Nature Noir: A Park Ranger's Patrol in the Sierra

This author has talent. His background speaks for itself, but his skills as a writer are legion. A great read.

Far from safeguarding the big-time, high-profile, and first-rate landscape and wilderness of the national parks and national monuments as a ranger, Jordan Fisher Smith instead worked to safeguard a second-rate, or even third-rate, semi-wilderness that was slated for damming and was open country for prospective miners, developers, and social misfits. For those who have sped through I-80 east through Auburn and Colfax, admittedly more interested in the snowcapped peaks of Emigrant Gap and Donner Pass than in the canyons of the Western Sierra foothills that cradle the forks of the American River, a reappreciation of this part of the Mother Lode country is inevitable, thanks to the powerful sense of place and environmental sensibility of Smith, not to mention a writing style infused with humility and devoid of preachiness. Hence the title "Nature Noir", where, unless you are a local who knew the land (such as Smith himself) or an avid river-runner of the North, Middle, and South Forks of the American River, you would have never thought twice of the wilderness quality of a place with a dam and reservoir that never existed but was already permanently emplaced on maps and mindset of people who had power over the use of the land for flood control, irrigation, and hydroelectricity. In this land, laws are broken, boundaries are pushed, and the moral resilience of rangers are tested, but there is salvation in the knowledge that nature still rules--pockets of wildness where human--and boat--tracks are erased, an aerial flood of beetles swarm from seemingly nowhere, people's lives are claimed by the power of water, a runner is ambushed by a mountain lion, wildflowers burgeon, and a clearer understanding of the complex geology merely underscores the power of nature over human folly where short-term gains tend to overlook long-term large-scale disasters.

Most truly fine writers are too dreamy to be much good at anything else. Not that they lack experience, they just lack heroic competence, and generally are confined to the role of (hopefully keen) observer when the stuff hits the fan. The man or woman of action who can write--and the writer who can save your life--is vanishingly rare. Jordan Fisher Smith is that rare exception. Nature Noir is a memoir of place in the broadest, most catholic sense: people, politics, plants, animals, weather, and geology all are acknowledged as characters in the universal hard-luck drama we call "nature." During the last two decades of the 20th century, a handful of park rangers found themselves in the surreal, tragic, deliciously post-modern situation of risking their lives to enforce the law in a condemned landscape--California's American River canyons. The canyons, already used hard for a hundred years by miners and ranchers, had been bought up by the government as the site for a reservoir that would rise behind the still-incomplete Auburn Dam. When young Fisher Smith's tenure as a ranger on the American River begins, the dam project has stalled, leaving the land in limbo, a temporary place. The pause creates a social vacuum in the American River canyons--an opportunity for wildness--and Nature Noir is about what happens in that vacuum. Much of what happens is sad and absurd, and Fisher Smith's tale is partly a sympathetic but trenchant commentary on the behavior of modern humans at the edge of civilization. A bridge built to clear the planned reservoir waits for the waters to rise underneath, presenting a spectacularly vertiginous vertical drop that proves irresistible to suicides, stunt drivers, and parachuting chickens, and the rangers are called upon to deal with the grisly post-mortems and shattered Corvettes. Down in the canyons, a Mad Max atmosphere pervades: everyone seems to be armed, drunk, or both; gold miners run afoul of drug dealers, and people get hurt. The place has become both a temporary refuge for society's misfits and a giant salvage operation as opportunists rush to loot the goods before the waters rise. No one wants to risk loving the canyons except, perhaps, the rangers, who always seem to be perversely aware of where they are in relation to the invisible line hundreds of feet above the river: the ultimate water level of the coming reservoir. The more inspiriting elements of Nature Noir are found in Fisher Smith's portrayal of the rangers, each of them--the author included--improvising a raggedy existential heroism to get through the days, the hot, dusty, dangerous work that all suspect may, in the end, be for naught. Nature Noir is a wild ride, a piercing and unflinching look at contemporary American society's collision with the rest of nature, and ultimately a vector of stubborn hope. No transparent eyeball, Jordan Fisher Smith writes with the authority conferred by a life of action, the perspicacity to see that the action means somet

Jordan perfectly describes the job of park ranger from the inside out. His honesty and humility blend seamlessly with the astounding beauty, wonder and often utter sense of futility that infuse this career choice. The joy of being mostly alone at work and accomplishing a task by your own wits, the need to understand the complex web of your political and natural environment and the reality that you will be poorly equipped for nearly all law enforcement situations with the fall back of either bluff or retreat as a last resort. It's a great ride while it lasts and ends for everyone. Hopefully, Jordan will live a long and healthy life and write us more and more. In tandem with the narrative of the events, come his insights on finding your footing in a rapidly changing world. A very personal book by a very reflective and humane person who happens to be truly great writer.

Destined to become an environmental classic, Nature Noir vividly captures the reader in a tale of interactions between people and nature, and the park rangers' many roles. As each chapter relates a true story from an accidental wilderness of doomed public lands in the Sierra foothills, you feel as though you are in the jeep on patrol with Jordan Fisher Smith. As he shares his thoughts on the journey, the reader gains an inciteful view into the real world of modern park ranger work and the conflicting forces affecting all of our natural landscapes. This thought provoking book is a 'must read' if you care about our public parks and forests!