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A Branch of The Sky: Fifty Years of Adventure, Tragedy, and Restoration in the Sierra Nevada
From the week he finished high school, Steve Sorensen began a fifty-year adventure of climbing, skiing, and working in the southern Sierra Nevada. After learning to rock climb in Yosemite Valley, Sorensen spent fourteen years working for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, where he became the leader of a backcountry crew, a skilled tree faller, an emergency medical technician, a wildland firefighter, and a mule packer. Working with park botanists, he developed new techniques for restoring damaged backcountry meadows, and he spent several winters conducting backcountry snow surveys. While raising his family in the town of Three Rivers, just outside of Sequoia National Park, he wrote the first two hiking guidebooks for the park’s frontcountry trails, both of which became bestsellers in the park’s visitor centers. His tales of life in the southern Sierra Nevada are told with style and humor, both informative and touching at the same time. Though his blunt criticism of the National Park Service might anger some, many seasonal park employees will recognize the honesty and accuracy of his observations. Sorensen’s writing is infused with the love and respect he felt for his friends and coworkers, many of whom he lost to accidents and disease. How he learned to make his peace with their ghosts is a unique and captivating story, beautifully told.
308 pages, Paperback
Published October 10, 2018
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March 12, 2019
I had read Morning Glass, a biography of Mike Doyle, and Heap of Bones, about aging surfers looking for that magical time when the surf was great and the crowds small. Both Sorensen and Doyle ended up on the southern tip of Baja, content with lives well lived and still close to the desert and sea.
However, the author's autobiography of his time spent in the Sierra as a NPS crew boss touched many common themes of the time in views of the wilderness, man against the powers that be and reaching far above those mundane concerns with excellent story telling and introduction to characters that literally jump from the page. His life touched many of the same critical people that shaped our current mania for back country adventure.
The author is the real deal in terms of his skill set. He worked as a tree feller, tree climber and sawyer on the hazardous tree crew as a seasonal worker. He learned how to treat stock animals and load them correctly from expert packers. He worked his way into an expertise on the restoration of back country meadows by using dam and water bars with available natural materials. During the winter he was a snow survey skier, doing depth measurements in the often sub zero temperatures in January through March. His pay was twice as much as a backcountry ranger when he arose to be crew supervisor, but still no medical insurance or retirement. The book The Last Season chronicles the pressure that low pay, long time away from home while still "doing what you love to do" by being in the backcountry on a seasonal employment can bring about. The dream job has a price tag.
The author has a way of making the people he worked with the real subject of the book. As a person reaching the time when friends leaving this earth becomes a frequent and troubling aspect of life the choice of either trying not to think of past versus embracing the memories of those who influenced our life. At the start of the book, Steve uses the Native American philosophy of not thinking of those we loved and are gone after the one year of mourning, at the risk of the dead coming back to cause illness or other bad things. Later, after having moved to the east cape when the cold of Three Rivers became too much, he embraces the Mexican "Day of the Dead" tradition of welcoming those who have died to share in those moments before dawn when the gap between living and dead comes closer with shared memories.
The author's Reader articles are still online and I enjoyed the one on his solo climb of Picacho del Diablo, one I did with a guide about a year after he did it. He also wrote about a trip to Canyon Tajo, which I have done dozens of times and never touched his perception of it in one trip. Try before you buy, take a look at Sorensen's Reader articles. He has a singular vision and humor, what more do you want?
Every aspect of this book documents a life well lived. I liked the kindle version so much that a paperback copy was purchased so I could loan it to my friends.
However, the author's autobiography of his time spent in the Sierra as a NPS crew boss touched many common themes of the time in views of the wilderness, man against the powers that be and reaching far above those mundane concerns with excellent story telling and introduction to characters that literally jump from the page. His life touched many of the same critical people that shaped our current mania for back country adventure.
The author is the real deal in terms of his skill set. He worked as a tree feller, tree climber and sawyer on the hazardous tree crew as a seasonal worker. He learned how to treat stock animals and load them correctly from expert packers. He worked his way into an expertise on the restoration of back country meadows by using dam and water bars with available natural materials. During the winter he was a snow survey skier, doing depth measurements in the often sub zero temperatures in January through March. His pay was twice as much as a backcountry ranger when he arose to be crew supervisor, but still no medical insurance or retirement. The book The Last Season chronicles the pressure that low pay, long time away from home while still "doing what you love to do" by being in the backcountry on a seasonal employment can bring about. The dream job has a price tag.
The author has a way of making the people he worked with the real subject of the book. As a person reaching the time when friends leaving this earth becomes a frequent and troubling aspect of life the choice of either trying not to think of past versus embracing the memories of those who influenced our life. At the start of the book, Steve uses the Native American philosophy of not thinking of those we loved and are gone after the one year of mourning, at the risk of the dead coming back to cause illness or other bad things. Later, after having moved to the east cape when the cold of Three Rivers became too much, he embraces the Mexican "Day of the Dead" tradition of welcoming those who have died to share in those moments before dawn when the gap between living and dead comes closer with shared memories.
The author's Reader articles are still online and I enjoyed the one on his solo climb of Picacho del Diablo, one I did with a guide about a year after he did it. He also wrote about a trip to Canyon Tajo, which I have done dozens of times and never touched his perception of it in one trip. Try before you buy, take a look at Sorensen's Reader articles. He has a singular vision and humor, what more do you want?
Every aspect of this book documents a life well lived. I liked the kindle version so much that a paperback copy was purchased so I could loan it to my friends.
Displaying 1 of 1 review