In Mountains of Memory, seasoned wilderness dweller Don Scheese charts a long season of watching for and fighting fires in the largest federal wilderness area in the mainland United States. In the tradition of Edward Abbey and Gary Snyder, Scheese offers readers a meditation on the meaning and value of wilderness at the beginning of the twenty-first century, painting a complex portrait of the natural, institutional, and historical forces that have shaped the great forested landscapes of the American West. Book jacket.

I have this canoe that is tied to my imagination and docked to my memory bank. This book is simply a ride down the rivers of my memories. I grew up in the mountains of western NC under the shadow of Mount Pisgah. The mountain way of life during the 40's and 50's is worth writing about and preserving for future references. It is my story, seen and experienced through the eyes of a young boy. And for me the canoe rides are real, for the places and folk it takes me to are real. The river of my memories is deep and wide, for there are 70 plus years of storage. The traditions, the way of life in the 40's and 50's, Mountaineer spirit and humor are worth talking and writing about. There is nothing really spectacular about what I have to say, but I do hope the stories of growing up in a time that has almost slipped away help you take your own ride down your river of memories. The good times have left me upbeat and positive and extremely happy to have lived in those years. The tragedies have left me raw and exposed and extremely emotional. I truly hope these stories bring some smiles and joy to you. And I really hope you just relax, hop in my old canoe and take a river ride with me. Part of life that comes too sudden is the 'last time'. The last time you see a friend. The last time you talk to your folks. The last time you hugged a family member. One part of writing these stories is remembering the last time I had with some of my people. That is why tears have been shed while trying to write this memoir. I wish I had asked more questions. I wish I had had hugged a bit harder, and loved a lot sweeter. So as for me, I have tried to show in words just how much those folk, growing up in that time, and my Faith have meant to me. Be a blessing because you are blessed.

Where did you come from? How did you get here? These questions came from people who had not seen black skiers before. Black people cant endure cold temperatures, is a myth that has been held by Caucasians and some black people. Black skiers enjoy gliding, sliding and riding on the cold and snowy mountains. The myths that black people dont ski and that black people are too lazy to learn will be dispelled. There are countless stories of their experiences on the snowy mountains, their volunteer services, networking, finding love, and the friendships over the years.

"This will cast a spell on fans of Cheryl Strayed and Glennon Doyle." - Publishers Weekly Between Two Kingdoms meets Wild. In this heart wrenching and inspirational memoir a woman and her mother, who is suffering from dementia, embark on a road trip through national parks, revisiting the memories, and the mountains, that made them who they are. Steph Jagger lost her mother before she lost her. Her mother, stricken with an incurable disease that slowly erases all sense of self, struggles to remember her favorite drink, her favorite song, and—perhaps most heartbreaking of all—Steph herself. Steph watches as the woman who loved and raised her slips away before getting the chance to tell her story, and so Steph makes a promise: her mother will walk it and she will write it. Too aware of her mother’s waning memory, Steph proposes that the two take a camping trip out to Montana—which her mother, on the urging of Steph’s father, agrees to embark upon. An adventure full of horseback riding, hiking, and “tenting” out West quickly turns into one woman’s reflection on childhood, motherhood, personhood—and what it means to love someone who doesn’t quite remember the person she spent her lifetime becoming. A staggeringly beautiful examination of how stories are passed down through generations and from Mother Nature, Everything Left to Remember brings us the wisdom of who our memories make us under the constellations of the vast Montana sky.

The legendary mountaineer describes his adventures in such ranges as the Alps and Himalayas, and provides details of what really happened during a controversial 1954 Italian expedition that made the first ascent of K2.

Famed naturalist John Muir (1838-1914) came to Wisconsin as a boy and studied at the University of Wisconsin. He first came to California in 1868 and devoted six years to the study of the Yosemite Valley. After work in Nevada, Utah, and Colorado, he returned to California in 1880 and made the state his home. One of the heroes of America's conservation movement, Muir deserves much of the credit for making the Yosemite Valley a protected national park and for alerting Americans to the need to protect this and other natural wonders. The mountains of California (1894) is his book length tribute to the beauties of the Sierras. He recounts not only his own journeys by foot through the mountains, glaciers, forests, and valleys, but also the geological and natural history of the region, ranging from the history of glaciers, the patterns of tree growth, and the daily life of animals and insects. While Yosemite naturally receives great attention, Muir also expounds on less well known beauty spots.

First published in paperback by UNM Press in 1976, The Way to Rainy Mountain has sold over 200,000 copies. "The paperback edition of The Way to Rainy Mountain was first published twenty-five years ago. One should not be surprised, I suppose, that it has remained vital, and immediate, for that is the nature of story. And this is particularly true of the oral tradition, which exists in a dimension of timelessness. I was first told these stories by my father when I was a child. I do not know how long they had existed before I heard them. They seem to proceed from a place of origin as old as the earth. "The stories in The Way to Rainy Mountain are told in three voices. The first voice is the voice of my father, the ancestral voice, and the voice of the Kiowa oral tradition. The second is the voice of historical commentary. And the third is that of personal reminiscence, my own voice. There is a turning and returning of myth, history, and memoir throughout, a narrative wheel that is as sacred as language itself."--from the new Preface