Modern-Day Thoreau Heads For The Mountain Montana Man Quits Job, Builds Cabin On Edge Of The Rockies

Snowfall silently decorates the bright green saplings that have shot up at the foot of blackened pines.

Tom Wilcox seems oblivious to the cold.

Shielded only by a windbreaker and a baseball cap, Wilcox has stopped a few feet ahead along a steep path, waiting patiently for a couple of visitors to catch their breath.

The idea came to him four years ago: Wilcox would build a cabin in the woods, high atop a mountain at the edge of the Rocky Mountain Front. A cabin far enough from civilization that you could never drive to it. A location so remote that your only sure companion would be solitude.

“I wanted to do something similar to what I thought our pioneers would have done,” Wilcox said. “They got something in their head, they did it, no matter what it took, and I wanted to experience that.”

Wilcox, 44, grew up in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley. Single, a welder by trade, he spent 10 years in Alaska before returning home to Florence. There, he built a 3,000-square-foot house. Life was comfortable. Then, suddenly, things changed.

On the eastern side of the Continental Divide, in Augusta, Wilcox’s grandmother, Maude E. Wilcox, died, leaving behind a tiny house in town and 595 acres along the Front, land she had homesteaded.

His cousins weren’t interested in the property, Wilcox says. But its setting, nestled up against the Rockies, at the foot of Steamboat Mountain, intrigued him. He bought out his relatives’ shares, quit his job and moved to Augusta, into his grandmother’s house.

That was in 1984.

Wilcox’s goal was similar to that of Henry David Thoreau, the New England poet and lecturer who in 1845 set out to live alone in the Massachusetts woods: to shed the hustle and bustle of society and confront nature on its own terms.

The cabin would be a formidable challenge: built at an altitude of 6,200 feet, 2-1/2 miles from the nearest road.

“A lot of people suggested using a helicopter,” Wilcox says. “That would have been easy. But no, I wanted to be tested.”

A year ago, he bulldozed a mile-long path up the mountainside. When the terrain got too rough, he used simple hand tools to dig another mile and a half.

The path winds around the side of the mountain until it reaches the top, a saddle-shaped ridge with a pond in the middle, which serves as a magnet for wildlife.

On a clear day the views are magnificent. To the northeast, the jagged tops of the Little Belts reach skyward. To the southwest are graceful mountain peaks.

This summer, Wilcox was ready to begin building. A friend agreed to help.

The two hooked a trailer to the bulldozer and piled on the equipment: sheets of tin for the roof, a door, 6-by-6s, insulation, floor joists - 5,000 pounds of material in all.

The going was rough. A photo shows the wheels of the trailer struggling through 6-8 inches of mud. More than once it threatened to slide completely down the side of the hill.

But that part was easy. For the final stretch, they had to unload the trailer and transport items by way of a much smaller apparatus: “Old Silver,” a game-hauler consisting of a motorcycle wheel attached to a 10-foot-long aluminum frame, with steel handles on either end.

Still, the first trip was so exhausting that every few feet they had to stop and rest. It took 58 trips to haul the materials to the top.

Once the materials were in place, the cabin went up quickly. Wilcox drove cutting wedges 2-1/2 to 3 feet into the ground. He bolted metal plates onto them, attached 6-by-6s on top of that, then covered everything with 6 inches of insulation and a pine floor.

The cabin has one room and three windows and a 6-foot-long deck out front.

The furnishings are simple: two twin beds, a small, round wooden dining room table and a couple of chairs, a wood stove and a countertop. Dishes are stored in large plastic chests. There’s no electricity; a gas lantern hangs down from the roof. No running water; an open-air outhouse sits about 100 feet away. The cabin is cozy: 12 by 16 feet.

Outside, a blue grouse suddenly swoops out noisily from under the deck. Inside, coffee’s brewing.

“I learned this, at least by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” - Thoreau.