Ranger Magazine: Spring '06
BOOK REVIEW: A "Must-Read"
By Peter Stekel
On the morning of July 21, 1996, Randy Morgenson tied together the tent flaps of his ranger station at Bench Lake in Kings Canyon National Park and went on patrol. He was never heard from again. What happened to Morgenson and how that story was pieced together is the subject of Eric Blehm's The Last Season.
Tracking down every detail of the Morgenson disappearance, Blehm interviewed the missing backcountry ranger's family, friends and co-workers. He also sifted through reports and logbooks from the Morgenson search and rescue. Not confining himself to a paper search, Blehm walked the ground, following Morgenson's probable last steps. The author's research, his affinity for the missing ranger and his obvious love for the Sierra Nevada mountains all come shining through to make The Last Season a must-read. Blehm additionally tackles many issues important to seasonal rangers such as recognition of their term of service.
Because it is a biography, The Last Season is also a story about dreams and aspirations, successes and failures, friendships, love and human frailty. And it's also the story of the National Park Service when the Wilderness Act of 1964 was young—before it forever changed the concept of how our nation's wild lands would be visited and managed.
How things have changed in 45 years! In 1965, Randy Morgenson's first year as a seasonal backcountry ranger, he wasn't required to know CPR. He carried no sidearm or handcuffs and had no training in search and rescue. In fact, Morgenson received no training of any kind before taking up his station at Rae Lakes, deep within the wilderness of Kings Canyon. At his post, located along the John Muir Trail, Morgenson was responsible for "spreading the gospel" of wilderness to as many hikers and packers as possible. He issued fire permits, picked up trash, naturalized campsites, picked up trash, gave assistance whenever possible (and radioed for help whenever assistance was not possible), picked up trash and represented the law of the land. Oh, and he picked up trash.
Blehm conveys how backcountry rangers live outdoors in conditions that would make Spartans blush. The job requires an individual who is comfortable with solitude and knows how to handle loneliness. But misanthropes need not apply because, paradoxically, people who gravitate to this job must also be friendly and gregarious since they spend so much time working with the public. Backcountry rangers must also be self-motivated because they work their entire season without significant supervision. These days, in addition to their regular duties (which have changed little since 1965) backcountry rangers have also become medics, law enforcement officers, SAR specialists, interpreters, scientists, research technicians, resource managers and campground rangers. And they still pick up trash.
Randy Morgenson was raised in Yosemite Valley where his father worked for the Curry Company. As a boy during the 1950s, Randy played in the meadows of Yosemite Valley much the same way city kids played in urban parks. Weekends were spent exploring the high country with his brother and father, learning the natural history of the Sierra. Growing up, Morgenson knew Wallace Stegner, Ansel Adams and other Yosemite notables. Stegner coached the young writer on how to prepare his work for publication. Adams gave Randy one of his first cameras. Dana Morgenson instilled a father's love of the Sierra while also teaching young Randy the natural history of John Muir's Range of Light.
His love of the high mountains secure, Morgenson joined the Peace Corps, wanting to climb in the Himalaya Mountains. After three years away he returned to California, realizing the Sierra Nevada offered everything he would ever need.
Blehm has used the techniques of creative non-fiction, but without putting the author in the center of the story, to make The Last Season quite different from other books about rangers. It's not presented as a chronological catalog of events, memories and experiences. Neither is it a natural history book nor a research-oriented regurgitation of incidents or personal history. To the contrary. Facts in The Last Season are thoroughly checked and double checked—no doubt to the annoyance of many interviewees who had to constantly field questions and provide information over the six years of the author's investigations.
The work, the wait and the questioning were well worth it. What emerges from The Last Season is the story of Randy Morgenson as a ranger par excellence. Yet, the central theme of the book remains the mystery of what happened to Morgenson that day in July and it plays as such—the clues, the tension, motivations, a cast of characters, the investigation and finally the denouement.
Blehm delicately covers the topic of Morgenson's extramarital affair—a love story with three broken hearts. Torn by his actions and aware of the pain he caused, Morgenson was deeply depressed the summer of his disappearance. This led to some searchers thinking Morgenson had either deserted his post or committed suicide. Feelings are still passionate about Morgenson and that summer. Working a SAR, as any ranger knows, is difficult physically and emotionally. But to be searching for one of your own adds a dimension deeper than any civilian can ever comprehend or understand. The Last Season handles the lessons from the Randy Morgenson SAR unaffected by strong emotion or prejudice. No person is excoriated for failing in their duties, overlooking or missing clues. If anything, Blehm is unstinting in his praise for all the people involved in the search. Not so the systems they were required to use or the followup, including the issue of how duty-related deaths are handled.
When NPS duty-related deaths occur (as when a fire fighter was killed in Kings Canyon National Park a few years ago), findings and recommendations are published and quickly acted upon. However, ranger divisions are much slower to act. Important recommendations made by the serious accident investigation team after Morgenson's death have still not been implemented nationally. They include a daily check-in procedure for rangers working in remote areas, GPS trackers and emergency beacons. These procedures would enhance protocols already in place for checking on rangers who haven't reported in over 24 hours.
Another issue Blehm mentions involves health care benefits for seasonal rangers. Simply stated, long-termed seasonals don't get health benefits.
Blehm is also concerned that no program exists to honor length of service for seasonal rangers. He cites how Morgenson worked 28 seasons for the NPS yet received no recognition of his service. Randy, in his log books, especially toward the end of his life, was upset with this lack of recognition. He always felt that the issues of recognition and health benefits were an indication that seasonals weren't being treated fairly, that their work was neither understood nor appreciated.
The Last Season also examines the role of communications failures in remote national parks. If radio contact with the backcountry is as poor today, as Blehm maintains, as it was when Randy Morgenson went missing in 1996, then perhaps nothing was learned. This would be a tragedy. Radios issued in the spring of 1996 were bad. Not one of them was tough enough to survive the Sequoia and Kings Canyon backcountry. There were problems with the radio repeaters too, with huge dead zones in the backcountry. Sequoia and Kings Canyon finally mapped these zones and tried to improve the repeaters but, as of summer 2005, success has been limited.
Weaving a genuinely interesting personal story along with important ranger issues, Eric Blehm has written an important book. He has succeeded in informing readers about wilderness, backcountry rangers and important NPS issues—all through the lens of Randy Morgenson's life and death.
