The Last Season (5 page)

With or without a VIP guest, dinner was always a sit-down affair at the Morgensons'. Esther mimicked her English mother's regimen of a perfectly set table. The meat was carved by the man of the house, milk was served in a pitcher, and hats and elbows weren't tolerated.

Entertainment after the evening meal was generally focused on con
versation, either around the fire or at one of the venues in the valley where visiting scholars, authors, artists, and photographers frequently gave lectures and slide shows and presented documentary films. In later years Larry would veer off to a high school party while Randy would almost always tag along with his parents—unless he was absorbed in a good book. In that case, even as a teenager, he'd stay home and keep the fire stoked for his parents' return. Randy was the cliché boy under the covers with a flashlight. Many mornings, he'd wake with the house flashlight (batteries dead) in bed with him, having pushed it for one too many pages the night before. Even if television reception had been possible, the Morgenson household would have resisted. Radio, records, and newspapers were the main sources of news and entertainment, the
San Francisco Chronicle
and columnist Herb Caen being the family favorites.

In the winter, Randy would ice-skate on the pond at Curry Village and ski at Yosemite's ski area, Badger Pass, where his brother was an instructor and resident hot-dogger, who Randy looked up to and tried to keep up with.

During the late-1950s, Larry was drafted and stationed at the tense border between North and South Korea. While he was away, Randy and one of his best childhood friends, Bill Taylor, outgrew the “tame terrain” of what they coined “Badger Piss.” The wooded glades and steeper slopes of the backcountry became their new playground.

 

NEPOTISM REPORTEDLY
is a major factor in securing choice positions in the national parks, and so it was in 1958, when 16-year-old Randy Morgenson applied for the coveted job of bicycle-stand attendant at Curry Village. The $1.35-an-hour job—his first—consisted of 28 hours per week renting and repairing bicycles, giving directions, and answering questions about the park. He was rehired the following summer for the same job at the same pay rate and, by age 17, he had saved enough money to buy his first car, a 1932 Ford Model B five-window coupe, for $200. By the end of that summer, he'd torn out the stock Ford engine and replaced it with a Cadillac engine. According to
his friend Randy Rust, it “purred.” For a time, it was his passion. “If he wasn't out in the woods somewhere,” says Rust, “his head was either in a book or under the hood in their driveway.”

In June of 1960, at 18, Randy took a job at the park's only gas station, where he serviced cars, repaired flats, sold batteries, and acted as a guide to the steady stream of visitors who were relentless in their barrage of questions regarding Yosemite. Randy had absorbed enough trivia from his father—the park's resident walking, talking Yosemite guidebook—to answer most queries with a flare, unexpected from a youth with a greasy rag hanging from his back pocket.

If someone asked directions to Snow Creek Falls in early June, he'd rattle off road directions, then probably suggest the Mirror Lake Trail, recommending, “Keep your eyes open for a heart-shaped leafy plant at ground level in the shady spots. Rub one of the leaves between your fingers and smell it for a surprise.” The “surprise” was wild ginger.

As Randy began his senior year of high school, the Golden Age of big wall climbing in Yosemite was under way. Royal Robbins had pioneered a route up the 2,000-foot northwest face of Half Dome in 1957—the biggest wall that had ever been climbed at the time. Shortly thereafter, Warren Harding topped out on El Capitan's 3,000-foot Nose. Like many of the valley's youth, Randy occasionally loitered around Camp Four, which over time would become a mecca for climbers in search of what many call the vertical world of Yosemite. For Randy, it was simply another designated camping area in his backyard.

For Dana and Esther Morgenson, it was a source for concern. Randy had proven himself adept at all wilderness pursuits. He graduated from one to the next with the ease of a natural athlete. First it was ice skating at the ice rink, but then he decided that a remote lake was less crowded and afforded him more adventure and speed—the same way he'd progressed from controlled ski runs to the wild snow of the backcountry. Randy, like all the Yosemite kids, loved to climb around on the boulders and up the huge granite slabs along the edge of the valley floor. The Morgensons knew it was only a matter of time before they'd be holding their breath while watching him with binoculars—a
fly on one of the very granite walls that they had long associated with the comforting safety of an unhurried life. Unlike the small-town kid who wants to go and discover the big city, Randy wanted to venture deeper and deeper into the wilderness. Day hikes became overnight adventures, and if he could find no one to go with him he had no qualms about going alone.

He became interested in stories of mountaineering and dreamed, not of the world-class rock climbing in his backyard, but of exploring deep into the mountains of exotic lands. Sometimes he would head out of the house with the goal of finding the most obscure spot to read, uninterrupted, a book or the newest
National Geographic
cover to cover. One of the more inspirational articles he read was about the famed Sherpa of Nepal, mountain people whose physiological makeup from living for centuries at the world's highest altitudes enabled them to travel effortlessly in the thinnest air on the planet and had made them favorite porters and guides for climbing expeditions. Randy marveled at the notion of traveling to the land of the Sherpa, but until then, the Sierra served as a training ground.

 

RANDY GRADUATED
from Mariposa County High School, an hour's bus ride from his home, in June of 1961, ranked academically fifteenth out of forty-five graduates. He had excelled, especially in English and physical education, carrying straight A's through his high school career. Math, history, and science were B subjects. In sports he lettered in both football and basketball, but most telling was his elected position as senior class president, which friends attributed to his likable nature and way with words. Randy Rust remembers that he was a natural speaker and “comfortable talking about anything with anyone.”

Much to the pleasure of his proud parents, Randy was accepted by Arizona State College in Flagstaff (renamed Northern Arizona University in 1966), where he declared his major as Recreation Land Management, a fairly new curriculum nationwide. But after a year and a half, the 21-year-old decided to take the spring semester off to work his first real job for the National Park Service, that of “ungraded laborer.”

By all accounts, this was the first time Dana and Esther weren't pleased with Randy. Their elder son, Larry, had returned from his tour of duty and moved in with them, spending much of his time at local watering holes and often coming home drunk. Then, after vanishing for a few days, he appeared at the front door with a young woman he introduced as his wife. He'd met her at a bar, and after a brief love affair, they'd driven to Vegas and gotten married.

So, as one son was sinking into the depths of alcoholism, their intellectual son, for whom they had high hopes, was maintaining park trails with a pick and shovel.

It was to their great relief that Randy continued with school the following fall, explaining that he'd needed some time to clear his head. Truth be told, he didn't want to continue using his parents' money on an education that he wasn't excited about. His mind was in the mountains, and even then he knew that, unlike his father, working a job where he could “walk in the woods on the weekend” wouldn't be enough.

During the summer of 1963, Randy and his friend Bill Taylor headed south to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks to hike a portion of the High Sierra Trail, which crossed the Sierra range east to west. On their last day in the backcountry, Bill reminded Randy that Randy was supposed to work at the theater in Yosemite for that evening's show. It was late morning and they were miles from their car; still, Randy paused at a particularly scenic overlook and marveled at the view—for nearly an hour. Randy continued to take his time, investigating trailside flower patches, pausing to photograph the crystalline stalactites dripping from sugar pine cones.

Randy's casual pace stressed Bill and he repeatedly reminded Randy about the time. Finally, Randy walked over to him and calmly said, “You're missing way too much by staring at that watch. Either throw it off this cliff or stop bothering me about being late.”

“Randy did that to me a lot,” says Taylor. “He reminded me to keep my priorities straight.”

Indeed, Randy sauntered into the Yosemite theater just as the line of people were let in.

Bent on saving money, Randy took two more jobs from June to September of 1963: he worked as a messenger delivering and collecting cash for the Curry Company, and he showed employee training films on the side, earning $300 a month.

In the fall of 1963, Randy returned to Arizona State College ready to hit the books. His first two years had been lackluster, with B's and C's the norm, and even a couple of D's.

Philosophy changed all that in his third year.

Introduction to Philosophy, American Philosophy, Critical Thinking, and Classic Piano all pocketed him A's. During this inspired time, he added books on Aristotle and Plato and other “great thinkers” to his bookshelf. But it was Confucius who probably best described the philosophical bent on wilderness that would last the rest of Randy's life: “Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.”

Randy not only saw beauty in the smallest things, but also was captivated by their smallest details. He decided to spend the following summer in the high country. He wanted to put his life on his back, not unlike John Muir, and hike the crest of the Sierra without a schedule. Unhurried. Unhindered.

He informed his parents of his summer plans during Christmas break, which was an adventure in itself. Perhaps inspired by some great thinker, Randy attempted to return home to Yosemite by jumping a train. To test his mettle he left Flagstaff with no money. He didn't make it to the California state line. While his train was stopped at a rail yard, the cars were searched by a conductor, who discovered the unlikely hobo and kicked him off. He walked to the next town and called his parents, collect.

For the entire summer of 1964, beginning in Yosemite, Randy hiked the John Muir Trail south to Mount Whitney. Bill Taylor was one of the people he enlisted to hike in and resupply him with food caches along the way.

“Meeting the backcountry rangers on the trail,” says Taylor, “made quite an impact on Randy. He did everything possible to stay in the mountains that summer. He didn't want to hike out if he could help it. Seeing the rangers along the trail, self-sufficient, with a cabin, was very
romantic to Randy.”

Whether it was the rangers, the high country, or just the best way to stay out there, Randy decided to apply for a backcountry ranger position for the following summer posthaste upon his return from the mountains, but not in Yosemite. The less crowded Sequoia and Kings Canyon to the south was the country he most enjoyed on his summer-long trek.

He couldn't have chosen a better time. The results of six backcountry-use studies conducted over the previous twenty years had recently culminated in a landmark backcountry management plan for Sequoia and Kings Canyon. It was the early 1960s, and there was a new environmental movement that went beyond simply setting aside wilderness for future generations. These studies and others proved that wasn't enough. The land had to be looked after more closely than in the past. It had to be “managed,” with a sensitivity for the wilds.

The management plan proposed an increase in backcountry rangers—which, since World War II, had numbered fewer than four rangers per summer season. Randy was on the cusp of a hiring movement that would triple the number of backcountry rangers in Sequoia and Kings Canyon.

 

DURING THE MONTHS
after the summer of 1964, Randy decided college wasn't for him. He felt strongly that anything he was to learn on this planet would be taught to him by the mountains.

He told his friends that he'd learned more during those months in the high country than all his schooling up to that point, and he wanted to share what he'd seen and what he'd felt. But there was a dilemma. He couldn't talk openly about these aspirations with his parents because they were set in the belief that a college education was required to make a respectable living. They supported his love of wilderness wholeheartedly; his mother would say he “got that honest” from his father. If he wanted to make a life of the Park Service, wonderful. But the administrators—the superintendents, the chief rangers—had degrees.

Randy had a bit of the sixties in him and wanted what was then just beginning to be referred to as an “alternative” lifestyle. He wanted to
create for himself a life where living came before a job. He didn't want to settle for one or two weeks of vacation a year. A desk job, whether in a suit and tie or a ranger uniform, was out of the question.

For advice he went to his family friend Ansel Adams, whom he'd assisted occasionally in his younger years. When Randy had first offered his services to the famous photographer, he was a young teen. He'd been worth his weight in gold during photography courses when he lugged Adams's heavy tripod and large-and medium-format cameras all over Yosemite.

As the years passed, Randy experimented with photography himself. While his father was bent on documenting the park's flowers and scenic vistas, Randy exhibited more artistic tendencies, which Adams observed as he reviewed his work.

Randy wrote Adams a letter in October 1964, explaining his predicament with school and career, and expressed his desire to use photography as a means to support himself while documenting his adventures in the High Sierra and eventually around the world.