A Branch of the Sky

Book excerpt: The day he finished high school in 1967, Steve Sorensen began a fifty-year adventure in the southern Sierra Nevada. After learning to rock climb in Yosemite Valley, Sorensen went on to spend fourteen years working for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, where he became the leader of a backcountry crew, a skilled tree faller, an emergency medical technician, a wildland firefighter, a backcountry snow surveyor, and a mule packer. Working with park botanists, he developed new techniques for restoring damaged meadows, and his crews rehabilitated miles of eroded trails throughout the parks. Later he wrote the first two hiking guidebooks for the park’s frontcountry trails. Sorensen’s heartfelt tales of life in the southern Sierra Nevada are told with style and humor, both informative and touching at the same time. Though his blunt criticism of the National Park Service might anger some, many park employees will recognize the honesty and accuracy of his observations. A Branch of the Sky is infused with the love and respect Sorensen felt for his friends and coworkers, many of whom he lost to accidents and disease. How he made his peace with their ghosts is a unique and captivating story, beautifully told.