Senior Editor Colin Kearns and photographer Kevin Cooley spent three days exploring what’s at stake in the battle for water in the Flaming Gorge Reservoir and the consequences of irresponsible drilling for oil and gas in Wyoming’s Little Mountain region. Here’s what they found on day one.

Our Cessna 210 races down the runway. The wings catch air, the vessel climbs, and we fly toward a dropoff, which, I’ve been told, is sheer and deep. The instant we shoot past the edge, the view briefly silences the six of us inside the cabin.

Hundreds of feet below, the Green River cuts through a vise of red canyon walls. Rafters are already coasting down the current. Fisherman are launching drift boats, getting an early crack at the thousands of trout that choke each mile of the tailwater. Bruce Gordon, the pilot, turns and floats us over mountains and valleys and plains—an endless landscape, even from the view up here—and we spot elk and antelope and one very large mule deer buck. As we survey the country, the words Teddy Roosevelt spoke upon seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time come to mind: Leave it as it is. You cannot improve it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American if he can travel at all should see.

Granted, this is not the Grand Canyon. But it’s still a special place: the Outlaw Triangle. Land where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid once hid from men with badges. Land rich with wildlife and wild scenery. Land that should be left as it is, but could very well be marred if some get their way. Land that Field & Stream and Trout Unlimited selected as the second stop on their Best Wild Places tour.

Along with a TU crew and other outdoor writers and photographers, I’ll spend the next three days here. Together, we’ll fish, explore, and learn about the conservation concerns that threaten this land.

For the moment though, all I can think about is this view. So I look down.

Senior Editor Colin Kearns and photographer Kevin Cooley spent three days exploring what’s at stake in the battle for water in the Flaming Gorge Reservoir and the consequences of irresponsible drilling for oil and gas in Wyoming’s Little Mountain region. Here’s what they found on day two.

Today starts early. The breakfast bell rings at 5:30 a.m. By six, we’re in the in the trucks headed toward Little Mountain to view some wildlife—and we don’t have to wait long. By 6:30, we’ve already seen mule deer, pronghorns, one moose, and a pack of wild horses. The crew from Trout Unlimited wasn’t kidding when they said this area was rich with wildlife. I mean, wild horses.

We take it slow on Little Mountain’s dirt roads. We do this because the land—decorated with wild flowers, bitterbrush, sagebrush, junipers, and aspen trees—deserves to be appreciated. Even the patches of dead junipers, killed long ago by wildfire, are beautiful in their own way—twisted and bare and pale like a league of freak skeletons frozen on the land. We take it slow so as to not disturb the animals, which we can’t seem to travel a quarter-mile without spotting, be it a mule deer doe with her fawns or a pack of antelope or a nest of juvenile hawks. Life thrives here.