‘’Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter’’

John Muir

‘’The last Season’’, is at its core, a book about celebration of nature and the national parks. It centers around Randy Morgenson, a National Park Service ranger in The Sequoia King Canyon National Parks. Randy is a conservationist and a mystic in the mold of Muir and Thoreau, a passion he inherited from his father. ‘’Protect the people from the park and the park from the people’’ was his mantra. Even more than that he is, a poet, a photography enthusiast, and an amateur botanist. His mastery of the Sierra Nevada always left anybody who met him in awe. When he went missing in July, 1996 few days after reporting for his 28th season at the parks, a complicated rescue operation ensues to find him in the vast mountainous wilderness of the Sierra.
I think this book excels at relating the reverence for nature that Randy often shows, along with the universal sense of oneness we are ominously losing with the environment. A log book entry from Randy on September 12, 1978 cited in the book is a perfect example:
‘’ Love for the world and its creatures comes easily here [in the mountains]. I have loved a thousand mountain meadows and alpine peaks. To be aware each day that I am alive, to be deeply sensitive to the world I inhibit and the world that I am, not to roam roughshod over the broad surface of this planet for achievement but to know where I step, and to tread lightly.’’
One look at the Instagram page of The Sequoia King canyon national parks, gives us a glimpse of the beauty that he was so infectiously infatuated with. In the Author’s Note section of the book a further visual resource is provided at www.robiningraham.com ,where the magnificence of the parks is there for everyone to see. But it is only a glimpse. Nothing probably comes as close to actually being there. Blehm does a great work in this book of highlighting the vastness and the absolute wilderness of the terrain having himself hiked through it since 1992.
The rescue operation that the team goes through to locate Randy, was so well laid out and thrilling. Sure, there were some side stories that were a bit underdeveloped in my opinion. Overall though, the book has accomplished what it set out to do. There is enough mystery and intrigue to make the reader care. Although, I suspect between trying to be a page turner and a book about nature, the author might have stretched himself a bit too thin. When I read a non-fiction book, the level of research that goes into the book is the primary criteria. It is clear that the research work done for the book was thorough and sensitive towards the people involved. On the other hand, I feel the book has some fillers at times here and there and it could have been a bit shorter and concise.

Yes, yet another book about someone who has gone missing in the wilderness. Each of the books I've read in the past few years with this theme has been different from the others. The Last Season is my preferred style, with a balanced focus on the individuals who disappeared and the efforts to find them.

In this case, the missing individual is not a hiker passing through, but Randy Morgenson, one of the most experienced wilderness rangers in the Sequoia/King's Canyon National Parks. He has spent 28 summers living mostly on his own in remote locations in this dual park system, sharing his love of the area with visitors and encouraging them to tread lightly. His appreciation of the natural world extends equally to the dramatic granite peaks and the tiniest wildflowers. The backcountry is where he feels most alive; away from the crowds, blacktop and technology.

But his personal life is in turmoil, his infidelity and self-absorption having driven his wife to file for divorce. He is in the midst of one of the world's great mid-life crises; he's even begun questioning to his fellow rangers the value of all those summers he's spent protecting people from the wilderness and the wilderness from people.

And one day in the middle of this "last season", he leaves the tent-cabin that is his home for the summer on what is to be a normal 2-3 day tour of his section of the 1,300+ square miles of the parks. He's never heard from again.

Questions abound. Is he injured and waiting for rescue? Is he somewhere in the Park, but not wanting to be found? Has he left the park entirely? Is he even alive? And regardless of what has happened to him - did he bring it on himself intentionally?

The timeline splices into the details of the search to find him the story of his formative years, courtship and marriage, various artistic endeavors, and efforts to get the Park Service to work harder at protecting the park's meadows from being used as grazing grounds. What emergences are two vivid pictures: one of a breathtakingly beautiful but highly dangerous park, and one of a highly troubled man no longer sure of his place in the world.

The story of the search is skillfully told. It is an opportunity for the Blehm to demonstrate his own appreciation of the stunning, treacherous environment, while at the same time having the reader puzzle over red herrings just as the search teams do. None of those questions above are answered until the very end.

Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys this kind of thing.

Well-written. The back and forth between the current mystery and all that lead up to it really added depth to the story and kept my intrigued throughout. If you are a fan of wilderness books and like a mystery, this book is probably for you. The book really makes me want to explore Sequoia and King's Canyon NP.

If you like Jon Krakauer books you'll probably like this one. Blehm is nowhere near the writer that Krakauer is, however, but it's an interesting story, anyway.

Randy Morgenson is a seasonal park ranger in Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. He goes missing one day and a massive search begins. He's been having trouble with his marriage and an affair so people wonder if he's committed suicide. I think Blehm pads the story a bit too much, however, with irrelevant information to make this into a full length book so my interest waned in parts. Not bad, but not great either.

I loved this book, and for so many reasons.

--Well-researched - Blehm's research was comprehensive. I loved all the interviews and maps and photos and quotes from journals. He pulled the reader it - I felt like I was part of the search party. He was always professional and not sensational; he treated those he interviewed with respect.
--Fascinating explanation how search-and-rescue operations are performed in extremely remote locations. It is a science and a feat of human organization.
--The trajectory of a life - It is possible I read this book at exactly the right time in my life; I found myself immersed in Morgenson's life story. He was a dreamer, an idealist, a perfectionist, a purist. He knew what he wanted, and I yearned to feel that passion for something in my own life. He found this great love for nature and was able to make good of it and to touch so many lives. And then, as it inevitably does, sorrow comes. We become disillusioned, we lose connection to our passion, we start asking what it all means and what it all matters, (esp when we are unfairly compensated). Maybe this is due to making a few mistakes (Morgenson's affair); maybe this is a function of getting older and losing parents and facing our own mortality. Maybe it is all part of some larger pattern, the ebb and flow of happiness. Of course, in this case, it was especially fascinating as the sorrow coincided w/ Randy's disappearance.
--The importance of nature and of minimizing the human impact - I loved Randy's passion for nature. I share his disgust for American solipsism.
--Connected-ness - how, even for a guy like Randy, essentially a loner, we are all connected, our lives touch other lives. He made an impact, he influenced, he motivated.

When Randy Morganson disappeared, he had been a volunteer backcountry ranger in a national park for almost 30 years. Mainly based in the Sierra Nevada, he grew up feeling that the wilderness was his real home & where he was truly happy & his job was always more of a vocation than a career.

When he went missing whilst patrolling his allotted area, Randy had been having some troubles in his personal life & those he worked with were unsure if he had just walked away or was out there somewhere injured & waiting for help. This is the story of Randy's life & the search for him in an area which had hidden the wreckage of a plane crash for almost 20 years. It was the proverbial 'needle in a haystack' situation. Can they find him & will it be in time?

This is an intriguing read. What could have happened? After setting the scene of his disappearance, the narrative goes back in time to consider Randy's childhood & we return to his past at several junctures throughout the book. Randy had plenty of good points in his love of nature & wish to conserve the wilderness for future generations, but he was also a complicated man & made some decisions which were rather selfish.

It was really interesting even if the reader has a looming sense of sadness as there wasn't much doubt that there wouldn't be a happy resolution to this one. I was expecting it to remain open-ended but there is sort of an ending even if it is mainly conjecture at this point.

Excellent portrait of love for the Sierras

Randy Morgenson had one love in his life, and he enjoyed it every summer - the High Sierras.

Unfortunately, a tricky snowfield and a dead radio led to his death in 1996.

Eric Blehn does "flashback" style well, alternating chapters between the hunt for Morgenson after a missing person alert was officially declared, and chapters beginning with Eric's childhood through his years in Kings Canyon National Park.

Having gone a little way into the backcountry there, the last time this May, when a bone-dry California already had many of the peaks of the Sierras almost bare, I loved this book.

Well-written but utterly heartbreaking.

This non fiction book was written so well that it started to feel like a fiction book the more I read it. Lots of great information about what goes on in the High Sierra and how Randy Morgenson disappeared and died and how the people around him reacted to it. Great book.

This was an obvious work of love, handled with meticulous care. This mystery is both researched and told from a human, not just factual, place. And what a beautiful tribute to Mother Nature and all her wondrous mysteries. In great synchronicity, I read most of this while in the great outdoors during the month of summer that much of this story transpired. I still find it remarkable that this ranger was mentored by both Wallace Stegner AND Ansel Adams -- WOW. What a great perspective, and reminder, of our place in the universe.
Thank you, Eric Blehm, for this telling.

I loved everything about this book. It reads like a mystery: thrillingly fast paced with twists as you try to understand what happened. It's also a drama: your heart rips apart over and over, especially at the end. Even though you know what happens from the beginning, you can't help but hold out hope. This story demonstrates why life without closure is more difficult than grief over loss. The five stages of grief are ever present in this book and you work through them slowly.

There is also so much beauty in Randy's story, which reminds the reader simultaneously about the beauty of the wild and how we are all flawed. (This book covers the life and disappearance of a veteran ranger)

I deeply appreciated the open discussion of depression and how it shapes us in innumerable ways and that life happens without your permission and everyone inevitable struggles with a crisis of character or conscience.

The caring and brotherhood of rangers is a true love story and makes you see how thankless their job is but how without then we wouldn't have our slice of heaven on earth. For people who hike, climb, camp, and can't be caged, this book is for you!

Blehm took me so deeply into the back country that Randy Morgenson loved that I felt the sweat collecting under my backpack and my muscles burning with exquisite exertion. Despite, knowing the outcome of The Last Season, this book is predicated on tension that propelled me through the book with curiosity. I read long past when I should have turned out the light because I could not stop at the section breaks. I just had to read what happened next. I'm a fan of Jon Krakauer, and Blehm writes in a similar vein. The book is beautifully researched, covers multiple points of view and opinions, and lets you ultimately decide for yourself what you think of Randy Morgenson, his life and his choices. The book is structured with chapters which alternate between a biography of Morgenson and traveling step by step through the Morgenson SAR. The chapters resonate with one another, clarifying and elucidating in quite lovely prose, with just the right amount of quoting, science, and beautiful description for me. This was a terrific summer read. Can't imagine why I didn't find it sooner, but so glad it landed in my hands at last.