The Last Season (6 page)

“You make a very clear statement of your problems and I must tell you I have a very high opinion of your attitudes!” wrote Adams in response. “To see and to feel is supremely important, and to want to share your experiences is the hallmark of a truly civilized spirit!

“Photography, as a…profession, is a grim business—with terrific competition. Frankly, I advise most people to approach it as an avocation. Many of the greatest photographers were ‘amateurs' in the sense that they did not make their living from the art. You have too fine a concept of the creative obligations to get yourself mixed up with the ‘nuts and bolts' of the camera world.”

Adams then invited Randy to come to his home in Carmel, California, to discuss the subject at length.

“I think I can help you much more in this way,” Adams continued. “It is easy to write down ideas and suggestions, but you have a very definitive purpose in life (rare!) and I think I could help you most by just talking with you and exploring.”

The dialogue between Randy and Adams from that meeting is
unknown—but Randy did leave Carmel with a gift, one of Adams's classic wooden tripods and a 4-by-5 view camera. A few weeks later Randy dropped out of his fall semester courses, and applied for the job of seasonal backcountry park ranger on February 8, 1965.

On the application, under Special Qualifications, he wrote: “Entered public speaking contests in high school, and have been meeting the public and working with people all my life; have been backpacking through the Sierra covered by these 3 parks [Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon], plus some, for as long as I can remember.”

Two months later, Randy was informed of an opening at Sequoia and Kings Canyon. He arrived at park headquarters at Ash Mountain on April 29. He was honored to serve in the Park Service and had proudly purchased the classic ensemble of olive green coat, gray shirt, dark green tie, and the traditional tan flat hat. The silver National Park Ranger badge represented something important. Just a few weeks earlier, he had been in Arizona, majoring in outdoor recreation. Now he was going to live it, to actually get paid to go camping in the mountains.

On May 1, Randy reported for duty at the parks' vehicle entrance kiosk, not far from Ash Mountain, where he would work for a few weeks before being dropped into the backcountry.

The entrance kiosk, or check-in station, was the hub of activity at this, the parks' southernmost entrance. With the passing of the Wilderness Act in 1964, the parks had experienced a slight increase in traffic. Still, check-in station duties had changed little since the early 1940s, when Gordon Wallace, a ranger in Sequoia from 1935 to 1947, worked inside the same rock-walled building. Wallace recounted his duties in his memoir,
My Ranger Years
:

From years working customer service jobs in Yosemite, Randy knew that a smile combined with enthusiastic local knowledge went a long way when dealing with the public. Randy's performance at the check-in station prompted accolades, as acknowledged by a letter written to the park's superintendent, John M. Davis, on November 5, 1965, in reference to a family's encounter with Randy on June 8, 1965:

Superintendent Davis forwarded the letter and photograph to
Randy, and responded to Mrs. Ingard with his own letter, which stated, in part, “Service to Park visitors is one of our primary functions, and we are always happy to hear that this important service is being carried out cheerfully and courteously.”

Mrs. Ingard's glowing letter was the first of dozens that would eventually be filed in Randy's meticulous archives in the attic of his home. None of these letters would be included in his government employee personnel file.

Even though Randy performed his duties admirably at the entrance station, it was not the reason he had joined the Park Service. Like his predecessor Gordon Wallace, Randy longed for the backcountry. It was a calling that had been eating at him nonstop since he'd hiked the John Muir Trail the summer before. He wanted to get far and away from the cars and blacktop of the parks' most traveled routes and sites: the General Sherman Tree—with its 36.5-foot-diameter base, the biggest tree in the world—and the myriad quick roadside hikes that could be enjoyed by anybody with a few hours to spare while passing through.

After six weeks of inhaling exhaust fumes at the parks' entrance, Randy helped load what appeared to be supplies for a small expedition into the belly of the parks' helicopter. His first season as a backcountry ranger was about to begin.

As the pilot gained altitude, the cabins and roads at Ash Mountain became a distant memory. On a northeast flight path, the helicopter skimmed the granite walls of Moro Rock, taking a wide arc around Giant Forest, where groves of the world's largest trees seemed toy-like in comparison with the serrated teeth of the snow-clad Sierra Crest that filled the horizon to the east. Following the routes of rivers and streams, the pilot weaved into the high country as his wide-eyed passenger spun around to absorb every geographic feature. It was Randy's first bird's-eye view of a land he would describe to his mother as Eden.

Gordon Wallace had taken a similar eastern route into the Sierra wilderness some thirty years earlier, though his summer ranger supplies had been transported by a string of mules. Wallace's stock had
grazed freely in any and all meadows; Randy's rotor-powered steed was deemed less invasive to such meadows, despite the noise.

“Do not come and roam here unless you are willing to be enslaved by its charms,” warned Wallace in his memoir of his ranger years. “Its beauty and peace and harmony will entrance you. Once it has you in its power, it will never release you the rest of your days.”

By the time Randy jumped out of the helicopter onto the gravel shore of Middle Rae Lake, it was already too late. The spell had been cast.

WHEN RANDY MORGENSON
hopped off that helicopter near the shores of the Rae Lakes on July 12, 1965, he landed in a new era of wilderness. The early environmental movement had long fought for the idea of protecting the wilds, not exploiting them. Now, with the passing of the Wilderness Act the year before, the National Park Service was struggling to balance two wholly conflicting philosophies mandated by the new law—preservation and use. Even pre–Wilderness Act, Sequoia and Kings Canyon had implemented grazing restrictions in certain areas where heavy use, if continued, would have turned moun
tain meadows into dirt fields. Other areas, the Rae Lakes in particular, had been so heavily used by campers that dead and down wood that could be burned as firewood was almost depleted. In cases such as this, camping and grazing of stock was limited to one night, and a recent invention for cooking—the backpacker stove—was encouraged. Without these and other controls, it was predicted, the High Sierra wilderness would never recover.

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, mus
tached 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 family 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.