MaryJane harvests corn at her farm in Moscow, ID.
In 1971, Butters graduated from Ben Lomond High School in Ogden, Utah.

In 1972, Butters took a job at a mountaintop lookout tower in Weippe, Idaho,

as a Clearwater-Potlatch Timber Protective Association fire watcher.

She briefly studied forestry at Utah State University, but dropped out.

In 1974, Butters was one of the three women who became the

first female wilderness rangers in the U.S.A, maintaining trails and cleaning sheepherder camps in the Uinta Mountains of northern Utah.

After that summer, she earned her carpentry proficiency certificate and was hired as the only woman on a crew building houses at Hill Air Force Base.

Early in 1976, Butters became the first woman station guard at the remote Moose Creek Ranger Station.

There she met Emil Keck, a fire-control officer, and construction-crew chief who lived at the wilderness station year round, and who became her mentor and the namesake for her second child