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.”
Author photos
