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Nature Noir: A Park Ranger's Patrol in the Sierra (.) | 
 enlarge | Author: Jordan Fisher Smith
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 321358
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.6 x 1
ISBN: 0618224165
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.28
UPC: 046442224161
EAN: 9780618224166
ASIN: 0618224165
Publication Date: February 8, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Nature Noir is the intensely original story -- part Edward Abbey, part James Ellroy -- of Jordan Fisher Smith's fourteen years as a park ranger on forty-eight miles of Sierra Nevada river canyons.
The gorgeous government-owned land along the American River that Fisher Smith and his band of fellow rangers have pledged to protect is (think Catch-22) condemned to be inundated by a huge dam. As Smith learns from his first day on patrol, the provisional quality of life here attracts the marginal and the pure crazy. Ranger work, in this place where wildness tends toward the human kind, includes encounters with armed miners who scour canyons for gold, drug-addled squatters, and extreme recreators who enjoy combining motorcycles, parachutes, and high bridges.
Nature Noir reveals some startling truths about park rangering on America's public lands. In one heart-stopping scene, Smith comes across the corpse of a woman runner, killed and partly eaten by a mountain lion -- the first Californian to die in that way since the nineteenth century. Elsewhere, the predator on the loose may be human, and Smith goes looking for the bones of a long-missing woman in the surreal landscape around a half-constructed dam slowly reverting to wild.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
 Nature Noir: A Park Ranger's Patrol in the Sierra March 11, 2008
Shatter the California Environmental Myth! Then kick it in, step on it and if there is still anything left, shoot if for good measure. In "Nature Noir," Jordan Fisher Smith tells it like it is. He's the ranger for a piece of state parkland in the high Sierras, a neglected piece of land slated to become a dam site and inundated reservoir capturing the floodwaters of the American River; this to prevent downstream flooding in Sacramento.
Smith elects to work in this park instead of trying to compete for a much more coveted, high-status ranger role in the National Park Service. While he would love to work in one of California's great national parks, he's settled for rangering in this off-the-path piece of public parkland. For those not aware, it's a tough time for a white guy to get one of those high-profile National Park ranger roles. Since women and minorities have historically been under-represented among park rangers, there's a major push to diversify. As a white guy, Smith finds himself at the back of the line.
His piece of California state parkland is on a shoe-string budget with an skeletal staff. Because the expectation is still for a dam and reservoir to be built, activities like dredging for gold are allowed. Intolerable and illegal elsewhere on public parkland, activities like this go on, spoiling the environment, making lots of noise, silting up streams, lowering water quality.
This is a rough place and rough things happen here. Smith is able to convey a strong sense of place. He knows his land. Rough people seem to be drawn to this place. A lot of people openly carry guns. Few Sierra Clubbers, Friends-of-the-Earth, Audubon Society birdwatchers and people with a sense of environmental stewardship frequent this place. The spirit of John Muir is at best a foggy ghost in the vision field of most of the patrons of this place. Smith is not a law-enforcement oriented type of ranger. However, this part of his ranger role is often all-consuming.
This is a tale told by a guy who knows well his piece of public land and the people who frequent it. His tale will strip down the high-minded environmental conscience of California ecology types and even ordinary folks, who want simply to go on a nature walk in the woods. This narrative will make you feel uncomfortable. You won't think about a piece of public land in the same way after reading this book. You won't think about the role of a ranger in the same way after reading this book.
Distinctive stories from a distinctive setting November 25, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is the memoir of a ranger assigned to a dying state park whose lands were due to be flooded by a downstream dam. The park's fate helped make its visitors a relatively pathetic bunch, since California's park department clearly reduced spending on infrastructure and staff in anticipation of the park's coming demise. People who didn't need infrastructure, and who liked the low enforcement level, found it a congenial place to hang out - - mostly to drink, of course, but also to engage in other antisocial and/or illegal activities.
The experience gave Smith a lot of good stories, and he tells them pretty well. As a storyteller in the ranger-warden-cop genre, I'd put him about in the middle of the pack. The underlying quality of the stories is better than average.
The book stands out in its perspective, conveyed by the title. Some comparable memoirs present park rangers and game wardens as semi-heroic servants of the people, but this one has a more gritty feel of an urban cop assigned to a rural beat. If you're looking for Bambi stories about wildlife or wilderness, this is the wrong book for you - - the star animal eats a visitor, and a much more humble creature puts an end to our author's career. But if you're a true-crime fan looking for an unusual setting, this book might be just the ticket for you.
A fascinating glimpse into the dark side -This gritty book holds nothing back October 24, 2007
A boldly written book, by an author who is not afraid to take chances, Jordan Fisher Smith, a park ranger whose career led him by chance, or perhaps by destiny, to the canyons of the American River in California. The area under his jurisdiction was condemned in his time, facing a future of being annhilitated; damned up and buried under thousands of tons of water.
"Nature Noir" is a fascinating peephole into the dark side of nature, the dark side of humanity, the dark side of the author himself. This gritty book holds nothing back. Not the carelessness of humankind, not the uncompromising thrust of the natural world, not even the relentless self-scrutiny of the author.
This unique book gives a personal perspective from the viewpoint of the ranger who hands out permits to people like us. It also indicates Smith's deep connection with the lands that he had sworn to protect.
Often terse, "Nature Noir" illustrates the author's ability to paint a highly evocative picture with a minimum of words. His spare descriptions illuminate the landscape in which he lived, and tell us everything we need to know to imagine the place, the people, and the era.
I was so intrigued by Jordan Smith's succinct prose that I felt compelled to
make a pilgrimage to the canyons of the American River myself. I found them as intriguing as the author's descriptions.
Nature Noir is not for the faint of heart. It is not for readers who anticipate a light-hearted tale, or an ordinary one.
Look for the ending, brutal in it's sudden simplicity.
This book is a great read.
 Nature Noir October 17, 2007
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
A park ranger talks about law enforcement, dams, miners, and death in California's Auburn State Recreation Area.
Good book for the plane June 20, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I don't really have much to say about Nature Noir. I read it on the plane out to Denver. It was recommended to me by a non-fiction writer and I heard part of an interview with the author on the radio. I confess that I have not read a great deal of non-fiction aside from personal essays. "Nature Noir" read much like a long personal essay, interspersed with the customary commentary on landscape necessary in all nature writing. Smith's narrative seeks to dispel the idyllic image of wilderness and the life of the Forest Ranger. And I imagine for many people, particularly people who do not spend much time in the Western backcountry, Smith's reports of meth-labs, poachers, suicides, and predator attacks contrast their image of wilderness. But it's something most people who spend time in the backcournty have know about for some time. Ultimately I found his tales and observations somewhat pedestrian. The reviewer on the inside cover compared the work to Edward Abbey, Gary Snyder, and Aldo Leopold. Such comparisons are far too generous for this particular work.
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