Fotografía de autor
5 Obras 388 Miembros 26 Reseñas

Sobre El Autor

Andrea Lankford is a former national park ranger and the author of four books, including Haunted Hikes: Spine-Tingling Tales and Trails from North America's National Parks, which was featured in USA Today, chosen by People as a 2006 Travel Pick, and described by Newsday as "spell-binding." Her mostrar más articles have appeared in Paddler, Arizona Highways, and Backpacker. She lives in the Sierra foothills of California. mostrar menos

Obras de Andrea Lankford

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Género
female
Nacionalidad
USA
Educación
University of Tennessee (Forestry/Wildlife Management)
Ocupaciones
Naturalist
Zookeeper
National Park Service Ranger
Biografía breve
During high school Andrea’s career goals were vague. But she knew she wanted to work outdoors, ideally in a job protecting wildlife. So she enrolled in a Forestry/Wildlife Management program at the University of Tennessee.

During her summer breaks she worked as a naturalist for the Tennessee State Parks and volunteered for the U.S. Forest Service in North Carolina. She had experience as a zookeeper and contemplated becoming a veterinarian. Alas, when Andrea graduated in 1986, her education and experiences did not make her resume a valuable commodity.

Then a boyfriend invited her to take a class with him, a six-week course for people wanting to be law enforcement rangers for the National Park Service. At the time, Andrea (or “Andy” as her friends know her) was an honors graduate who bagged groceries for a living. Learning how to drive fast, shoot guns and handcuff people sounded like fun. She was flattered when a district ranger offered her a summer job before she had finished the academy.

At first living and working in the biggest, busiest parks in the world, including Cape Hatteras, Zion, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon, was the best job in the world. But along the way something went horribly out of whack. In due time this park ranger flipped out, threw her government benefits to the wind and became a walkaholic.

Two years later, Andrea had traveled nearly 4,000 miles by her own power. She thru-hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, kayaked from Miami to Key West, cycled from Fairbanks to the Arctic Ocean and became the first to mountain bike the entire Arizona Trail from Utah to Mexico.

Andrea published stories about her adventures in newspapers, magazine articles, and two trail guides, Biking the Arizona Trail and Biking the Grand Canyon Area. In 2006, Andrea found a creative outlet for her peculiar, love-hate relationship with Nature’s dark side through her critically acclaimed book Haunted Hikes: Spine-tingling Tales and Trails from North America’s National Parks.

Ranger Confidential: Living, Working and Dying in the National Parks is Andrea’s fourth book. Although it is a fast read Ranger Confidential was a bear of a book to write. These real stories behind the scenery are the result of eight years of taped interviews, diligent research, writing, rewriting and more rewriting.

Andrea is bored by Nature-is-good: People-are-bad rhetoric. She has seen how scenery can be as cruel as it is redemptive and believes that denying Nature any culpability in the humanity versus the environment “conflict” is a luxury only youth and dilettantes should enjoy. As Melville expressed in Moby Dick, “...unless you own the whale, you are a provincial and sentimentalist in Truth.” (From the author's website: www.andrealankford.com)

Miembros

Reseñas

Trail of the Lost is a compulsively readable narrative about the search efforts undertaken to help find three hikers who went missing along the Pacific Crest Trail in 2016/2017. The author, a previous park ranger and currently a nurse, becomes involved in the search efforts and this book is a product of that time.

The author is definitely a talented writer. I wouldn't have been surprised if she had previously been a journalist. The narrative of the book is exceptional, the book was hard to put down, and the author treated her subjects very compassionately, all things I appreciated.

I also appreciated the takedown of the obviously pseudo-scientific idiot who was peddling some expensive horsesh*t to families desperate to find their loved ones. (LPT: any time somebody uses a vaguely worded explanation including the phrase "quantum physics," run far, far away from them.) There is also a psychic involved in the process, and the author explained that while they can't typically solve anything (except by chance), they may be able to reveal clues that other people miss.

Basically, this book was realistic. Nobody just overturned a leaf and magically found something obvious. The process of finding somebody who has been lost for months or even years in an extremely vast trail system is not like what we see on TV or in the movies. It truly is like searching for a needle in a haystack.

I appreciated the explanation of the process. How seemingly small clues about personality or gear can uncover leads. The enormous number of interviews that occurred. I was also fascinated by the people who misled the searchers (either intentionally or not), some in ways that may have seriously derailed active investigations.

At some point while reading this book, I thought to myself "if I get through this whole book and they don't find any of the three hikers, I'm going to be seriously annoyed." But by the end of the book (and even as of the time of me writing this review), none of them have been found. I wasn't seriously annoyed though, as the book didn't really need to rely on finding the missing hikers to come to a satisfying (for this reader, at least), albeit sad, conclusion.

The author really made me think about the process of coming to terms with somebody simply vanishing. When do you let go? When do you decide that you can't keep putting other people's lives at risk to search for somebody who is most likely dead? How can you find closure in your life?

At the end, the author and others certainly have helped to raise awareness about being locatable. With the advent of smart phones and satellite GPS trackers, it seems amazing that people can still go missing today, but they do. And what they have learned in the process of searching for the missing three PCT hikers has led to their ability to more easily recover the remains of missing hikers today.


For me, this book goes no higher than 3.5 stars even though I generally enjoyed the narrative due to the fact that the three hikers' stories are interwoven to such a degree that it became hard for me to follow each one individually. The author also uses her narrative prowess to sometimes intentionally mislead the reader about finding big clues, only to reveal that it was related to a different search and rescue case.
… (más)
½
 
Denunciada
lemontwist | 10 reseñas más. | Feb 25, 2024 |
Finished this book feeling unsatisfied but that is due to the cases themselves being unsatisfying. You want an ending to have resolution but since this is true crime and not fiction that is not aways possible. The book did present a different perspective of the PCT by acknowledging what a dangerous place the trail can be and I appreciated that. Something that really stuck with me is from the acknowledgements section where Lankford confides that she is afraid this book will scare people and Cathy responded, “‘Maybe it should’” (322). Lankford is a realist that prefers “cold facts over warm sentiments” (171) and her tone can come across as too matter of fact at times. However, her dedication to the PCT Missing is redeeming and you can tell she genuinely cares about these cases. I hope closure will be brought to these families some day.… (más)
 
Denunciada
lilygarcia | 10 reseñas más. | Feb 18, 2024 |
Author Andrea Lankford worked for many years as a search and rescue expert for the National Park Service before burning out and returning to school to become a nurse, but she still consults on cases from time to time. One such case leads her to a trio of missing hikers from the Pacific Crest Trail, and Trail of the Lost chronicles her journey as she and her small group of search friends meet, hike, post on social media, and a million other things in their attempt to find the missing hikers. The writing is uneven at times, and details of the three missing young men often get confusing as the stories intertwine, but overall a very interesting story for readers of nonfiction, nature, or true crime stories.… (más)
 
Denunciada
Hccpsk | 10 reseñas más. | Feb 13, 2024 |
Andrea Lankford was a park ranger and first responder, who lead many rescue missions, tracking down missing hikers through our National Parks. She left the force and became a nurse but was drawn back into the mysteries of several missing hikers that disappeared on the PCT, (Pacific Crest Trail). With bulldog determination, she begins to piece these stories together, discovering some disturbing revelations along the way. This true-adventure story is a marvel and it definitely helps that Lankford is also a gifted writer. She is a new hero of mine. Highly recommended.… (más)
 
Denunciada
msf59 | 10 reseñas más. | Feb 9, 2024 |

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Obras
5
Miembros
388
Popularidad
#62,338
Valoración
½ 3.7
Reseñas
26
ISBNs
16

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