Kevin Grange

Wild Rescues by Kevin Grange is a very highly recommended fascinating firsthand account of the life of a paramedic working with the National Park Service.

In 2014, Kevin Grange left his job as a paramedic in Los Angeles to work at Yellowstone National Park. The district ranger at Old Faithful told Grange, "We figured you could handle the call volume and craziness since you’re from Los Angeles. You probably won’t see gang shootings, but we do have bison gorings and bear maulings." Clearly this is a challenging job that requires paramedics to have the ability and skills to respond to both medical and traumatic emergencies. As Grange points out, "the myriad of Yellowstone’s wonders is matched only by the many ways the park can kill you."

A paramedic with the National Park Service is not a desk job. They encounter stroke, seizures, heart attacks, broken bones, allergic reactions, and diabetic emergencies in a field setting. They may treat patients who are potentially suffering from heat exhaustion, heat stroke, burns, frostbite, hypothermia, lightning strikes, or insect bites, along with the numerous injuries caused by wildlife. These paramedics may be expected to stay over night with a patient in the back country, do search and rescue missions, fight fires, assist visitors, keep visitors safe, and handle resource management.

As Grange tells the many stories of just some of his experiences and the wide variety of calls he answered and emergencies he handled it became quite clear that these paramedics are a special breed all of their own. Grange covers working in Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Grand Teton National Parks. Each of theses park have differences and similarities. Yosemite, for example, has a lot of climbing accidents which requires Grange to learn and sharpen his skills in that area. Clearly I, as many people, am not cut out to be a paramedic at a National Park, but what I can do is appreciate the job these brave people do through the eyes of Grange.

Wild Rescues is not just a heart-stopping series of tales of emergencies, Grange also makes it personal. He shares bits of his personal life and his thoughts. Sometimes there is humor in the pages while at other times there are touching tear-jerking stories or frightening encounters. These paramedics have honed the ability and skill required to quickly assess situations and act accordingly and Grange shares events that clearly showcase this. The narrative is organized into sections set in the three National Parks and the accounts are very accessible to those who don't have a medical background. Clearly, after reading Wild Rescues, travelers will be thinking about safety as well as the natural beauty and wildlife when they visit a National Park.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the Chicago Review Press in exchange for my honest opinion.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2021/03/wild-rescues.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3901608511… (mais)

My idea of the ideal vacation? Oceanfront on the Pacific or Caribbean, sun and plenty of cold drinks and reading material. A hammock is always an exquisite addition. What did Kevin Grange do in 2007? He embarked on what is billed as the toughest trek in the world, a 24-day horseshoe-shaped journey of 216 miles on foot through the Himalayan Mountains in Bhutan.

Granted, Grange and his fellow trekkers were accompanied by a seven-person support team, a kitchen tent and toilet tents and were served hot tea upon arising each morning and hot evening meals with silverware at a large table. Still, the trek is a daunting challenge. Not only are trekkers hiking nearly 10 miles a day, they traverse 11 high-mountain passes, seven over 16,000 feet. In addition to the risks inherent on at times precarious trails and from unpredictable weather, the height of the mountain passes makes altitude sickness a very real -- and potentially fatal -- danger. More people have climbed Mount Everest than have completed the Snowman Trek. Fewer than 120 people a year attempt the trek; less than 50 percent finish. Or, as one of Grange's fellow trekkers put it, "Everybody cries at some point on the Snowman Trek."

Were Beneath Blossom Rain: Discovering Bhutan on the Toughest Trek in the World, Grange's account of his journey, limited to its hazards, trials and tribulations, one could easily categorize it as an adventure travel tale for those who enjoy such reads. Fortunately. Grange's scope and journey were far broader. He does a fine job of showing readers the nature, history and landscape of Bhutan, as well as taking us to remote villages and monasteries (including an encounter with a "shit-faced" shaman who is plainly intoxicated when he comes to bless the group in a remote village). He is equally open about what is essentially a personal search for meaning.

As such, Beneath Blossom Rain combines the best of two other recently released works. Noted travel author Colin Thubron's To a Mountain in Tibet is somewhat more heavily philosophical account of his pilgrimage trek from Nepal to a Himalayan mountain in remote western Tibet. A search for meaning and an account of life in Bhutan, a country that actually measures Gross National Happiness and limits the number of tourists, is the focus of Lisa Napoli's Radio Shangri-La: What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth. Napoli's story, though, is set in Bhutan's capital and largest city, not Himalayan treks.

Two concepts help drive Grange on the trek. One is the western idea of Shangri-La. A friend who completed the Snowman Trek described a high-altitude village in a valley in remotest northern Bhutan as "the most beautiful, most mysterious and most otherworldly place I've ever been." It becomes Grange's personal idea of Shangri-La and motivates him along the trek. The other is a Tibetan and Bhutanese concept that inspired the book's title. In local folklore, an auspicious superstition surrounds blossom rain, the moment of rainbow light when it is raining and sunny at the same time. Bhutanese he asks about blossom rain provide no better than enigmatic answers about its significance and his desire to grasp the concept also animates his efforts. Beneath Blossom Rain becomes as much a journal of an internal trek as a Himalayan one, a tale in which we are even privy to Grange's ongoing debate with his "inner critic." We also learn with Grange that enlightenment may not always come in places or events we would suspect.

Grange occasionally falls into a few clichés ("like home, sleep felt far away") and platitudes ("A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"). Additionally, some of the conversations with his fellow trekkers and guides seem somewhat artificial, designed more to convey basic information to the reader that someone on the trek would already know. Still, Grange brings a light touch of humor and direct, conversational tone that outweighs these occasional foibles. More important, Beneath Blossom Rain succeeds in merging travelogue with personal contemplation, allowing the armchair traveler to share both the physical and personal journey and taking them beyond a geographic place to a more philosophical one.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie.)… (mais)