If Monte Barrett had known he was about to die, he would have hobbled up to some rock high among the trees and just sat there. He saw himself going that way. “That way, the animals can benefit,” his wife recalls him saying.

But Barrett didn’t have time Sept. 16. Late that afternoon, he returned to his Woodland Park home after a walk in the nearby woods with his beloved bulldog, Ajax. He wasn’t feeling so good, he told Terry.

She brought him lemonade, but by then he was gone. He was 71.

Later, Allen Owen hiked to his mentor’s old stomping grounds: Barr Camp, Pikes Peak’s now-famous way station above 10,200 feet.

“It was kind of like seeing a ghost. So many memories, so much adventure,” Owen said. “It’s not even a faded memory; it’s like a chunk of history you know you lived. I can feel it. I can still see it. The vibrations are still there.”

Barrett, whose few words came in a deep, grainy baritone, didn’t much care to be known as the savior of Barr Camp, whose caretakers now host 2,500 overnighters every year, with tens of thousands more weary explorers stopping for nourishment and friendly faces. No, Barrett never minded his name missing from the popular history of America’s Mountain.

But last year, he was happy to speak to The Gazette about his fondest memories, about how this tradition of year-round caretakers came to be.

By the 1970s, the camp had fallen into disrepair under the infrequent watch of the Mennonite Church. The U.S. Forest Service hatched plans to raze the three cabins that stood then.

“I was like, ‘No man! Barr Camp has a purpose! It has to be there!’” Barrett said in an interview, recounting his visit to the district ranger. Barrett offered to clean up the place and look after it, and the ranger agreed.

“He was the guy who saved Barr Camp from ruin,” said Robert Houdek, local historian and cartographer of the Pikes Peak Atlas. “He deserves the Fred Barr Meritorious Service Medal for the 20th century.”

The Atlas has a landmark named for Barrett: Monte’s View Rockpile. Owen stopped by that outcrop during his recent memory tour.

It was one day in 1980 that he first encountered Barrett, who was descending the mountain via French Creek, his drainage of choice for the day. “I don’t need no stinkin’ trail,” he always said.

Owen came to admire Barrett for that boldness and for his endless knowledge. He knew all about the trees, all about everything that grew from the Earth, about the roots that made for good tea, about the wildlife big and small, about the depths of secret caverns and the ways the water flowed and converged. He was truly a guardian of the mountain, it seemed to young Owen. For weeks and months, he relieved Barrett at Barr Camp, serving soup or stew to guests and finding peace after years of American unrest.

Before Colorado, Barrett had been skipping classes at the University of Oklahoma to protest the Vietnam War. He’d head to the hill country to make sense of things. Always, he returned to the outdoors; the cottonwood stands of his formative years were tall and dense enough to get a boy lost.

“I figured I’m still on the planet Earth, so I was never concerned with where I was,” Barrett said. “So I’d just go wander.”

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He and Terry wanted something wilder. “There wasn’t much to do in Oklahoma,” said his partner of five decades. So they packed the Volkswagen and headed west.

They made home in Manitou Springs, where Barrett befriended another transplanted free spirit, Don McClung. He was enlisted to help at Barr Camp. Barrett had loads of trash to haul down and loads of supplies to haul up, appliances to make the place livable and gear to serve as first responder on search and rescue missions.

For gathering wood, an ax would have to do, because they couldn’t afford a chainsaw. They had several cabin doors and windows to replace.

“It took every penny we had and all of our time,” McClung said.

Down in the real world, Barrett picked up odd jobs, most recently at a liquor store. A career never suited him, as he was busy pursuing life’s toughest questions.

“What’s it all mean?” Owen said, recalling those conversations by kerosene lamp, those nights in the forest under the stars. The two could never come to a conclusion, but they always looked forward to the next day.

“What was important to him was the adventure,” Owen said. “Learning all you can and just go, run like a young puppy. Go. Explore and learn.”

Adventures Ltd. was short-lived. Barrett and a few other prospecting guides formed the company with Barr Camp central to plans. In a 1978 Gazette Telegraph article announcing the idea, a 31-year-old, big-haired Barrett is pictured near the bunkhouse where he would charge $2 a head, failing again to make much money; he only wanted enough to preserve the grounds. After four years, Barrett was pleased to hand the camp over and see it become the nonprofit it is today.

Last summer, Barrett showed a scar across his chest — the result of an open-heart surgery. His health long forbade him from returning to the mountain, something he regretted terribly. He resorted to the Pikes Peak Atlas, letting his imagination run wild, and on Google he zoomed into satellite images.

The memories were enough.

“He said this several times the last few years: ‘No regrets,’” his wife said. “We never got rich, but no regrets.”