The Motor Vehicle Use Map for the Elkhorn Mountains glowed on my phone screen – a black-and-white grid of the Helena-Lewis & Clark National Forest, with thin dotted lines representing roads I’d never driven, parts of the forest I’d never explored.
It was 8 a.m. on a Friday morning, and I was planning an expedition I had no business planning. I’d never cut down any tree, much less my own Christmas tree. I’d never owned a handsaw. I wasn’t what anyone would call a “handy person.”
But there I was, zooming in and out with my fingers, squinting at road numbers and boundary lines, deciding that some five miles up Warm Springs Creek Road near Alhambra would be the place.
