Title: Nature noir
Description: "Nature Noir is the story -- part Barry Lopez, part James Ellroy -- of Jordan Fisher Smith"s fourteen years as a park ranger on a huge tract of government land in the Sierras. As Fisher Smith learns on his first patrol, the wildness in this place tends toward the human kind: desperate miners who scour canyons for gold, bad guys who look like armed rock-and-roll musicians, extreme recreators who enjoy combining motorcycles, parachutes, and high bridges. This gorgeous land along the American River is destined to be drowned by a huge federal dam, a paradox that colors every day of Fisher Smith"s patrol. The story of life here becomes, among other things, an extraordinary litany of violence and death; dozens of people lost their lives in the canyons of the American River on Fisher Smith"s beat. In one surreal, heart-stopping scene, he comes across the corpse of a woman jogger, killed and partly eaten by a mountain lion -- the first Californian to die in that way since the nineteenth century."--Publisher description.
Subjects: Park rangers, Anecdotes, Officials and employees, California, Natural history, California. Dept. of Parks and Recreation, United States, United States. National Park Service, Natural history, united states, United states, national park service, California. Department of Parks and Recreation, Wilderness areas, Sierra nevada (calif. and nev.)
Places: California, Sierra Nevada (Calif. and Nev.), Auburn State Recreation Area (Calif.)
People: Jordan Fisher Smith