The Last Season (10 page)

Whenever the evening news reports that a search-and-rescue operation is in progress for a missing person, in wilderness terrain or otherwise, an ICS is almost certainly the skeleton that is moving the body of the search.

Bird was concerned that Coffman was initially performing the duties of incident commander, operations chief, and planning chief, which was “way too much for one person to handle effectively” for any length of time.

“I wanted Randy [Coffman] to stay in the frontcountry and plan the search, not go into the backcountry himself and be part of the search on the ground,” says Bird, who explained it like a military battle: “The general doesn't go out with the troops and lead the charge. Instead, it's his job to stay a ways back and plan the execution of the battle plan, including factoring in events as they change. This means collecting intelligence, ordering the tanks and aircraft that are needed to execute the plan, and making sure you have enough troops to do the job and have a way to transport, feed, and house the soldiers.”

The chief ranger wanted Coffman to either assign the incident command position to someone else or “come out of the backcountry and start thinking about planning the full-scale search,” which included delegating duties to qualified personnel.

When Bird heard Coffman's voice over a static-filled radio connection, he was receptive to the idea of an ICS but had no interest in relinquishing his command of the SAR. At this point, it was personal—he felt a sense of responsibility to see this one through. Incident commanders often wear numerous hats initially in a SAR, and for good reason. The ICS was formulated around the basic principle of accountability. In the
end, the weight of the operation's success or failure was on his shoulders.

Confident that the search was on track, Bird called Randy's wife, Judi Morgenson, with whom she had worked as a wine steward at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite during the early 1970s. Bird, who had begun her career with the NPS well after Randy's first summer seasons, was proof positive that a high-level permanent position was attainable in the Park Service if you had the skills, the desire, and a willingness to jump through hundreds of hoops. Here she was in 1996, filling the boots of the once male-dominated chief ranger position at one of the country's wildest national parks. In the past, she'd dealt with a lot of unsavory duties in her rise up the duty chain, from arresting drunks to being bitten, stepped on, and kicked by mules, to recovering bodies to shooting human-attacking coyotes to dealing with the mountains of paperwork in constant upheaval on her desk.

But it was a phone call like this, regarding the uncertain well-being of a ranger who ultimately was under her command, that proved to be one of the most difficult duties she had performed in her entire career.

 

RANDY HAD PACKED
his gear for the 1996 season with the belief that Judi would not be welcoming him with open arms at their Sedona, Arizona, home come October. He loaded his Toyota truck with more boxes than usual, intending to store favorite books from his parents' library, his camera equipment, extra clothes, ski equipment, and photo albums in Bishop, California, on the eastern side of the Sierra.

He had always given Judi books as gifts, often before heading into the backcountry. Generally, they held deeper meaning than just a good read—a message to Judi, something he felt strongly about and wanted to share. In seasons past, they had provided her a measure of comfort on the lonely nights spent at home while he was away for months at a time. “It's hard to explain, but reading a book Randy left me was kind of like having him there next to me,” she says. “After so many years, we were in tune with each other. Books that spoke to him usually spoke to me too.”

Even with divorce papers stashed in his backpack, Randy continued this tradition. He had given Judi
I Heard the Owl Call My Name,
a novel by Margaret Craven. The gift had been an unexpected and tender message, despite the pending terminus of their marriage. It reminded her, if only for an instant, how charming and sweet her partner in life could be. But it was a short-lived respite. After Randy drove off, she placed the book on her nightstand, where it sat unread.

Almost two months later, on the evening of July 24, she still hadn't cracked the cover when the phone rang and a familiar voice greeted her.

“Judi,” said the chief ranger, “this is Debbie Bird at the park. You haven't heard from Randy recently, have you?”

The last time Judi had heard from Randy was during ranger training. “Not since late June,” she responded. In that phone conversation, Randy had pleaded with Judi to join him in the backcountry. He wanted to make things right—if she would have him. But Judi had held her ground, letting Randy know that it wasn't that simple.

Bird informed Judi that Randy was overdue from a patrol, and a search was in progress. “He could just be having radio problems,” said Bird, “but it's been four days.”

“Four days?” said Judi. “He's trying to worry me.”

Judi then told Bird that they had separated and she had filed for divorce. This was news to Bird, and she became concerned that perhaps Randy had hiked out of the mountains. If that were the case, the well-being of the searchers was unnecessarily at stake.

“Is there anyplace he'd go? Anybody he'd call?” asked Bird.

“Alden Nash,” said Judi. “Or maybe our friend Stuart Scofield.”

“We can contact Alden,” said Bird. “You might want to follow up with your friend and let us know if he's heard anything.”

Bird gave Judi her direct lines at headquarters and at home and told her she'd call with an update the following day.

Judi ended the conversation by telling Bird, “It wouldn't be like Randy to leave the mountains. That's where he needs to be right now.”

Judi wasn't overly concerned. On the contrary, she was perturbed.
She became fixated on the suspicion that he was merely taking his time on the patrol, lollygagging around, looking at wildflowers and purposely ignoring the radio. His motive? To get even with her for not coming into the mountains. For not giving him another chance.

“Randy would have known I'd be the first call they'd make when he was overdue,” says Judi. But he was mistaken if he thought this stunt was going to make her lose any sleep. Picking up the address book she and Randy had filled over the years, Judi searched for Scofield's number.

In the living room of their home, she sat in her reading chair and reached for the phone. As if on cue in a campy horror flick, thunder rumbled and lightning flashed, lighting up the desert. Randy always loved storms—in the desert and the Sierra—and for a moment she was taken back to another storm they experienced early in their marriage.

They'd been hustling north on the John Muir Trail, rushing to make it back to Randy's Tyndall Creek cabin before the storm was upon them. To the west across Kern Canyon lightning strikes were hitting the jagged teeth of the Kaweah Peaks as menacing dark clouds closed in overhead, growling and illuminated with pulses of electricity. When they moved quickly through a sparse scattering of foxtail pines, one exploded with a deafening crash. The trees thinned as they climbed, and Judi grew terrified when they emerged onto the treeless 11,300-foot Bighorn Plateau. They squinted in the howling wind, watching snow squalls blow across the tundra. The safety of a distant treeline and a lower elevation was more than two and a half miles across completely exposed country. Judi hiked as fast as her legs could carry her, wanting to pass Randy, who strolled casually ahead, enraptured by the tempest.

The rain and snow turned to hail, which pelted Judi and stung her face. Frozen granules accumulated in the indentation of the trail, rendering it a white line to safety that she was fixated on.

But a quarter mile out on the plateau, Randy's aura soothed her and she was able to relax into the experience. Even though lightning was striking the plateau and the hair on her neck stood on end from the
static, she suddenly felt safe. Judi observed that the world was coming down around Randy, yet he was calm and composed in the face of the storm, not unlike a battlefield hero seemingly immune to flying bullets. They made it to Tyndall Creek wet, exhilarated, and happily unscathed—an initiation for Judi, but for Randy just another walk in the park.

Phone in hand, Judi dialed Scofield, repeating in her mind what she'd told herself every summer for more than two decades:

“Randy can take care of himself in the mountains.”

AT THE END OF THE
1971 summer season, Randy came down from the mountains tanned, lonely, underweight, and hungry for his mother's cooking.

Esther Morgenson was managing The Art Place, one of Yosemite's art galleries, which also sold homemade cards, candles, and other crafts. Randy wandered in looking for her, but was sidetracked by the resident candlemaker, Judi Douglas, a self-proclaimed “city girl” from Orange County.

“So, what brought you to Yosemite?” asked Randy after he had
introduced himself. Judi, instantly smitten by the dashing young ranger, explained how she'd taken a year off from studying art history at San Jose State University to travel, party, and see the galleries and cathedrals of Europe with her best friend, Gail Ritchie. Then, with a couple of months left before the next semester, she'd decided to follow Gail to Yosemite, where Gail had helped Judi get this job at the gallery. Randy nodded his approval and told her she'd been wise to leave the best for the end of her journey. The look he gave her conveyed that he meant something more than Yosemite. “Yeah,” says Judi, “he charmed the socks right off of me from the start.”

Judi had gotten to know the tourists' Yosemite, but Randy took her to hideaway beaches on the Merced River that weren't on tourist maps; they also had drinks in the rustically romantic Ahwahnee Hotel and shared stories of their travels. “Randy could paint pictures with words,” says Judi. “He'd take me on trips to India, Nepal, and Japan in one conversation.”

A little more than a week after they'd met, Randy rendezvoused with Judi and Gail at the art gallery to view an exhibition of Asian artwork that made for another night of easy conversation. This was Judi's domain, and Randy listened intently as she explained some of the history behind the pieces. “He made me feel important,” says Judi. “That what I wanted to do with art was important—not just special, or neat, but important. And he never made me feel rushed, which wasn't easy to find back then. Most guys couldn't wait to get out of an art gallery. Randy just strolled through soaking in the art.

“First, we were inspired by this amazing artwork, and then we walked outside only to find ourselves in this amazing natural amphitheater.” The granite cliffs glowed in the moonlight, the pine trees shot up into a sky full of stars, and Judi and Gail had Randy between them, the three happily holding hands as they headed toward Judi's dorm room at Happy Isles.

“Gail let go,” says Judi, “and I never did.”

It wasn't long before Judi was a frequent guest at the Morgensons' residence on the Ahwahnee Meadow, drinking cocktails in the yard
and watching evening light on Half Dome before being called in to dinner. The protocol of the Morgenson household was a bit surreal for Judi, whose own family life was more unstructured. She was impressed by Esther's attention to detail—how she wrapped everything she put in the freezer slowly and artistically in plastic, like Christmas gifts. At the dinner table, Judi appreciated to the point of awe the image of Dana at one end carving the meat and Esther at the other end serving the salad, of plates passed from one person to the next until everyone was served. Then, and only then, did anyone lift a fork.

Judi learned quickly that Esther was the sensitive and quiet artist while Dana was the engaging diplomat with a confident command of language. Randy, she observed, had inherited both his mother's sensitivity and his father's way with words; he was also handsome, with thick, dark hair and expressive, gentle eyes that held a hint of something she couldn't put her finger on. Mystery, perhaps. By the time her job ended and she had to return to the city for school, Randy had captured her heart.

 

HIS OWN HEART FILLED
with romance, Randy strove to get his photography and his stories published. He'd been taking notes in the backcountry and made dozens of prints from both his travels abroad and the Sierra that he sent off to various magazines. He read the letters he'd written home, all of which his mother had typed up, and reviewed his journals. And what more inspiring setting to write one's memoirs than staring off toward Half Dome as the first winter snows dusted the valley?

As temperatures dropped and tourists fled, an unlikely mentor arrived—perhaps to research a book or to visit Ansel Adams, or likely he just knew that this was the best time to come to Yosemite. Perhaps he came to see Dana Morgenson, who had become a bit of a celebrity himself in botanical circles. Regardless, Wallace Stegner ended up in the Morgensons' living room that autumn of 1971.

He'd just won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel
Angle of Repose
and was about to begin his final year teaching at Stanford University, where he'd founded the creative writing program in 1946. In the ensu
ing decades, he had taught hundreds of students, some of whom had been awarded a Stegner Fellowship: Wendell Berry, Ken Kesey, Ernest Gaines, Raymond Carver, and Edward Abbey.

During the course of eco-fired conversation—snowmobile usage in the national parks and other such controversies of the times—Stegner learned of Randy's aspirations as a writer and offered to read something he had written. Randy had just refined two stories, “Little Town of Golapangri” and “Within Mountains,” both of which left Yosemite Valley in Wallace Stegner's satchel.

By Christmas, Randy had received a handful of rejection letters for other articles he'd submitted to magazines, but he had heard nothing from Stegner. He'd almost given up when, after the new year, it arrived: two single-spaced typed pages on the letterhead of Stanford University.

“I've been interested to read your two pieces,” wrote Stegner on January 26, 1972. “They're literate, sensitive, and earnest, and they probably made you feel good when you wrote them…. But, I doubt they'll do for publication…. I'll try to tell you why, always with the risk of being blunt and seeming unfriendly.”

First Stegner commented on “Within Mountains,” which had been inspired by LeConte Canyon:

Stegner then gave an equally honest, scathing critique of “Little Town of Golapangri.” He ended the letter by reiterating:

Randy replied promptly.

In closing, Randy continued the snowmobile banter:

Within a month, Stegner replied:

These letters were the beginning of a string of correspondence that
would span years. Stegner continued to encourage Randy to send him his writings, while Randy kept Wallace abreast of issues within the National Park Service, fishing around for information and becoming a sort of stringer for Stegner's kindred bent toward environmentalism.

On March 2, 1972, Stegner wrote:

BY THE SUMMER OF
1973 the only thing Randy had “published” was this handwritten note he stuck to the door of his ranger station at McClure Meadow:

Randy Morgenson, Evolution Ranger

 

It wasn't Pulitzer material, but word got around. His journal entries from Rae Lakes in 1965, Charlotte Lake in 1966, LeConte Canyon in 1971, and McClure Meadow in 1972 were good reading, not just the standard logbook fodder recorded by most of the rangers that included miles hiked, weather reports, number of people contacted, citations issued, medevacs performed, lost Boy Scouts found—oftentimes written with that much detail, and no emotion.

“Then Randy came along and started something. He put to words what we felt in the backcountry,” says one of his fellow rangers. “Nobody had really done that, but he took care to convey his emotions. You couldn't put down a logbook written by Randy without knowing, full well, his love for these mountains—and all the crap he'd put up with as a ranger.” It was, in fact, Randy's suggestion not only that these logbooks be archived at park headquarters but also that they be photocopied and kept in files at the individual duty stations where
they'd been written, so that future rangers could reference them for a “ranger's point of view” of the country they'd be taking care of and the problems to anticipate.

Whereas Randy's writing career had yet to bud, his relationship with Judi had flowered. The season after they'd met, he'd asked her to “walk in” and see him at McClure Meadow. The walk in had been a rude awakening for Judi, who toughed it out through 18 miles of wilderness and was still 9 miles short come nightfall. The bats were out and the birds had gone quiet when she was “taken in” (according to Randy; “rescued,” according to Judi) by another ranger whom Randy had asked to keep an eye out while she hiked through his territory.