The Last Season Read Free Page A

invoke a chuckle at any ranger gathering. It is an accepted truism that rangers are “paid in sunsets.” After covering bills, gear, food, and the gas it takes to get their luxury automobiles—rusting Volkswagen vans, old Toyota trucks, and the like—to park headquarters, where they’d sit and leak oil till October, maybe a few dollars would trickle into a savings account. They certainly weren’t there for the money.
    In truth, there was one financial benefit backcountry rangers could count on. Randy, and all rangers with federal law enforcement commissions, was eligible for the Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Program, enacted by Congress in 1976 to “offer peace of mind to men and women seeking careers in public safety and to make a strong statement about the value American society places on the contributions of those who serve their communities in potentially dangerous circumstances.” In effect, the law offered a “one-time financial benefit paid to the eligible survivors of a public safety officer whose death is the direct and proximate result of a traumatic injury sustained in the line of duty.” In 1976, the amount was $50,000; in 1988, that amount was increased to $100,000.
    After twenty-eight years of summer service for the NPS, this was the only employment benefit Randy was eligible for. Of course, he would have to die first. So, here he was approaching his thirtieth year as a seasonal ranger at Sequoia and Kings Canyon and there was nothing about his uniform to distinguish him from a first-year rookie. There wasn’t even a pin to commemorate the achievement: such medals were awarded only to permanent employees.
    Graber, who had made it a point over the years to at least write letters of appreciation to the backcountry rangers for their invaluable contributions to his studies, had routinely told them that their job satisfaction “would have to come from within themselves—that they likely wouldn’t get any from the NPS.”
    As Graber’s conversation with Randy progressed, he interpreted the ranger’s apathy and uncharacteristic lack of passion as depression. “His eyes were blank,” says Graber, “but I knew how to push Randy’s buttons—he’d lobbied for meadow closures his entire career. I never knew anybody who took a trampled patch of grass more personally than Randy. And wildflowers—he was a walking encyclopedia. You could always get him going about flowers, so I brought that up, along the lines of ‘Nice and wet up high, good year for flowers.’
    â€œHis response was ‘I don’t find much pleasure in the flowers anymore.’”
    That statement went beyond any contempt Randy held for the NPS. There was something else going on, but Graber didn’t push the subject. “Randy wasn’t the type to air his dirty laundry,” says Graber, who patted Randy on the back when they parted ways. “I hope you have a good season, Randy,” he said.
    â€œYou know, Dave,” said Randy, “after all these years of being a ranger, I wonder if it’s been worth it.”
    â€œThat,” says Graber, “chilled me to the core.”
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    RICK SANGER WAS the tanned picture of a ranger in his prime—36 years old, 5-foot-11, with boyish good looks, dimples, and a quick smile. He’d quit a computer engineering job in 1992 and headed to the mountains for some healing perspective after the end of a stormy relationship. He was hired as a backcountry ranger on Mount San Jacinto in Southern California, where he stayed for three years before being hired in 1995 at Sequoia and Kings Canyon, parks he had been drawn to since his Boy Scout days.
    This was Sanger’s second season as a backcountry ranger in Kings Canyon. At dusk on July 23, 1996, he donned a headlamp, shouldered his backpack, and struck out into the cold outside his duty station at Rae Lakes. Randy