Gebhards writes of his experiences in lucid prose expressing his love for the wilderness with philosopical insights punctuated with humerous anecdotes. He traces his enchantment with the "Wild Thing" from his boyhood in the Mississippi bottom lands to the formalization of his education at Utah State University to his employment as an Idaho fishery biologist, mule skinner, folk musician, reluctant politician, winter survivalist, camp cook, wilderness meteorologist and wild river runner. His tales are loaded with humor sometimes wry and other times raucous. A modern mountain man, Gebhards' love of the Rocky Mountain wilderness is unrelenting as it is passed on to the reader.