Goosewing Guard Station, Upper Gros Ventre, Jackson District
“Yes, we’ve always been adventurous,” says first-time FBT/BTNF Ambassador Marthanna. “We’re the parents of eight children!” The couple has also spent a year sailing America’s Great Loop, a continuous 6,000-mile nautical route that circumnavigates the eastern United States and parts of Canada, and explored the Great Lakes, Boundary Waters, and mountains of Colorado.
They did the Great Loop themselves, but took kids with them on many of the other adventures.
Since Les retired in the spring of 2024, the couple, who live in Michigan, has adopted the mantra, “you’ve got to do it while you can,” concerning adventures they still want to have, of which there are many, including volunteering for public lands.
They started their search for a volunteer position looking for something in winter. “But we saw the Goosewing Guard Station and it sounded so interesting and unique,” Les says. Marthanna adds, “It seems so remote and wild, and we’ve already heard about the sourdough.”
About the sourdough—Regular Goosewing visitors can rest easy: Marthanna put in a request for some of the starter and looks forward to trying it for bread and pancakes this summer. If you don’t know about Goosewing’s sourdough, its story started with longtime Ambassadors Claudia Rector and Clay Alderson. The couple, who served at Goosewing for 10 years, retiring in 2024 at the ages of 76 and 85, respectively, were big sourdough fans and often shared fresh-baked sourdough bread and pancakes with people who stopped by the guard station. The couple at Goosewing in 2025 got some of Clay’s starter and continued the tradition of fresh bread and pancakes. Clay credited the mineral-rich spring in the guard station’s backyard, which he believed to be filled with trona, as his sourdough’s secret sauce.
The couple are also looking for people willing to eat any cookies they might bake.
Fun fact: While about 90 percent of people who undertake the America’s Great Loop, which traverses the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, the Great Lakes, Canadian canals, and inland rivers—do so in a powerboat, Les and Marthanna did it in a 37-foot sailboat. They had to unstep the mast to get under a bridge in Chicago. “We put the mast down on the boat and carried it with us,” Les says. “Past the bridge, we put it back.”