In all these ways, the M-K makes it easy to forget what century you're in. "For years we traveled with no communication of any kind," Sawchuk says, recalling his early forays through this country. "The outside world could be blown up and you'd never know."

To see what might have happened here if Sawchuk and others hadn't intervened, you don't have to go far. Immediately to the west, enormous open-pit copper, lead, and zinc mines are already up and running, and as of this writing, tens of millions of dollars are being invested in even more ambitious projects. To the east, beyond thousands of square miles of natural gas wells, lie the Alberta oil sands, a monumentally expensive and environmentally destructive oil-extraction project. Nor is the M-K immune. Because of its somewhat vague "special management" status, many individuals close to the M-K believe the future of this grand experiment is precarious at best. "What we've seen over the past few years is an unraveling of the M-K," says Dave Porter, a member of the Kaska Dena First Nation and former M-K advisory board member who has also represented the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission.

Under British Columbia's pro-industry Liberal government, the board's budget for outreach and education about the M-K and what's permitted inside the reserve has been whittled down since 2001 by a third. Conservationists also worry about potential new oil and gas development. Sawchuk is an optimist at heart, but he has no illusions. "We live in a political world," he says. "I wish it was all tied up with a big red bow, but we are going to have to keep defending it. That's just the way it is."

It is in situations like this where the hard lessons Sawchuk learned from his father in the woods around their home become most valuable. "Getting on that skidder every day—even when I hated it—taught me perseverance," he says. And his youthful fight to save his hometown's forest? "That woke me up to the fact that none of these guys are going to stop until you make them stop."