On October 19, 2003, after a life full of adventure and accomplishment, Mardy Murie, a member of WOC’s founding board of directors, died peacefully in her cabin on the Murie Ranch in Moose. Mardy stood as the inspiration and mentor for several generations of American wilderness advocates. Wilderness for Mardy was not avocation or abstraction. It was a life. She eloquently expressed her passion for wild places and her steely resolve to protect them in her writing, her speeches and her testimony before congressional committees. Her warm and welcoming personality drew an unending stream of visitors to her home.

Margaret “Mardy” Thomas was born in Seattle in 1902, and grew up in the frontier town of Fairbanks, Alaska. She learned early how to deal with harsh winters and rough living, and she developed a love for wild country.

Shortly after becoming the first woman to graduate from the University of Alaska, she met a young biologist, Olaus Murie, who was studying caribou for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They fell in love, married in 1924 and embarked on a 550-mile honeymoon journey into the Arctic wilderness by boat and dogsled. In Two in the Far North, she writes, “Through every mile of the Koyokuk, Olaus was opening my mind and heart to the little-known, teeming, rich life going on in the trees and stream, in the mossy tundra, and in the grassy sloughs.”

For the next two decades Mardy and Olaus, often with their children, Martin, Joanne and Donald, made many trips into the wilderness of Alaska and the mountains of Wyoming, where Olaus had been sent to study elk at the National Elk Refuge in Jackson. They built a house in the town of Jackson where Mardy became actively involved in the community.

In 1944, Olaus retired from the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service to serve as director, later president, of The Wilderness Society. He and Mardy moved to a new home, formerly a dude ranch in Moose. They bought the ranch in partnership with Mardy’s sister, Louise, and her husband, Olaus’s brother Adolph, a National Park Service biologist. The Murie Ranch would become a center of the American conservation movement.

In 1956, Mardy embarked on a trip that would mark an important transition in her life. Traveling with Olaus and several other biologists to the upper Sheenjek River on the south slope of the Brooks Range, this summer-long adventure launched the campaign to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The designation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 1960 was a major victory and a fitting high point in Olaus’s and Mardy’s lifelong partnership dedicated to the protection of wild places.

A second major victory was on the horizon, the Wilderness Act. When President Johnson signed the bill in 1964, Mardy Murie stood at his side.

Mardy worked for short periods of time for the Izaac Walton League, the Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society, but she always returned to the home she loved, saying, “The house just put its arms around me.” From that house in the woods in Moose, Mardy continued to shine, writing letters and articles, traveling to hearings, making speeches. She returned to Alaska to survey potential wilderness areas for the National Park Service and worked on the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, signed by President Carter in 1980. Her tireless efforts as a conservation advocate preserved some of the most important wilderness areas left on the planet. WOC founder Tom Bell remembers her fondly:

It was my great pleasure to get to know both Olaus and Mardy Murie. Olaus became one of my conservation heroes but died before I really got to know him well. Quiet, soft-spoken and wise, Mardy became a dear friend. She was one of that group of people who came together as the first board of directors of the Wyoming Outdoor Council. There, I valued her counsel and steady support. She was also most supportive in personal encouragement and her own limited finances in launching High Country News. To me she was a paragon of virtue, a heroine larger than life who brought richness into my life. My wife and I both loved her for just who she was, a most wonderful person and a fine friend.

Mardy received many awards over the years, including the Audubon Medal in 1980, the John Muir Award in 1983, the Robert Marshall Conservation Award in 1986 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. Nearing her 100th birthday in 2002, Mardy was honored with the J.N. Ding Darling Conservationist of the Year Award, the National Wildlife Federation’s highest honor. But Mardy’s greatest rewards were letters, phone calls and visits from those who had found inspiration, comfort and purpose in her work. For the three decades after Olaus’s death, the Murie Ranch continued to be a place of pilgrimage for conservationists, and the impact of Mardy’s direct, personal approach can be measured in the astonishing number of people who recall time spent with her as a life-changing experience.

“Mardy was a mentor to many of us without even realizing it,” notes WOC’s Meredith Taylor. “As Mardy aged, she made it clear to those of us who followed in her footsteps that the fight for wild places was not yet over, will never be over. The best thing we can do to honor Mardy’s life is to keep working as hard as we can to protect our last great wild open spaces in perpetuity.” Mardy’s steadfast defense of wild places will be carried on by many. All who knew her will miss her humor, kindness and grace. Especially appropriate today are Mardy’s words at the end of Two in the Far North: “Do I dare to believe that one of my great-grandchildren may someday journey to the Sheenjek and still find the gray wolf trotting across the ice of Lobo Lake? Yes, I do still dare to believe!”

Thanks to the Murie Center and The Wilderness Society for supplying us with much of the information contained in this remembrance.