Wild Rescuesis a fast-paced, firsthand glimpse into the exciting lives of paramedics who work with the National Park Service: a unique brand of park rangers who respond to medical and traumatic emergencies in some of the most isolated and rugged parts of America. In 2014, Kevin Grange left his job as a paramedic in Los Angeles to work in a response area with 2.2 million acres: Yellowstone National Park. Seeking a break from city life and urban EMS, he wanted to experience pure nature, fulfill his dream of working for the National Park Service, and take a crash-course in wilderness medicine. Between calls, Grange reflects upon the democratic ideal of the National Park mission, the beauty of the land, and the many threats facing it. With visitation rising, budgets shrinking, and people loving our parks to death, he realized that—along with the health of his patients—he was also fighting for the life of “America’s Best Idea.”
“There are thousands of ways to die in the Great Outdoors, but an elite group of park rangers and paramedics mind the gap. One of them has finally brought us their riveting stories of rescue in this quick and interesting book full of drama and real-life heroism.”—Ben Montgomery, author ofGrandma Gatewood’s Walk
“Wild Rescuesis a book you want to read, not be featured in. But if you did have the bad luck to be the subject of one of these entertaining and occasionally scary stories, you’d be eternally grateful for Kevin Grange and his fellow Rangers. A paramedic with more than a decade of experience rescuing people, Grange talks of tumbles, heart attacks, freak storms, wild animals, and suicides in the National Parks with the steady voice of one who’s seen it all, and then some. Whatever the emergency, specially trained National Park Rangers respond again and again in his pages, risking their necks to savel“ˇ