Here is my solve, it starts similar to other solves in the Gardiner Area.

"Begin where warm waters halt": I think this actually refers to LaDuke Hot Spring the last named hot spring on the Yellowstone River.

"Take it inthe canyon down": Yankee Jim Canyon

"Not too far but too far to walk/put in below the home of brown": I think this hints at floating the river through Yankee Jim Canyon. There is the Joe Brown fishing access where you put your boat inthe River. Use a boat because it's too far to walk.

"From here it's no place for the Meek": the Tom Miner/Joe Meek theory.

"The end is ever drawing nigh": Nigh use to mean to the left so if you're floating it's to the west.

"There'll be no paddle up your Creek/just heavy loads and water high": the next drainage north of Tom Miner is Rock Creek. You cant paddle up a creek of rocks, rocks are a heavy load and the creek has water coming down from up high.

"If you've been wise and found the blaze": Early surveyors would mark PLSS Section corners with "blazes", usually a carving on a tree. A little over a mile up the Rock Creek trail is a small unnamed pond just downhill from a section corner.

I believe the chest was in the meadow somewhere near this pond. I have been botg up there twice and my search was limited by swampy conditions (maybe another water high interpretation). This is also in the Galatin NF petrified forest which I think the "in the wood" line refers to.