Video: A journey through grief

• Posted By: Bryan Chan
• Posted On: 2:30 a.m. | November 14, 2010

When Gary Ferguson lost his wife, Jane, in a canoeing accident in 2005, he struggled to keep his promise: to scatter her ashes in five locations in the West, each special to their life together. He traveled to Idaho, Wyoming and Utah, but his sorrow only deepened. He had to wait. Finally, in August 2009, he decided to try again, and over 11 days, he walked 100 miles from his home in Red Lodge, Mont., through the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness into Yellowstone National Park, some of the wildest, most remote country in the Lower 48.

Times photographer Brian van der Brug and staff writer Thomas Curwen joined Ferguson on the last trip. View the audio slide show above and more photos by van der Brug and read Curwen’s full story “Walking away from grief.”