High Country: A Novel

· University of Oklahoma Press
Ebook
368
Pages
Tools

About this ebook

The packer’s business is guiding mule trains into mountains where wagons can’t travel. It’s a life of danger, long days, and low pay. But for those wedded to the wilderness and inaccessible high country, it is the only life there is.

During the Great Depression, young Ty Hardin is sent from his family’s failing Montana ranch to learn from the last of the great packers, Fenton Pardee, legendary in the Montana Rockies for his packing adventures across the Swan Range all the way to the Big Divide. High Country follows Ty through this apprenticeship and into World War II, where he watches trucks and jeeps replace the army’s mules. Wounded and shipped home, Ty recovers by packing into the Montana mountains he loves. After his mentor dies, Ty leaves Montana for the Sierra Nevada—the highest country of all—where he becomes a legend in his own right.

Writing in the tradition of Norman Maclean’s A River Runs through It, Willard Wyman shares techniques of breaking and packing and leading animals into forbidding country, hunting and tracking, and making camp. Wyman brings you so close to the packer’s life you smell the leather, sweat, and oil.
The packer’s business is guiding mule trains into mountains where wagons can’t travel. It’s a life of danger, long days, and low pay. But for those wedded to the wilderness and inaccessible high country, it is the only life there is. During the Great Depression, young Ty Hardin is sent from his ...

Discover more

About the author

Willard Wyman (1930-2014) was a wrangler, guide, and packer in Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Sierra Nevada High Country for over forty years. He taught literature and was a dean of students at both Stanford University and Colby College. He was also Headmaster of The Thacher School.

Willard Wyman (1930-2014) was a wrangler, guide, and packer in Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Sierra Nevada High Country for over forty years. He taught literature and was a dean of students at both Stanford University and Colby College. He was also Headmaster of The Thacher School.

Rate this ebook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.