Medicine Warrior
Grizzlies On My Mind
The Journeyman, 253
Winter Adventures
Life Returns to Yellowstone
Mammoth Madness
Ranger Field Journal
Wild Entrapment
Christmas in Yellowstone
Ode to #6
The Story of the Kestrel
Bitterroot Paint
Only In Yellowstone
Hello Again Old Faithful
The Hills Are Alive
American White Pelican
Summer Love Letter
Fall Is In The Air
Yellowstone’s Gym Culture
Winter’s Loosening Grip
The Fading Light Of Summer
Closing Out The Season
Bison and Bigotry
Teasing Seasons
Chaos, Wind and Harlequins
Respect For Señor Blanco
Song of the Yellow Bellied
Bliss Pass
Hoodoo Equinox Storm
What is it about Yellowstone National Park that draws millions of visitors from all over the world? The "Rev" Michael Leach captures it in this book of essays. Leach is a Yellowstone insider with unmatched passion for this nation's first national park.
Michael Leach has written numerous pieces for regional publications, including YELLOWSTONE DISCOVERY, OUTSIDE BOZEMAN, DISTINCTLY MONTANA, NEW WEST, and WYOMING WILDLIFE. Michael is known for his bold, unique voice, his humor, and his lyrical writing style. Drawing comparisons to the great Norman McLean, Michael's writing conjures up deep and powerful emotions in readers of all ages. With his innovative and passionate approach, Michael brings a contemporary style to the nature genre through his rich and heartfelt prose while connecting readers with the raw power of wild places like Yellowstone.
"Three and a half million people see Yellowstone National Park
every year, but few people see as clearly and deeply into the park
as Michael Leach. Yellowstone’s combination of natural attributes
and human oddities makes it a truly weird and wonderful place.
Leach lifts a curtain, lets you see a layer of the park the casual
visitor would never know. He writes with equal admiration for the
subtleties and splendor—and the understanding that sometimes the
subtleties are the splendor. Leach provides glimpses of the
people—from biologists to law enforcement staff to astonishing gym
rats in the border town of Gardiner—and the animals that make
Yellowstone a world unto itself. Whether writing about famous
wolves, dinosaur bones, arrowheads, marmots or grizzly bears, Leach
writes with a passion that is as inspiring as his subject. His
journey of discovery through Yellowstone is both public and
poignantly personal. Treat yourself to this unique and passionate
perspective on America’s greatest national park." —Jeff Hull,
author of Pale Morning Done and Streams of Consciousness
"Michael Leach offers a beautiful tribute to Yellowstone National
Park, where he spent over a decade as a ranger, naturalist, guide,
park nonprofit director and wildlife advocate.
At age 22, Michael Leach became a Yellowstone National Park ranger,
it was a dream come true. Shortly after he took the job, Michael
had earned the nickname "the Rev" for his powerful and passionate
Yellowstone "sermons" that drew crowds to his interpretive
presentations throughout the park. His passion went to new heights
five years later, when he was named one of the park's bear
education rangers.
In Grizzlies On My Mind, Michael shares his love for
Yellowstone—its landscapes and wildlife, especially its iconic
bison and grizzlies--as he tells tales that will delight anyone
interested in the national park system, wildlife and wild
landscapes, rivers and adventure.
The essays are written as a personal journal, so the book that can
be read chronologically or savored one random chapter at a time. As
he states in the introduction, all events are centered on his life
and interactions with the park . . .
Michael Leach does for Yellowstone, what Terry Tempest Williams
does for the Great Salt Lake; Rick Bass does for The Yaak; and Jack
Turner does for the Tetons---gives the reader a special look at a
place they hold in their hearts." —Barbara Theroux, Fact & Fiction,
for Mountain West News
"Michael Leach dreamed of becoming a Yellowstone park ranger. He
got his wish and, with his memoir GRIZZLIES ON MY MIND, he takes us
on a personal journey, traveling with an unguarded heart into the
mystery and beauty of the Yellowstone backcountry. He passionately
and correctly speaks his outrage against the 'barbaric' trapping of
the park's wandering wolves, of the inhumane bison slaughter by
Montana's livestock department. Above all this is a personal
odyssey; Leach shares his lusty interest for women in uniform, his
faith in the power of wild nature and the spiritual paths of
healing." —Doug Peacock
The flora and fauna of Yellowstone becomes the setting of a
spiritual journey in this luscious memoir.
For seven years, the scenery of Michael W. Leach’s daily commute
was beyond enviable: bands of roaming bison, marauding grizzlies,
charging elk, and sulking wolves that peppered stunning vistas. In
Grizzlies on My Mind: Essays of Adventure, Love, and Heartache from
Yellowstone Country, Leach delivers a beautiful tribute to the
Yellowstone National Park or, as he calls it, the “spine of the
continent,” where he spent over a decade as a ranger, naturalist,
guide, park nonprofit director, and wildlife advocate.
Written like a journal, the chapters convey Leach’s rapture for
Yellowstone as an iconic American landscape and one of its last
truly wild frontiers. Such scenery can be as cruel as it is
invigorating: it is a place “where ignorance or carelessness can
help you become part of the food chain.” For instance, he tells of
an overly zealous amateur bear enthusiast who after being mauled by
a grizzly bear is forced to walk miles back to camp holding the
skin on his face in place.
Leach also regales readers with several stories of his own brushes
with danger: a hormone-crazed elk who chased him through the deck
of a cabin, the search for the body of a park visitor after a fatal
fall, keeping park visitors at a safe distance from a grizzly and
wolf having a stand-off over an elk carcass, and tumultuous
snowmobile excursions.
Diagnosed with a debilitating autoimmune disorder, Leach was forced
to stop his basketball career at an early age and undergo a cycle
of pain intervention and other medical treatment. He credits his
career as a ranger as saving his sense of self, and Grizzlies on My
Mind is Leach’s spiritual journey. An early essay describes a
Native American healing ritual, and there are short essays
throughout the collection in which Leach conjures animistic
reverence for the park’s impressive flora and fauna.
Grizzlies on My Mind has wide appeal as an intimate account of life
within one of America’s national treasures beyond the rocketing
waters of Old Faithful. Leach’s inspired prose evokes how the land
and its creatures hold special powers over those lucky enough to
witness them firsthand. As Leach describes, “each day spent in
Yellowstone has the potential to remedy a broken heart and calm a
racing mind.” As evidence, he points out that any day he spends
with park visitors ends in hugs rather than handshakes.
—Amanda McCorquodale, Foreword Reviews
The flora and fauna of Yellowstone becomes the setting of a
spiritual journey in this luscious memoir.—Amanda McCorquodale,
Foreword Reviews
"The flora and fauna of Yellowstone becomes the setting of a
spiritual journey in this luscious memoir.
For seven years, the scenery of Michael W. Leach’s daily commute
was beyond enviable: bands of roaming bison, marauding grizzlies,
charging elk, and sulking wolves that peppered stunning vistas. In
Grizzlies on My Mind: Essays of Adventure, Love, and Heartache from
Yellowstone Country, Leach delivers a beautiful tribute to the
Yellowstone National Park or, as he calls it, the “spine of the
continent,” where he spent over a decade as a ranger, naturalist,
guide, park nonprofit director, and wildlife advocate.
Written like a journal, the chapters convey Leach’s rapture for
Yellowstone as an iconic American landscape and one of its last
truly wild frontiers. Such scenery can be as cruel as it is
invigorating: it is a place “where ignorance or carelessness can
help you become part of the food chain.” For instance, he tells of
an overly zealous amateur bear enthusiast who after being mauled by
a grizzly bear is forced to walk miles back to camp holding the
skin on his face in place.
Leach also regales readers with several stories of his own brushes
with danger: a hormone-crazed elk who chased him through the deck
of a cabin, the search for the body of a park visitor after a fatal
fall, keeping park visitors at a safe distance from a grizzly and
wolf having a stand-off over an elk carcass, and tumultuous
snowmobile excursions.
Diagnosed with a debilitating autoimmune disorder, Leach was forced
to stop his basketball career at an early age and undergo a cycle
of pain intervention and other medical treatment. He credits his
career as a ranger as saving his sense of self, and Grizzlies on My
Mind is Leach’s spiritual journey. An early essay describes a
Native American healing ritual, and there are short essays
throughout the collection in which Leach conjures animistic
reverence for the park’s impressive flora and fauna.
Grizzlies on My Mind has wide appeal as an intimate account of life
within one of America’s national treasures beyond the rocketing
waters of Old Faithful. Leach’s inspired prose evokes how the land
and its creatures hold special powers over those lucky enough to
witness them firsthand. As Leach describes, “each day spent in
Yellowstone has the potential to remedy a broken heart and calm a
racing mind.” As evidence, he points out that any day he spends
with park visitors ends in hugs rather than handshakes."
—Amanda McCorquodale, Foreword Reviews
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