The Last Season Read Free Page B

Morgenson—stationed twenty miles north on the John Muir Trail—had been out of radio contact for three days, and it was Sanger’s job to check on him. After a mile on the trail, Sanger’s legs settled into a slow, steady, piston-like rhythm. With the cascading roar of Woods Creek on his right and towering granite peaks framing the starry-night sky, he couldn’t believe he was getting paid to do this. God, he loved his job.
    Sanger and Randy were a study in contrasts. Sanger was the young, gung-ho, clean-shaven newbie with a taste for adrenaline; Randy was the wise, weathered, and bearded sage of the high country who had pulled too many bodies out of the mountains to find any thrill in the prospect of a search-and-rescue operation. Sanger considered Randy a mentor for his uncompromising idealism in wilderness ethics. It had taken some time, however, to earn Randy’s respect. The year before, the older ranger had studiously ignored him during training. Even when Sanger exhibited his expert mountaineering skills—self-arresting a fall with an ice ax on a snowy practice slope with the added difficulty of going headfirst while on his back—Randy had remained, at least outwardly, unimpressed.
    The two were teamed up months later on a search-and-rescue operation and were forced to bivouac overnight in a steep gorge. Until dusk, Randy hadn’t responded to Sanger with anything more thanyes or no as they searched for a missing backpacker. The silence was undoubtedly enjoyable for Randy, but offensive to Sanger, who interpreted it as rudeness. As darkness settled, Sanger gathered some wood for a small fire. After an entire day together, Randy uttered his first complete sentence: “You’d do well to learn a little respect.”
    Sanger was at once offended, confused, and angry. He had been trying to engage in conversation all day, and this was Randy’s reciprocation?
    â€œAnd in what way have I not been showing you respect?” asked Sanger. “I’ve been wanting to work with you all day, to learn from you. I don’t think you realize the regard I have for you and your experience in these mountains.”
    â€œNo, Rick,” said Randy. “I’m referring to the fire.”
    Randy moved his tiny backpacker stove closer to where Sanger sat, squatted beside him, and explained why Sanger should not build a fire—even though the wood he’d intended to burn was already dead; even though they were at a legal elevation for campfires; even though the blackened residue from the fire on the rocks and sand would be washed clean the next rain cycle. What gave human beings—not to mention rangers—the right to alter the natural processes at work here?
    Sanger respectfully scattered the wood he had gathered, and in doing so earned the regard he was seeking and kindled a friendship. A mentorship in wilderness ethics was born. Over the course of the night, Randy opened up and offered Sanger a rare glimpse inside the backcountry rangers’ most notorious recluse.
    On subsequent contacts, the bond had continued to grow. Sanger knew Randy was working his way through some issues—unfinished business with his father as well as a marriage that was on the rocks—but he also knew that the backcountry had amazing healing properties. Randy had even told the younger ranger, “There’s nothing a season in the backcountry can’t cure.”
    Now, as Sanger hiked through the night toward Randy’s station, he looked forward to the ritual of boiling a kettle of water and catching up over cups of tea. When he had delivered a new radio to Randy atthe White Fork trail-crew camp a couple of weeks earlier, Randy had seemed excited about the future and hadn’t exhibited any signs of the depression reported by other rangers.
    At the White Fork camp, Randy had been reading Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon, an account of the author’s 11,000-mile