The Last Season Read online

  Referencing a range of ecological studies, the parks’ scientists compiled a backcountry management plan in 1960 that outlined ever-increasing populations. They proposed a set of experimental rules and regulations that, if adhered to, would theoretically save the backcountry from becoming another frontcountry.

  Randy represented a new generation of clean-shaven and uniformed rangers with military-cropped haircuts who, like military grunts, were stationed on the front lines but, as seasonal employees, held the lowest rank. Their challenge was to introduce this way of thinking to a cast of backpackers, fishermen, horsemen, and climbers, who weren’t always receptive to new ideas.

  In young Ranger Randy, the Park Service had been delivered the perfect foot soldier, though his gentle nature made him more of an archangel crusading in a green uniform. He already considered the High Sierra his church; the backcountry management plan became his bible. The report read like scripture to Randy, warning of an impending doomsday and often citing his childhood home, Yosemite, as an example of what could occur. Here, in the backcountry of Sequoia and Kings Canyon, man’s presence had not yet dismembered Mother Wilderness—but she was barely holding on.

  Armageddon was upon them.

  Besides his academic knowledge of that report and a genuine desire to protect his beloved wilderness from the proverbial fires of hell, Randy had brought with him an innate love and enthusiasm for the Sierra as well as the ability to survive in its wilds. The plants and the animals were his kindred spirits; the geology and waterways were his temples. But he didn’t know first aid or CPR. He wore no sidearm, carried no handcuffs. Disarming, much less defending himself from, an armed suspect was the stuff of movies, not his reality. The skills required to lower an injured climber off a precarious cliff or rescue a drowning hiker from swift whitewater had not been taught in ranger training because there was no formal training for seasonal backcountry rangers at Sequoia and Kings Canyon.

  His job was to hike the trails and “spread the gospel” to as many visitors as possible. He issued fire permits, picked up trash, hung Mountain Manners signs, naturalized campsites, and if there was an emergency—medical, forest fire, whatever—he was to tend to the situation as best he could and radio for assistance. In 1965, he knew none of the skills that would become second nature as he traveled down the high and lonely path of these parks’ most trained—some would call them elite—backcountry rangers.

  Despite his fit, but certainly not commanding, 5-foot-8-inch, 140-pound frame, Randy was, in these parts, the law of the land. Add youth to his stature, however, and the National Park Service patch on his shoulder and silver badge on his chest gave him little more law enforcement presence than an Eagle Scout at a bank robbery. But that didn’t mean he didn’t take the rangers’ motto seriously. Each morning he pinned the National Park Ranger badge above his left chest pocket; he was prepared to “protect the people from the park, and the park from the people.” It was his mantra.

  He soon learned, however, that his main duty that summer was to collect garbage—gunnysacks full of it. The second-most-prevalent chore was cleaning up “improved campsites,” which meant tearing down the log-and-granite dining tables and kitchen areas sheltered behind rock-wall windbreaks. Fire pits were his nemesis, engineering feats he deemed “fire castles” for their sheer immensity. They often came complete with iron grates that campers hid in nearby hollow logs or hung from trees when they left the mountains. Generations of families had been coming to these spots for years—sometimes kicking out other campers who were squatting on their campsite. Imagine their surprise when they couldn’t find “their” campsite and a young, mustached Ranger Randy materialized out of the woods to explain that the area was being “naturalized.”

  “Natural-what? I just want to know where my fireplace is!”

  It was predictable. The parks’ management plan had a section entitled “Wilderness Protection vs. Personal Freedom,” in which was written, “Oldtime use of wilderness was completely free of restrictions. Wilderness explorers could hunt and fish without limit, cut down trees at will, camp, make fires and graze their stock anywhere. The tradition of personal freedom in wilderness dies hard…. But when human populations expand they become subject to the biological limitations that govern other dense populations: the greater the number of individuals the greater the loss of individual freedom.”

  Translated: “Sorry, sir, the fireplace your grandfather built with your father has been obliterated, but I replaced it with this highly functional, less obtrusive fire ring that’s—yes, sir, I realize it’s quite small, but it will still provide plenty of warmth and cooking surface, not to mention you won’t have to burn an entire tree each time you light it. By the way, you won’t be needing that ax. The new regulations allow only foraging for deadfall on the ground. Oh, and please don’t cut pine boughs for your bed—that’s illegal now as well. Have a nice day.”

  Randy, who was neither so blunt nor so stiff, strove to respect past freedoms, introducing the new rules and regulations to more than 1,200 park visitors in his patrol area that season without hearing a complaint. The only citation he issued was to a backpacker who had brought his dog with him, which led to a discussion about the difference between national parks and the national forests bordering the parks, which are managed by a much looser set of use regulations. That first season was devoid of any major emergencies: Randy treated one person for blisters, and a dehydrated girl who felt sick merely needed to force down water. He destroyed seventy-five oversized fire pits and collected thirteen gunnysacks of garbage that were hauled out of the mountains by mules. As the summer progressed, he earned his reputation as a devoted and diplomatic workhorse who once hiked 16 round-trip miles to tear down a haphazard community of campsites that he’d heard was destroying the serenity of a remote lake. Exhausted after hours of moving rock and logs, he embarked on the 8-mile return to his station and discovered en route one of the Sierra’s legendary can dumps—a rusting midden that couldn’t be passed by. After loading his pack with 50 pounds or more of glass and cans, he returned home well after dark to collapse in his sleeping bag.

  He lived in the spartan accommodations of a tent on the shore of Middle Rae Lake and recorded his simplified life with the romanticized pen one might expect from an inspired 23-year-old truant from society who had been raised on a diet of nature writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Aldo Leopold, and Henry David Thoreau. “There is a low plant that grows profusely everywhere, composed of a ‘cup’ of several leaves pointing nearly straight up,” Randy wrote after some afternoon rain showers. “The whole is maybe half an inch high, and they form carpets that one could take for a meadow. Whenever it rains a large drop of water collects in the bottom of this cup and glimmers like the brightest diamond in a green rosette when the sun comes out…the most brilliant diamond one could imagine.”

  After one patrol, he returned to his station, where “the evening alpenglow on the peaks filled me with a feeling of bigness inside,” he wrote. “As I rounded the final edge of lower Rae the jumping fish dotted the lake with their rings. So still was the air I could hear the splashing…and as they jumped clear of the water I could see momentary flashes of silver bodies. Descending the final slope to my cabin, looking out over Arrowhead Lake and toward Pinchot Pass in the diffused pinkish light, I felt positively exhilarated. I know exactly how Henry Thoreau felt when running home after the rain. ‘Grow wild according to your nature, like these brakes and sedges which will never become English hay, let the thunder rumble.’”

  Indeed, Middle Rae Lake was his Walden Pond; the surrounding peaks, basins, and meadows were his Sand County.

  There was something different about staying in one general area that Randy’s previous summer’s hike on the John Muir Trail had not revealed to him, a satisfying sense of ownership that came with the job: not a selfish, territorial bent, but more the pride a homeowner feels for his property. With that sentiment came a respect for his endearing neighbors—the marmot famil
y that had taken up residence in a burrow near his cabin’s doorstep and the rosy finches and Clark’s nutcrackers that vied for his attention as he strolled down the trails.

  The fragile mountain meadows became Randy’s personal cause, no doubt impassioned by childhood walks with his father and brother. If a packer grazed his mules in a closed meadow or a poorly informed backpacker pitched his tent on anything green instead of on gravel, it was as if they had desecrated Randy’s yard—the church’s gardens.

  His supervisor, a well-liked ranger by the name of Dick McLaren, gave Randy a line of advice to which he would adhere for the rest of his career: “The best way to teach the public isn’t with a citation, it’s with communication.” And so Randy would offer to help move an ill-placed camp or catch an uncooperative mule in a wet meadow, and gently explain the reasons behind the rules—sometimes to the packer, sometimes to the mule, to the amusement of the packer. A story that would become legendary in Sequoia and Kings Canyon was about the backpacker who asked Randy the name of a tiny flower he had pitched his tent upon. Randy apologized and told the backpacker that he knew only the flower’s “book name.” He explained that he hadn’t figured out how to ask the flower its real name, but thanked the backpacker for his interest. The hiker likely never pitched his tent again without carefully checking what was underneath it.

  But the living flowers, grasses, and animals weren’t all that tugged at Randy’s heartstrings. Even the granite peaks—cast in a surreal glow each morning and night—hypnotized him with their sublime, quiet beauty and mystery. Among these high crags were secret passageways, long forgotten or never explored, that called out to him. After staring at one such cleft for more than two months, he devoted one of his days off to satisfying his curiosity. With some difficult scrambling and climbing, he reached the crux, which was a doorway into a hidden basin enclosed by an amphitheater of stone, where water flowed literally from solid rock.

  As he crossed the threshold of the notch, it was as if the mountains were sharing a verdant secret with him. He described it as “some of the most beautiful country in this area, perhaps because it is pure—untouched, untrammeled, and unlittered.” He explored the shores of silent glacial tarns, finding no other footprints. The flowers grew as they should at these heights, where the soil’s nutrients had gathered, sustaining them in “small patches or tufts between the boulders,” without fear of being plucked or smashed by a hiker or eaten by a mule. There were no blackened fire pits or piles of rusting cans, though there was a flat spot above the meadow that had been someone’s barely perceptible sleeping spot. The haven he’d been drawn to was, according to Randy, “rich country,” symbolizing not only the past but also what he hoped would be the future for these mountains.

  AS RANDY RELAXED into the daily regimen of life as a backcountry ranger, Dana and Esther Morgenson were increasingly anxious back in Yosemite. They weren’t concerned for his safety in the mountains—they were confident he could handle anything the Sierra might throw at him.

  They were, however, worried about the rumblings of a draft. On July 9, 1965, just three days before Randy was airlifted into the backcountry, President Johnson acknowledged in a news conference that his administration was considering a call-up of reservists and expanding current military draft quotas. Randy was of age, and Dana and Esther knew that no amount of wilderness could shield him from the Selective Service and Vietnam. The Morgenson family had seen what military service in a war zone had done to Larry’s spirit. Larry, whom Randy had once looked up to as an artistic and talented storyteller, a tireless skier, an older brother with worldly aspirations, had atrophied after the Korean War into living his life within the constraints of a bottle. The drink helped curb what would later be called post-traumatic stress. Regardless of the reasons behind Larry’s uninspired life, family and friends marked the beginning of the decline with his military service. Even knowing this, Randy had told his parents that he would serve his country if he was drafted. He “wouldn’t like it,” he said, but if he was called, he would go.

  Toward the end of the season, Dana and Bill Taylor—Randy’s childhood friend—hiked into the backcountry for a visit and were surprised to see how much weight he had lost. It was impossible for a foot ranger not to lose weight; he simply could not consume enough calories at altitude, especially with a canned-food diet. They brought with them homemade cookies from Esther, which Randy rationed sparingly after meals.

  Seeking his father’s expertise, Randy told him of the flowers that had appeared like diamonds after the rain. Dana instantly recognized the description as bilberry, but he and Randy hiked to the spot to confirm. The conversation, as it often did, segued into school.

  Bill Taylor thought that with the threat of a draft, Randy was crazy even to consider not going back to school. Full-time students were eligible for deferment, a no-brainer to Bill. Dana expressed his concerns as well.

  If Randy went back to school in the fall and spring, he could come back to the high country the following summer. That wouldn’t be an option if he were to be drafted. He agreed to think about it.

  Back in Yosemite, Dana confided his concerns to Randy’s friend Nancy Williams, a young woman who worked with Dana in the Curry Company’s accounting department. Dana expressed to her his disappointment in Randy for not continuing his education and his worry that he was exposing himself to the draft. But Nancy understood that “Randy was answering a higher calling.” She describes it as an irresistible pull, like Jack London’s “call of the wild.” “I think Randy had a distinct purpose in life,” Williams says, “and back then, he wasn’t exactly sure what that purpose was. He just followed his heart, which wasn’t in the classroom. The mountains were his classroom.”

  Such idealistic reasoning provided Dana and Esther little respite from their worries. War, they knew, was not their son’s calling—he wasn’t programmed for it. Before he’d left for the mountains, they had urged him to continue with his education. In the mountains, Randy reasoned, that was exactly what he was doing. When he wasn’t writing in his logbook or practicing with the camera Ansel Adams had given him, he was memorizing the backcountry management plan.

  As summer edged toward fall, Randy made it a point to speak with everybody he encountered. His knowledge and charm led people to invite him for dinner at their camps, and he reciprocated by inviting backpackers into his tiny yet cozy cabin for tea when a rainstorm passed overhead. Despite his comfort with solitude, he was extremely social and could dive into conversation and not come up for air for hours. On one long patrol to Upper Basin, he met a man and his daughter atop Pinchot Pass and spent some time with them, chatting about the Sierra. Afterward, Randy turned to hike down into Marjorie Lake Basin, toward Bench Lake. The father, obviously impressed by the young ranger, told him, “I hope this is your career—we need you.”

  “I was pleased,” wrote Randy in his logbook, “that he felt I was a credit to the service.”

  FOR WHATEVER REASON—to avoid the war or to please his parents—Randy was back at Arizona State College in Flagstaff the following fall. He carried with him the memories of an enchanted summer, and a folder that bore the quote:

  Wilderness

  An area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.

  —Howard Zahniser

  Perhaps it was a tribute to Zahniser, a former executive director of The Wilderness Society, as well as the author of the Wilderness Act. He had died four months before President Johnson signed the act into law on September 3, 1964. Or maybe it just kept Randy’s mind in the right place as he studied cultural linguistics, religious philosophies, and Asian cultures and philosophy, all classes that played into his longstanding dream of visiting the tallest mountains in the world: the Himalayas.

  Not unlike the military, the Peace Corps used romantic photographs of exotic locales to entice potential volunteers and recruits. Such photos of Asia, and in particular the Himalayas, str
uck a chord when Randy happened by a Peace Corps booth at his school, where, as in many other college towns and campuses, Peace Corps recruiters shared the sidewalks with Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine recruiters. In 1966, the Peace Corps was considered either an honorable exemption from the draft or, as Richard Nixon put it, a “haven for draft dodgers.” The crowds gathered around the Peace Corps recruiters told the story of that era.

  As with many things in his life, Randy didn’t consider being drawn to the Peace Corps to be merely a chance encounter. He filled out an application, requesting Asia as his top choice. There were no guarantees, but he made it clear that the Himalaya region was his dream assignment—another beckoning doorway that seemed to be leading him down a specific path in life.

  “The master intended for me a life in the wilderness, a life of awareness and discovery of the forces of nature and humanity. A life…that carries me toward more entire manhood, and perhaps one that brings some of this into the rest of the world, counterbalancing some of the forces that presently carry us along.”

  Randy wrote this in a letter to his parents while looking out from the terrace of the mud house he had been assigned in the village of Golapangri, in the Maharashtra region of India. It had been more than a year since the Peace Corps acceptance letter was delivered to him by mule at the Charlotte Lake station during his second year as a backcountry ranger. His journey from that point forward continued like a fable.

  RANDY HAD BARELY STRAYED from Yosemite’s granite womb when he boarded a jet and set out on a pilgrimage to the abode of the gods, the land of the Sherpa who climbed the mountains of the Himalayas with reverence and awe. To gaze upon those majestic peaks and walk even in their shadows was the ultimate treasure he sought when he joined the Peace Corps. Any assignment, he felt, would be worth the reward.