Book Review: Men For The Mountains

"Men for the Mountains" by Sid Marty is a recollection of his days as a warden in Canada's national parks. Sid gets his first summer gig as a patrolman. He learns the hard way about the ins and outs of horseback riding in some of the more memorable and hilarious stories from the book. He is given an area of responsibility in Yoho National Park. He lives in a small cabin heated by a wood stove and draws water from a nearby stream. As the years progress he eventually gets on as a full time warden and the book is filled with  stories about his dealings with bears, camp cooks and horses. There is a very interesting chapter on what it takes to fight a fire on a mountainside in Jasper National Park using volunteers composed mainly of hippies and Vietnam era draft dodgers. It really is amazing to see the methods that are required to bring a fire under control under such extreme circumstances and the type of men it takes to see the job through.

Throughout, there is a constant theme that the warden should not be in the townsite sitting in an office but should instead be out in the park, patrolling the back country, maintaining the trails and keeping tabs on the wildlife and the people who choose to interact with that environment. There are other stories he tells of wardens in the early days of the Park Service. Ones that spent winters holed up in patrol cabins waiting out blizzards in mountain passes. Another of a warden who falls off his horse and survives several days under a tree as grizzly bears prowl about waiting for him to die. The stories depict the life of the pre-centralization wardens. No one gets into that type job for the money, it is purely for the love of nature and the lifestyle.

The later chapters deal more with his job once "centralization" began to dominate. He spends more time acting like a police man and dealing with tourists and rogue campground raiding bears. He likes to depict the tourists he deals with as stupid and annoying. However, I suppose after  all those years dealing with the different types of people you will inevitably meet in that job you will be jades somewhat. Much like any job there are the goods and bads.

Men of the Mountains is a tale of how the  Canadian Parks Service was able to bring order and help preserve the vast landscapes set aside for the national parks. The men and women who patrolled these areas were able to establish the mandate of the Parks Act.

In this day and age of cutbacks and further centralization, "Men for the Mountains" tells of a time (not that long ago!) when we were more in tune with nature. It tells of how beautiful and at the same time dangerous this land can be.