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Ghostwalker: Tracking a Mountain Lion's Soul Through Science and Story
What does it feel like to be a mountain lion? Ghostwalker aims to empower the reader with that kind of knowledge. When the author encounters mountain lion tracks near her home outside Yellowstone National Park, she begins a journey to learn about these elusive, unseen animals. Personal tracking stories provide a framework as the author delves deeper into the heart of lions. What is the impact of hunting mountain lions? What happens when wolves and grizzly bears are added to the mix of top predators? How do mountain lions navigate urban-wildlife interfaces? To answer these questions, Patten interviews biologists working in Yellowstone National Park, Panthera's Jackson Teton Study, and various studies around the San Francisco Bay Area. She also conducts dozens of interviews with professional trackers, houndsmen, as well as spokesmen from the Mountain Lion Foundation and The Cougar Fund. Patten explores the ancient lore--who is the cougar that is the "Sasquatch" of Mexico--and learns how to successfully trail mountain lions to obtain amazing photos. Travel along with the author as she discovers the secret lives of America's largest wild feline.
302 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2018
27 people are currently reading
77 people want to read
About the author
Leslie Patten
15 books7 followersLeslie Patten has an unusual combination of experience that allows her to write her new book The Wild Excellence. She is a published author of Biocircuits: Amazing New Tools for Energy Health. She also has written several eBooks on gardening, and has kept an online blog journal for many years on wildlife issues from her home in the remote regions next to Yellowstone National Park.
Leslie has worked with land her entire life. She is an avid gardener, and still practices as a professional landscape designer in Marin County, California. She has a degree in horticulture, a certificate of design from The San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum, as well as two years of formal naturalist training from the College of Marin. She spent over five years working with elementary school children in Muir Woods National Monument and Muir Beach, teaching them about ecology and the natural world. She also worked on a three year spotted owl study conducted by the Golden Gate National Recreation Area locating owl nest sites and conducting chick counts. Patten is a member of the Marin County Tracking Club and spent over thirteen years in a spiritual community studying meditation.
Since moving to Wyoming in 2005, she has helped on wolf, elk and grizzly bear studies, as well as The Gloria Project, a climate change study, in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. She volunteers at the Draper Natural History lab of the Buffalo Bill Museum of the West preparing museum quality specimens of birds and mammals. Leslie enjoys hiking with her dog Koda and exploring the Greater Yellowstone Area.
Leslie has worked with land her entire life. She is an avid gardener, and still practices as a professional landscape designer in Marin County, California. She has a degree in horticulture, a certificate of design from The San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum, as well as two years of formal naturalist training from the College of Marin. She spent over five years working with elementary school children in Muir Woods National Monument and Muir Beach, teaching them about ecology and the natural world. She also worked on a three year spotted owl study conducted by the Golden Gate National Recreation Area locating owl nest sites and conducting chick counts. Patten is a member of the Marin County Tracking Club and spent over thirteen years in a spiritual community studying meditation.
Since moving to Wyoming in 2005, she has helped on wolf, elk and grizzly bear studies, as well as The Gloria Project, a climate change study, in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. She volunteers at the Draper Natural History lab of the Buffalo Bill Museum of the West preparing museum quality specimens of birds and mammals. Leslie enjoys hiking with her dog Koda and exploring the Greater Yellowstone Area.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
November 26, 2018
If you are at all interested in learning about mountain lions, I would highly recommend Ghostwalker as a book to read. Leslie lives in a beautiful valley in Wyoming not far from Yellowstone National Park, where she explores lions through tracking and the use of trail cameras. Within the pages of this book you will find her personal search for understanding mountain lions. With an inquisitive mind she has interviewed some of the best biologists in the field, conservation groups, state wildlife managers, houndsmen, professional trackers, and livestock owners. Her curiosity took her from Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, and the valley she now calls home to the San Francisco Bay area, where she explored the impact on mountain lions living within broken up urban-wildland zones. She explored the question of how conflicts with mountain lions can be avoided. Part of Leslie’s exploration deals with the latest research which has revealed a social structure between themselves, as well as the way they have adapted to the introduction of wolves into their habitat, and the growing population of the grizzly bear population. This book not only includes the science of the cat, and our relation with it, but also its history and lore, adding another layer of interest for the reader.
May 31, 2019
If you're interested in mountain lions read it...if not do not touch it. The author transitions well between different ideas and facts for the cats. This book shows a way to move forward for mountain lions. I have more respect and empathy for them now vs fear.
September 15, 2023
An outstanding book, though the heartwarming stories are too often tempered by heartbreaking ones. We, as humans are a dastardly bunch, especially trophy hunters who think it's okay to wait from afar for a team to corner a mountain lion in a tree using dogs, then fly in or drive in and shoot a tree-trapped cougar point-blank. That is the height of cowardice! Trophy hunting should be banned outright, and personally, I'd prefer to see all hunting of these big cats be banned.
So many details of how mountain lions are mistreated and misunderstood in this country. In fact - more people are killed by cows every 18 months or from dog attacks each year than have been killed in total by mountain lions over the past 155 years! That's why mountain lions/cougar/pumas need more advocates like the Mountain Lion Foundation and the Cougar Fund. Please consider joining one of these groups and help them spread the word.
So many details of how mountain lions are mistreated and misunderstood in this country. In fact - more people are killed by cows every 18 months or from dog attacks each year than have been killed in total by mountain lions over the past 155 years! That's why mountain lions/cougar/pumas need more advocates like the Mountain Lion Foundation and the Cougar Fund. Please consider joining one of these groups and help them spread the word.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 18, 2018
While out for a hike near her cabin in the wild, high country east of Yellowstone National Park on a relatively balmy January day (20 degrees F, no wind), Patten sees tracks of a wild cat much larger than those of the bobcats she is used to following. "Immediately, without ever having seen them before," she writes, "I 'grokked' that these large prints must belong to a cougar."
She follows the tracks and finds that the big cat trekked to the edge of the precipice of the deep Clarks Fork Canyon, "paused, and looked over her vast domain." The tracks and the moment of awareness of mountain lion awakens something in Patten that gives her a new sense of the vastness of the world and the size of her place in it:
Ghost Walker is a deep dive into science and culture and what makes mountain lions such awe-inspiring wild cats, a dive that takes in their ancestors, their current range and lives, and the challenges facing them in the modern West. What makes this book compelling is that Patten herself inhabits the story, her curiosity and thirst to understand another species driving the narrative forward.
Her writing is by turns poetic and reverential, as in the two passages above. It is also hard-nosed and realistic about the big cats and the people who study them through science or tracking and hunting them—which, Patten makes clear, is often another form of fascination with the majestic cats and their essential wildness.
Like the best of nature and science writing, Ghost Walker illuminates The Other, both another species—mountain lions—and people from differing cultures and world-views. As Patten brings what it means to be a mountain lion into sharper focus, she also give insight into what it means to be human.
Ghost Walker is a wise book, a book to savor and return to again and again.
by Susan J. Tweit
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
She follows the tracks and finds that the big cat trekked to the edge of the precipice of the deep Clarks Fork Canyon, "paused, and looked over her vast domain." The tracks and the moment of awareness of mountain lion awakens something in Patten that gives her a new sense of the vastness of the world and the size of her place in it:
The prints took my breath away. Something deep inside me stood at attention, not afraid, but now much more alert, awed, as if the tracks were a sacrament. I was in the presence of a true predator, in fact, the perfect predator.
Puma concolor—cat of one color. The cat with the tawny coat that blends in perfectly with her surroundings is the quintessence of grace, speed, agility, and stealth... The quiet of the icy landscape penetrated my body, and my mind was still. This cougar passed where I am standing.
Ghost Walker is a deep dive into science and culture and what makes mountain lions such awe-inspiring wild cats, a dive that takes in their ancestors, their current range and lives, and the challenges facing them in the modern West. What makes this book compelling is that Patten herself inhabits the story, her curiosity and thirst to understand another species driving the narrative forward.
Her writing is by turns poetic and reverential, as in the two passages above. It is also hard-nosed and realistic about the big cats and the people who study them through science or tracking and hunting them—which, Patten makes clear, is often another form of fascination with the majestic cats and their essential wildness.
Like the best of nature and science writing, Ghost Walker illuminates The Other, both another species—mountain lions—and people from differing cultures and world-views. As Patten brings what it means to be a mountain lion into sharper focus, she also give insight into what it means to be human.
Ghost Walker is a wise book, a book to savor and return to again and again.
by Susan J. Tweit
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
June 16, 2021
This author does a respectable job of discussing the natural history of this elusive and mysterious feline but because the majority of the book is related to the control and conservation of the Puma it is in total rather boring.
January 17, 2026
Found this at Yellowstone where I have never seen a mountain lion. Appreciated so much the education on the breed and wildlife conservation.
“Cougars, I learned, have a gland on the roof of their mouth called the vomeronasal organ; it acts like a vacuum cleaner for smell, drawing interesting scents in for further identification.”
“Over the last forty or so years, a new approach among the public has emerged that values nature for its intrinsic beauty, focusing on ecological connection, scientific advancements, and the idea that humans have a moral responsibility to protect the earth and its wildlife. These two stances are diametrically opposite, creating increased public demands on agency management.”
“…ethical concerns about tying conservation funding to our gun violence epidemic.”
“Wildlife is considered a public trust asset.”
“Unlike other animals that may have changed their habits to evade humans, mountain lions have always been ghosts upon the land, their movements remaining invisible day and night.”
“Humans need to practice more marvel and wonder, less knee-jerk fear. We would do well to abandon the antiquated presumption that we are managers of wild animals. Caretakers, perhaps, at best.”
“Cougars, I learned, have a gland on the roof of their mouth called the vomeronasal organ; it acts like a vacuum cleaner for smell, drawing interesting scents in for further identification.”
“Over the last forty or so years, a new approach among the public has emerged that values nature for its intrinsic beauty, focusing on ecological connection, scientific advancements, and the idea that humans have a moral responsibility to protect the earth and its wildlife. These two stances are diametrically opposite, creating increased public demands on agency management.”
“…ethical concerns about tying conservation funding to our gun violence epidemic.”
“Wildlife is considered a public trust asset.”
“Unlike other animals that may have changed their habits to evade humans, mountain lions have always been ghosts upon the land, their movements remaining invisible day and night.”
“Humans need to practice more marvel and wonder, less knee-jerk fear. We would do well to abandon the antiquated presumption that we are managers of wild animals. Caretakers, perhaps, at best.”
September 23, 2025
Interesting account of cougar conservation and its struggles...
But so completely heartbreaking to realize we will probably lose most of these programs and absolutely no Federal agencies, and few state ones, will be continuing any conservation focus whatsoever, especially regarding predators.
We are going to lose these animals and many other species to hunting, roads, habitat loss and starvation, and it doesn't seem like anything can be done to stop it at this point.
I really appreciated the author's mention of bringing small stock inside at night. This is something I've really been curious about... we have words like sheepfold, barn, cowbyre, etc. in our language, coming from our ancestors who brought their stock in at night for safety, yet it doesn't seem to occur to modern people to do so. Sheep, goats, crios, foals, cats, calves, any dog smaller than a massive livestock guardian... they shouldn't be out at night or left completely unattended in the wilds, and neither should children.
But so completely heartbreaking to realize we will probably lose most of these programs and absolutely no Federal agencies, and few state ones, will be continuing any conservation focus whatsoever, especially regarding predators.
We are going to lose these animals and many other species to hunting, roads, habitat loss and starvation, and it doesn't seem like anything can be done to stop it at this point.
I really appreciated the author's mention of bringing small stock inside at night. This is something I've really been curious about... we have words like sheepfold, barn, cowbyre, etc. in our language, coming from our ancestors who brought their stock in at night for safety, yet it doesn't seem to occur to modern people to do so. Sheep, goats, crios, foals, cats, calves, any dog smaller than a massive livestock guardian... they shouldn't be out at night or left completely unattended in the wilds, and neither should children.
December 25, 2024
Mountain Lions go by many names. One is Ghost Cat. The book provides a great explanation on why they are called that as well as the complexities of these big cats. Not only are Mountain Lions a Keystone Species but an Umbrella Species as well which means maintaining habit for these creatures also improves habitat for other More-Than-Humans.
February 16, 2025
I thought I knew a fair bit about mountain lions. I was so wrong. The amount of study, observation, travel, meeting and learning that Leslie Patten did was amazing. Mountain lions are incredible to learn about in themselves. I greatly enjoyed all the bits about wildlife management, human interactions and regulations, as well.
December 6, 2021
NF
239 pages
Pattern takes us on a journey with the Mountain Lion.
She unfolds their secret lives to us. Let's hope they survive.
239 pages
Pattern takes us on a journey with the Mountain Lion.
She unfolds their secret lives to us. Let's hope they survive.
September 21, 2023
This might be the best mountain lion book I've ever read. It conveys so much information about the behavior of this animal and has interesting firsthand accounts of the author's time in the field.
December 29, 2025
If you aren't super into animals, won't be for you.
If you ARE super into animals, I do recommend this book, as it's kind of a different perspective from some other, similar reads. It feels a bit more hands-on, in that the author herself describes her trips and journeys into mountains, forests, national parks etc., in her hunt for more information on the highly elusive puma.
It has a more colloquial, casual feel than clinical; there are many discussions of things like historical figures, conservation, puma-related events in US history, and so on.
I generally like this so far, I simply don't read books like this as quickly as I do fantasy/sci-fi, but it's a nice calm read when I do grab it.
If you ARE super into animals, I do recommend this book, as it's kind of a different perspective from some other, similar reads. It feels a bit more hands-on, in that the author herself describes her trips and journeys into mountains, forests, national parks etc., in her hunt for more information on the highly elusive puma.
It has a more colloquial, casual feel than clinical; there are many discussions of things like historical figures, conservation, puma-related events in US history, and so on.
I generally like this so far, I simply don't read books like this as quickly as I do fantasy/sci-fi, but it's a nice calm read when I do grab it.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews