I Married a Ranger

Smith, Dama Margaret, 1892-1973Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.3

Word count: 265K words
Chapters: 27

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.I Married a Ranger by Dama Margaret SmithAuthor: Smith, Dama Margaret, 1892-1973,Language: English, Class: F786: United States local history: New Southwest. Colorado River, Canyon, and Valley, Release Date: Jun 8, 2006

Editor's review

This is a collection of essays by Dama Margaret Smith recalling her life with her ranger husband in the American Southwest. The title is plain, and the content has a lived-in quality: the author records daily life in national parks and wilderness reserves from a first-hand perspective, including patrol work, remote dwellings, natural scenery, and visiting tourists. Its readability comes from the relaxed first-person tone and abundant everyday detail, showing readers the trivialities and hardships behind the ranger family's grand landscapes. As a sidelight on early twentieth-century Southwestern local history and park management history, the book has some reference value for understanding how national parks operated at the time and the character of the Southwest. A caution: the author's descriptions of nature and place carry a personal filter and should not be taken as objective geography. It suits leisure reading and readers interested in the history of American national parks.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Leisure readers who enjoy essays on the American West and natural life
Those interested in the early history of American national parks
Readers who want to learn about rangers' daily work and family life
Travel-literature fans who prefer relaxed first-person narrative

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking rigorous geography or academic works on park management
Novel readers expecting tight plotting and strong dramatic conflict
Readers entirely unfamiliar with the American Southwest who are unwilling to do background reading

Reading tips

Read it as life essays in sections; there is no need to pursue a continuous plot, as each piece stands on its own.
A brief acquaintance with the U.S. national park system and Southwestern geography before reading will help you appreciate the scenes.
Note the everyday details in the author's writing; they reflect ranger life of the time more than the landscape descriptions do.
Compare with modern writing on national parks to sense changes in management and ways of life.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book an adventure story?

No. It is closer to life essays, recording the author's daily life accompanying her ranger husband in the Southwest, including patrols, dwellings, and dealings with visitors. Adventure is not the focus; expectations should be set on life observations.

Do I need to know about American national parks first?

A basic understanding helps. Knowing roughly how national parks and the ranger system work aids comprehension of the work scenes and place names in the book; complete unfamiliarity does not prevent leisure reading, though the experience will be shallower.

Is it suitable as a guidebook before traveling?

Not really as a practical guide. The book is a memoir of life in earlier years, and transportation, facilities, and rules have all changed; it can serve as background reading to add interest, but specific itinerary information should come from current sources.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Smith, Dama Margaret, 1892-1973 Author · American · 1892–1973

Dama Margaret Smith (1892–1973) was an American writer known for her books on life and landscape in the American Southwest, especially the Grand Canyon area of Arizona. Two of her works are held here: the memoir I Married a Ranger, a first-person account of daily life with her ranger husband in a remote reserve, and Petrified Forest National Monument, Arizona, which turns to a specific protected natural site. Drawing on her own experience of wilderness life, her writing is plain and warmly personal, blending narrative with local knowledge and offering general readers a vivid picture of national parks and reserves in their early years. Beyond this, public information about her life and work is limited.