The World Turned Upside Down

Synopsis

MATT McGREGOR, late 40’s, high school science teacher, has backpacked with his family in Wyoming the past 25 years. Driving to a Thanksgiving celebration in northern Wisconsin, Matt hits black ice on a bridge. His wife and son are killed. Nine months later, guilt-ridden and suicidal, Matt returns to the Wind River Mountains to bury their ashes and then take his own life. Meanwhile, in a remote valley in the Winds, a heavily armed anti-government MILITIA prep for a horrific act of terror. A single engine plane that routinely brings supplies to their wilderness camp, lands. Passenger CATHERINE DAWSON, early 40’s, working for the Forest Service and hitching a ride to Montana, slides boxes out the cargo door. Secretly, the Militia leader places a package of explosives in the cargo area. At another location, Matt fly casts the shoreline of an alpine lake in the Stough Basin. Explosion. The small plane, with a gaping hole in the back fuselage, crashes. The pilot is dead. Catherine survives. Matt, startled and hesitant at first, quickly treats Catherine’s wounds, constructs a travois and initiates an emergency evacuation. Exiting the wilderness, they are trapped in a violent firefight between FBI AGENTS and the anti-government militia now executing their plan.

Forced to flee in a new direction, Matt corrals one of the Militia’s runaway horses. Among the supplies, a rolled schematic details the pumping of arsenic into water towers. Matt and Catherine are determined to report this new information, but compelled to bushwhack off-trail where they deal with further injuries, ford swollen rivers, climb passes, avoid booby traps, and resort to varied forms of transportation. At the midpoint Matt discovers a camp ransacked, and the bodies of two young backpackers he met earlier. Dashing into his camp, Matt is seized by the Militia and strung up in a tree in front of a tied and gagged Catherine. The hastily departing Militia, still chased by the FBI, leave behind a satellite phone programmed to set in motion the state-wide plot of terror. Catherine cuts Matt’s ropes with her concealed bracelet knife. Before ascending the Continental Divide, Matt buries the ashes of his wife and son along with personal artifacts. At the Divide Catherine is totally spent, suffering from altitude sickness and the onset of hypothermia. Matt collapses, and emotionally cannot go on. He never intended to leave the wilderness.

In desperation and after Matt’s chilling confrontation with a member of the Militia, Catherine forces Matt to his feet and they begin the perilous trek down the western side. Severe weather intervenes, exhaustion sets in, food supplies dwindle and Matt is armed with only a pocket knife. In the final hours they face-off at individual locations with the retreating Militia. The monstrous plot involving an entire Militia network unravels. Catherine is revealed as an undercover DEA agent pursuing an unrelated drug case and as perplexed as Matt. In the denouement Matt suggests they reunite in the future... there’s a small remote lake he and his son discovered. Golden. Trout of extraordinary beauty.