by Eric Blehm
He became interested in stories of mountaineering and dreamed, not of the world-class rock climbing in his backyard, but of exploring deep into the mountains of exotic lands. Sometimes he would head out of the house with the goal of finding the most obscure spot to read, uninterrupted, a book or the newest National Geographic cover to cover. One of the more inspirational articles he read was about the famed Sherpa of Nepal, mountain people whose physiological makeup from living for centuries at the world’s highest altitudes enabled them to travel effortlessly in the thinnest air on the planet and had made them favorite porters and guides for climbing expeditions. Randy marveled at the notion of traveling to the land of the Sherpa, but until then, the Sierra served as a training ground.
RANDY GRADUATED from Mariposa County High School, an hour’s bus ride from his home, in June of 1961, ranked academically fifteenth out of forty-five graduates. He had excelled, especially in English and physical education, carrying straight A’s through his high school career. Math, history, and science were B subjects. In sports he lettered in both football and basketball, but most telling was his elected position as senior class president, which friends attributed to his likable nature and way with words. Randy Rust remembers that he was a natural speaker and “comfortable talking about anything with anyone.”
Much to the pleasure of his proud parents, Randy was accepted by Arizona State College in Flagstaff (renamed Northern Arizona University in 1966), where he declared his major as Recreation Land Management, a fairly new curriculum nationwide. But after a year and a half, the 21-year-old decided to take the spring semester off to work his first real job for the National Park Service, that of “ungraded laborer.”
By all accounts, this was the first time Dana and Esther weren’t pleased with Randy. Their elder son, Larry, had returned from his tour of duty and moved in with them, spending much of his time at local watering holes and often coming home drunk. Then, after vanishing for a few days, he appeared at the front door with a young woman he introduced as his wife. He’d met her at a bar, and after a brief love affair, they’d driven to Vegas and gotten married.
So, as one son was sinking into the depths of alcoholism, their intellectual son, for whom they had high hopes, was maintaining park trails with a pick and shovel.
It was to their great relief that Randy continued with school the following fall, explaining that he’d needed some time to clear his head. Truth be told, he didn’t want to continue using his parents’ money on an education that he wasn’t excited about. His mind was in the mountains, and even then he knew that, unlike his father, working a job where he could “walk in the woods on the weekend” wouldn’t be enough.
During the summer of 1963, Randy and his friend Bill Taylor headed south to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks to hike a portion of the High Sierra Trail, which crossed the Sierra range east to west. On their last day in the backcountry, Bill reminded Randy that Randy was supposed to work at the theater in Yosemite for that evening’s show. It was late morning and they were miles from their car; still, Randy paused at a particularly scenic overlook and marveled at the view—for nearly an hour. Randy continued to take his time, investigating trailside flower patches, pausing to photograph the crystalline stalactites dripping from sugar pine cones.
Randy’s casual pace stressed Bill and he repeatedly reminded Randy about the time. Finally, Randy walked over to him and calmly said, “You’re missing way too much by staring at that watch. Either throw it off this cliff or stop bothering me about being late.”
“Randy did that to me a lot,” says Taylor. “He reminded me to keep my priorities straight.”
Indeed, Randy sauntered into the Yosemite theater just as the line of people were let in.
Bent on saving money, Randy took two more jobs from June to September of 1963: he worked as a messenger delivering and collecting cash for the Curry Company, and he showed employee training films on the side, earning $300 a month.
In the fall of 1963, Randy returned to Arizona State College ready to hit the books. His first two years had been lackluster, with B’s and C’s the norm, and even a couple of D’s.
Philosophy changed all that in his third year.
Introduction to Philosophy, American Philosophy, Critical Thinking, and Classic Piano all pocketed him A’s. During this inspired time, he added books on Aristotle and Plato and other “great thinkers” to his bookshelf. But it was Confucius who probably best described the philosophical bent on wilderness that would last the rest of Randy’s life: “Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.”
Randy not only saw beauty in the smallest things, but also was captivated by their smallest details. He decided to spend the following summer in the high country. He wanted to put his life on his back, not unlike John Muir, and hike the crest of the Sierra without a schedule. Unhurried. Unhindered.
He informed his parents of his summer plans during Christmas break, which was an adventure in itself. Perhaps inspired by some great thinker, Randy attempted to return home to Yosemite by jumping a train. To test his mettle he left Flagstaff with no money. He didn’t make it to the California state line. While his train was stopped at a rail yard, the cars were searched by a conductor, who discovered the unlikely hobo and kicked him off. He walked to the next town and called his parents, collect.
For the entire summer of 1964, beginning in Yosemite, Randy hiked the John Muir Trail south to Mount Whitney. Bill Taylor was one of the people he enlisted to hike in and resupply him with food caches along the way.
“Meeting the backcountry rangers on the trail,” says Taylor, “made quite an impact on Randy. He did everything possible to stay in the mountains that summer. He didn’t want to hike out if he could help it. Seeing the rangers along the trail, self-sufficient, with a cabin, was very romantic to Randy.”
Whether it was the rangers, the high country, or just the best way to stay out there, Randy decided to apply for a backcountry ranger position for the following summer posthaste upon his return from the mountains, but not in Yosemite. The less crowded Sequoia and Kings Canyon to the south was the country he most enjoyed on his summer-long trek.
He couldn’t have chosen a better time. The results of six backcountry-use studies conducted over the previous twenty years had recently culminated in a landmark backcountry management plan for Sequoia and Kings Canyon. It was the early 1960s, and there was a new environmental movement that went beyond simply setting aside wilderness for future generations. These studies and others proved that wasn’t enough. The land had to be looked after more closely than in the past. It had to be “managed,” with a sensitivity for the wilds.
The management plan proposed an increase in backcountry rangers—which, since World War II, had numbered fewer than four rangers per summer season. Randy was on the cusp of a hiring movement that would triple the number of backcountry rangers in Sequoia and Kings Canyon.
DURING THE MONTHS after the summer of 1964, Randy decided college wasn’t for him. He felt strongly that anything he was to learn on this planet would be taught to him by the mountains.
He told his friends that he’d learned more during those months in the high country than all his schooling up to that point, and he wanted to share what he’d seen and what he’d felt. But there was a dilemma. He couldn’t talk openly about these aspirations with his parents because they were set in the belief that a college education was required to make a respectable living. They supported his love of wilderness wholeheartedly; his mother would say he “got that honest” from his father. If he wanted to make a life of the Park Service, wonderful. But the administrators—the superintendents, the chief rangers—had degrees.
Randy had a bit of the sixties in him and wanted what was then just beginning to be referred to as an “alternative” lifestyle. He wanted to create for himself a life where living came before a job. He didn’t want to settle for one or two weeks of vacation a year. A desk job, whether in a suit and tie or a ranger uniform, was
out of the question.
For advice he went to his family friend Ansel Adams, whom he’d assisted occasionally in his younger years. When Randy had first offered his services to the famous photographer, he was a young teen. He’d been worth his weight in gold during photography courses when he lugged Adams’s heavy tripod and large-and medium-format cameras all over Yosemite.
As the years passed, Randy experimented with photography himself. While his father was bent on documenting the park’s flowers and scenic vistas, Randy exhibited more artistic tendencies, which Adams observed as he reviewed his work.
Randy wrote Adams a letter in October 1964, explaining his predicament with school and career, and expressed his desire to use photography as a means to support himself while documenting his adventures in the High Sierra and eventually around the world.
“You make a very clear statement of your problems and I must tell you I have a very high opinion of your attitudes!” wrote Adams in response. “To see and to feel is supremely important, and to want to share your experiences is the hallmark of a truly civilized spirit!
“Photography, as a…profession, is a grim business—with terrific competition. Frankly, I advise most people to approach it as an avocation. Many of the greatest photographers were ‘amateurs’ in the sense that they did not make their living from the art. You have too fine a concept of the creative obligations to get yourself mixed up with the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the camera world.”
Adams then invited Randy to come to his home in Carmel, California, to discuss the subject at length.
“I think I can help you much more in this way,” Adams continued. “It is easy to write down ideas and suggestions, but you have a very definitive purpose in life (rare!) and I think I could help you most by just talking with you and exploring.”
The dialogue between Randy and Adams from that meeting is unknown—but Randy did leave Carmel with a gift, one of Adams’s classic wooden tripods and a 4-by-5 view camera. A few weeks later Randy dropped out of his fall semester courses, and applied for the job of seasonal backcountry park ranger on February 8, 1965.
On the application, under Special Qualifications, he wrote: “Entered public speaking contests in high school, and have been meeting the public and working with people all my life; have been backpacking through the Sierra covered by these 3 parks [Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon], plus some, for as long as I can remember.”
Two months later, Randy was informed of an opening at Sequoia and Kings Canyon. He arrived at park headquarters at Ash Mountain on April 29. He was honored to serve in the Park Service and had proudly purchased the classic ensemble of olive green coat, gray shirt, dark green tie, and the traditional tan flat hat. The silver National Park Ranger badge represented something important. Just a few weeks earlier, he had been in Arizona, majoring in outdoor recreation. Now he was going to live it, to actually get paid to go camping in the mountains.
On May 1, Randy reported for duty at the parks’ vehicle entrance kiosk, not far from Ash Mountain, where he would work for a few weeks before being dropped into the backcountry.
The entrance kiosk, or check-in station, was the hub of activity at this, the parks’ southernmost entrance. With the passing of the Wilderness Act in 1964, the parks had experienced a slight increase in traffic. Still, check-in station duties had changed little since the early 1940s, when Gordon Wallace, a ranger in Sequoia from 1935 to 1947, worked inside the same rock-walled building. Wallace recounted his duties in his memoir, My Ranger Years:
Not only must all traffic, local as well as tourist, stop here and make its business known, but the station also served as the clearing house for all the trivialities, petty bothers and errands, information of all kinds, and amenities of daily life. The park ranger on duty at the checking station was the pivot of this life…. Besides the locals, I have seen and talked to many others—people who came from the forty-eight states as well as from other parts of the world.
From years working customer service jobs in Yosemite, Randy knew that a smile combined with enthusiastic local knowledge went a long way when dealing with the public. Randy’s performance at the check-in station prompted accolades, as acknowledged by a letter written to the park’s superintendent, John M. Davis, on November 5, 1965, in reference to a family’s encounter with Randy on June 8, 1965:
Dear Sir,
On behalf of the attitudes promoted in Sequoia National Forest [sic], I must comment that it’s wonderful to know that for those traveling throughout our great country, there are individuals and systems set up to further interests and establish atmospheres of enjoyment for all who wish to grasp the beauties of America.
In particular, I refer you to Mr. Randy Morgenson, a ranger who attended the check-in station…. His brilliant character, sparkling personality and cheerful smile both entering and leaving Sequoia left an impression my family and myself will never forget and I’m sure made the long trips for the many who passed through Sequoia that day bearable ones…. We appreciate it very much. Thank you.
Please give Randy our sincerest regards and the enclosed picture we took of him on our way through.
Gratefully yours,
Mrs. A. Wayne Ingard
Moscow, Idaho
Superintendent Davis forwarded the letter and photograph to Randy, and responded to Mrs. Ingard with his own letter, which stated, in part, “Service to Park visitors is one of our primary functions, and we are always happy to hear that this important service is being carried out cheerfully and courteously.”
Mrs. Ingard’s glowing letter was the first of dozens that would eventually be filed in Randy’s meticulous archives in the attic of his home. None of these letters would be included in his government employee personnel file.
Even though Randy performed his duties admirably at the entrance station, it was not the reason he had joined the Park Service. Like his predecessor Gordon Wallace, Randy longed for the backcountry. It was a calling that had been eating at him nonstop since he’d hiked the John Muir Trail the summer before. He wanted to get far and away from the cars and blacktop of the parks’ most traveled routes and sites: the General Sherman Tree—with its 36.5-foot-diameter base, the biggest tree in the world—and the myriad quick roadside hikes that could be enjoyed by anybody with a few hours to spare while passing through.
After six weeks of inhaling exhaust fumes at the parks’ entrance, Randy helped load what appeared to be supplies for a small expedition into the belly of the parks’ helicopter. His first season as a backcountry ranger was about to begin.
As the pilot gained altitude, the cabins and roads at Ash Mountain became a distant memory. On a northeast flight path, the helicopter skimmed the granite walls of Moro Rock, taking a wide arc around Giant Forest, where groves of the world’s largest trees seemed toy-like in comparison with the serrated teeth of the snow-clad Sierra Crest that filled the horizon to the east. Following the routes of rivers and streams, the pilot weaved into the high country as his wide-eyed passenger spun around to absorb every geographic feature. It was Randy’s first bird’s-eye view of a land he would describe to his mother as Eden.
Gordon Wallace had taken a similar eastern route into the Sierra wilderness some thirty years earlier, though his summer ranger supplies had been transported by a string of mules. Wallace’s stock had grazed freely in any and all meadows; Randy’s rotor-powered steed was deemed less invasive to such meadows, despite the noise.
“Do not come and roam here unless you are willing to be enslaved by its charms,” warned Wallace in his memoir of his ranger years. “Its beauty and peace and harmony will entrance you. Once it has you in its power, it will never release you the rest of your days.”
By the time Randy jumped out of the helicopter onto the gravel shore of Middle Rae Lake, it was already too late. The spell had been cast.
CHAPTER THREE
INTO THE HIGH COUNTRY
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential fa
cts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Only this simple everyday living and wilderness wandering seems natural and real, the other world, more like something read, not at all related to reality as I know it.
—Randy Morgenson, Charlotte Lake, 1966
WHEN RANDY MORGENSON hopped off that helicopter near the shores of the Rae Lakes on July 12, 1965, he landed in a new era of wilderness. The early environmental movement had long fought for the idea of protecting the wilds, not exploiting them. Now, with the passing of the Wilderness Act the year before, the National Park Service was struggling to balance two wholly conflicting philosophies mandated by the new law—preservation and use. Even pre–Wilderness Act, Sequoia and Kings Canyon had implemented grazing restrictions in certain areas where heavy use, if continued, would have turned mountain meadows into dirt fields. Other areas, the Rae Lakes in particular, had been so heavily used by campers that dead and down wood that could be burned as firewood was almost depleted. In cases such as this, camping and grazing of stock was limited to one night, and a recent invention for cooking—the backpacker stove—was encouraged. Without these and other controls, it was predicted, the High Sierra wilderness would never recover.