The family, luckily for those of us who have the Wanderlust, is four fifths masculine. I am the odd fifth—unlike the story of King George the Fifth and Queen Mary the other four fifths. It consists of the head of the family, to be known hereafter as the Head, the Big Boy, the Middle Boy, the Little Boy, and myself. As the Big Boy is very, very big, and the Little Boy is not really very little, being on the verge of long trousers, we make a comfortable traveling unit. And, because we were leaving the beaten path and going a-gypsying, with a new camp each night no one knew exactly where, the party gradually augmented.
The Author, the Middle Boy, and the Little Boy
First, we added an optimist named Bob. Then we added a "movie"-man, called Joe for short and because it was his name, and a "still" photographer, who was literally still most of the time. Some of these pictures are his. He did some beautiful work, but he really needed a mouth only to eat with.
(The "movie"-man is unpopular with the junior members of the family just now, because he hid his camera in the bushes and took the Little Boy in a state of goose flesh on the bank of Bowman Lake.)
But, of course, we have not got to Bowman Lake yet.
During the year before, I had ridden over the better-known trails of Glacier Park with Howard Eaton's riding party, and when I had crossed the Gunsight Pass, we had looked north and west to a great country of mountains capped with snow, with dense forests on the lower slopes and in the valleys.
"What is it?" I had asked the ranger who had accompanied us across the pass.
"It is the west side of Glacier Park," he explained. "It is not yet opened up for tourist travel. Once or twice in a year, a camping party goes up through this part of the park. That is all."
"What is it like?" I asked.