greats and a 2023 UM Distinguished Alumni. She learned the art of packing horses and mules, traversed the Bob Marshall and found herself enchanted by Elser’s unique aptitude for storytelling.

“He taught me how to pack a mule and a horse, but he also told me about the Bob Marshall and his stories,” Maggi said. 

Elser, also Maggi’s neighbor, became a mentor and friend. Their connection developed into a book written by Maggi and published in March titled, “Hush of the Land: A Lifetime in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.” The book narrates Elser’s decades-long career building an intimate relationship with the land, sharing its tales and advocating to policymakers on its behalf. 

Maggi sought to further steward Elser’s ethos and share place-based learning. She built two UM classes: Wilderness Policy and Packing – where students learn the theory and practice of wilderness policy and horse and mule packing at Elser’s barn in Missoula – and the Wilderness Pack Trip, where students put that knowledge into practice. 

Since then, pack mules have become an eccentric feature on campus during the annual Mules on the Oval event, which highlights the vibrant outdoor courses offered by UM each summer. While many members of the campus community flock to the Oval to delight in the charismatic four-legged creatures, those who enroll in the packing class build a closer relationship and understanding with the animals and their important working roles.  

The course is designed so that anyone, regardless of experience level in the wilderness or atop horseback, can take the class. Nonprofit-funded scholarships are available to make the trip more affordable.

In addition to packing, students learn from regional experts about the various issues wild places face, clear fallen trees from the trail and write a policy paper on a topic of their choice that is workshopped at Elser’s barn and around the campfire by Maggi, their fellow students and other professionals on the trip.

“Missoula is the wilderness capital of the world,” said Maggi, an impassioned proponent of experiential learning. “I think it’s really great to bring the classroom outside.”

This year, the group traveled 24 miles through the Pyramid Pass area of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. The path winds through rugged terrain that’s burned twice in fewer than 20 years, leaving scorched trees and giving life to lush, fertile meadows. As they trekked along, students learned how the wildfires changed the landscape and wildlife. 

“You ride through a wild lab, in a way,” Maggi said. 

The trip was outfitted by Rich’s Montana Guest Ranch in Seeley Lake, operated by the Rich family for nearly 70 years. Jack Rich, who accompanied the UM class for the second time this year, first traveled the very same route when he was about 5-years-old, making him a wealth of historical and policy knowledge, Maggi said. 

While every pack trip class is special, Maggi said she’ll remember this summer as one of the best yet.

“Sometimes on these trips, you have this clear division between the crew and the students. I don’t want that. I want for our students to feel like they’re responsible for camp and part of the process,” Maggi said. “That worked out so well this year. They were just jumping in.”

Deuter, a parks, tourism and recreation management major from Frenchtown entering her sophomore year, already had experience with horses and mules before the trip from working as a counselor for youth summer camps with Back Country Horsemen. She enrolled in the class to learn from and connect with people she feels truly at home with. 

“Working in those kinds of spaces, it’s the kind of people I want to surround myself with,” Deuter said. “They’ve found themselves and found where they want to be, which is in nature.”

Deuter is passionate about passing her lifelong zeal for nature to new generations, inspiring her to write her paper on improving wilderness accessibility to youth of all backgrounds. Workshopping her paper was both insightful and emotional, as everyone on the trip had their own personal memories and feelings about connecting to nature as a youth.

“Humans are connected to nature, that’s an intrinsic thing,” Deuter said. “You feel at peace out there. I wrote a poem about it where, you know, a man’s mind – his mental landscape – is like the woods and his soul wanders the landscape in his mind. Only when his being, his body and his soul are in landscapes like that is he truly balanced and connected.

“I think anyone who has a desire to be out there can get something out of the class,” she added. “You don’t have to have any previous experience.”

Journalism junior Maddie Pandis of Helena grew up fishing, hunting and generally spending lots of time outdoors but had never worked with horses or mules before the trip. She said getting thrown right in was the perfect way to learn.

“The outfitter said, ‘If your knees hurt, your stirrups are too short. If your butt hurts, they’re too long. And if everything hurts, you’re just right,’” Pandis said with a laugh. 

Pandis, who wants to work for an outdoor-themed publication after she graduates, signed up for the class on the recommendation of a friend and to broaden her exposure to the types of topics she hopes to write about. Experiencing the best fly fishing of her life and learning a new way to cast in a creek teeming with fish was an unexpected bonus.

Pandis focused her policy paper on the listing of wolverines as threatened under the Endangered Species Act last year, recommending that decision-makers pause to collect better baseline data before deciding whether the state or federal government manage them. 

Having never written a policy paper before, Pandis said it was a great learning opportunity to workshop her ideas with Maggi, Rich and her classmates. But it was an even greater and more special to do so while immersed in the very wilderness she was studying.

“I think it makes you appreciate all the procedures and policies put into place to preserve the wilderness, because not everybody gets to just walk out in their backyard and jump on a horse and go. Some people travel hundreds of miles,” Pandis said of the class. “It’s in your backyard, so there’s really no reason not to go.”

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Contact: Dr. Eva-Maria Maggi, UM political science instructor, 406-243-5202, eva.maggi@mso.umt.edu