Jeff Darren Muse

Ranger Paula

Featured in Dear Park Ranger: Essays on Manhood, Restlessness, and the Geography of Hope

A rumination on marriage, the power of place, and my adult years in the North Cascades, the book’s introduction, “Ground Truthing,” lays out what to expect from Dear Park Ranger—“a search for purpose, companionship, a lost father, and home.” An excerpt:

“In those days, Paula and I lived in Marblemount, Washington, on the western edge of North Cascades National Park. Born in Connecticut, she stood five foot ten with long black hair, slender hipped in wool uniform pants, and had worked for the National Park Service for nearly two decades, first as a wilderness ranger on Cascade Pass, up Sahale Mountain, and high atop Copper Ridge, then in the frontcountry after a climbing accident had weakened her ankles. Trained in forestry and environmental science, Paula thrilled me with her knowledge of eagles and salmon, wolves and wolverines, and fascinating old-timers like Hazel Tracy, a petite elderly lady who lived up Ranger Station Road, long after she’d been among the valley’s first horse packers and dam builders. Sometimes Paula and I would visit Hazel, initially in her little yellow house, then in a nursing home in Sedro-Woolley, where I would listen to them talk affectionately of the drippy, snowcapped landscape locals called ‘the Upper Skagit.’”

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