Ranger Confidential: Living, Working, and Dying in the National Parks
For twelve years Andrea Lankford lived in some- of the biggest, most impressive national parks in the world, working as a ranger-a job she loved. She chaperoned baby sea turtles on their journey to sea. She pursued bad guys on her galloping patrol horse. She jumped into rescue helicopters bound for the heart of the Grand Canyon. She won arguments with bears. She slept with a few too many rattlesnakes.\ Hell yeah, it was the best job in the world! Fortunately, Andrea survived it.\ In this...
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The real stories behind the scenery of America’s national parks For twelve years, Andrea Lankford lived in the biggest, most impressive national parks in the world, working a job she loved. She chaperoned baby sea turtles on their journey to sea. She pursued bad guys on her galloping patrol horse. She jumped into rescue helicopters bound for the heart of the Grand Canyon. She won arguments with bears. She slept with a few too many rattlesnakes. Hell yeah, it was the best job in the world! Fortunately, Andrea survived it. In this graphic and yet surprisingly funny account of her and others’ extraordinary careers, Lankford unveils a world in which park rangers struggle to maintain their idealism in the face of death, disillusionment, and the loss of a comrade killed while holding that thin green line between protecting the park from the people, the people from the park, and the people from each other. Ranger Confidential is the story behind the scenery of the nation’s crown jewels—Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Great Smokies, Denali. In these iconic landscapes, where nature and humanity constantly collide, scenery can be as cruel as it is redemptive.
Introduction vi1 This Is Your Brain on the Grand Canyon 12 Plover Patrol 73 Faint at Heart 164 As Yosemite Falls 235 Our First Summers in the Sierra 316 Dead Bear Walking 427 The Ranger Olympics 498 A Girl in Boys Town 589 The Partner 6810 The Tell-Tale Backpack 7411 Mary, the Split-Tail Clerk-Typist 79Gateway to the Underworld 9113 Scorpion Karma 9414 Predator-Prey Relationships 10315 Cruel World 11316 Crash 11917 A Cold Wet One 12518 Dry Heat 13619 The Devil's Corkscrew 14620 Friday the Thirteenth 15021 The Gut of Darkness 15422 Thunder and Lightning 15723 Pine Pigs 16524 Dangerous Types 17025 Thanksgiving Ledge 18026 Stuck in the Fee Booth 19127 What's So Wonderful about Wonder Lake? 19728 Separation Canyon 20429 Place of Emergence 21230 On the Mountain 21731 The Ranger's Burden 22632 The Last Call 233Epilogue 235Acknowledgments 239Index 241About the Author 246
