There are many reasons why I keep coming back to Peter Heller books. First of all, he lives in Colorado and endearingly writes about the American West so, of course, I love that. Additionally, his Hemingway tone and short sentences are appealing because a) Hemingway is one of my favorite writers and b) no one seems to be able to write like that anymore. The Last Ranger is the fourth (and my new favorite) Heller book I’ve read and I could not put it down. Similar to the other three (The Painter, Celine, and The River), it features bold descriptions of the West, characters spending time fly fishing, and relatable dialogue. Also, the powerfully observational yet straightforward way Heller writes is one of the most intriguing aspects of the stories he tells. “It was the anger in him that scared him. The more time he spent in Yellowstone, the more he wished that people would just go away, leave the bears, the herds of elk, the foxes, the hawks alone. The wolf packs.” I’m a lover of wolves so when I read this sentence on page nine, I knew the book would be good: “Wolves had never once attacked a human in Yellowstone.” With the recent wolf controversy in Colorado I have reminded people that wolves do not attack people so this hit home. On page 65 that point is reiterated.
In terms of content, Heller always inserts his preference of animals over people, talks about how alcohol ruins lives, and uses “Well” as a full sentence. Those threads are important because it feels like his books, although different, are connected. But Heller’s biggest flex is his ability to write wilderness thrillers with heart – and The Last Ranger is definitely that. Yellowstone ranger Ren Hopper is our protagonist and he is the quintessential local and all-around good guy. He’s also getting a bit weary of tourists acting like assholes and costing animals their lives. And wow do I get that. Living in a mountain resort town entails hearing stories about people leaving their front door open with a Yogi Bear-style pie in the kitchen and then complaining that an actual bear ransacking their house. As a result, the animal is (best case) relocated or (worst case) put down because a human who knows better did something stupid. It gets old. But back to the book.
Hopper cares – about his job, his coworkers, the animals who live in the park, the woman who runs the local coffee shop, the janitor who reminds him of Santa Claus, and the feisty biologist who studies wolves, among others. He knows everyone and everyone likes him but trappers and poachers make his job tougher each day which is exhausting. Hopper also has some inner demons – mostly due to his mother bailing on him when he was a kid and his wife’s horribly tragic illness– that he keeps at bay by fly fishing. Speaking of which, it’s amazing how Heller finds new ways to describe fly fishing in every book. But The Last Ranger is more about wolves that anything or anyone else. Themes of the lone wolf, wolf packs, park boundaries, and what it means to put another creature first are abundant. “If culture is learned behavior passed from one generation to the next, then wolves had culture in spades.” Amen.
Heller clearly has spent time in Montana as he name-checks small Livingston and even smaller Emigrant, and the cast of characters Hopper interacts with on a daily/weekly basis (janitor, bartender, souvenir shopkeeper, etc.) are beyond accurately depicted. We know these people – we see these people. He also accurately describes these towns as feeling “more like a campus or an army base or a movie set.” That is how I describe Minturn! Heller also points out that “in a smaller town, cultural and institutional memories tended to be long.” So true! As in The Last Ranger, there is a lot of talk about private and public land in Colorado. Maybe it has to do with the number of people who moved here post-Covid or maybe it’s people spending too much time watching the show Yellowstone, but everyone seems to think that either they have a right to all land or that no one should have the right to theirs. Sometimes it’s both.
Any outdoor enthusiast will enjoy this book and anyone living in the mountains of Colorado, Montana, or Wyoming will empathize with Hopper. Don’t even get me started on the scene with the little girl and the baby moose. But the overarching themes of the story go beyond wildlife – it is about the family you are born into, the family you choose, learning what to do with the anger that manifests for reasons seemingly beyond your control, and understanding that things and people aren’t always what they seem.
Quotes:
“The chain of command did not at all like making decisions, especially one that carried a smidgen of political risk.”
“He’d been one of those kids who had wished he had a dozen lives to try out.”
“The sky looked scrubbed. The few clouds splayed like empty linens blown off a line.”
“To watch another navigate their life and surmise motives and emotions was a guessing game at best.”
“The stolid business owner still carried the rebelliousness of a teenager.”
“The joy he could never recover with his family he had found with her.”
“Front-porch storytelling is a different art.”
“It was utterly draining, keeping the peace in one remote valley.”
“Nobody thrived on their own. That’s what Ren thought as he watched the rockered slip of a moon rise off the ridge as if on a tide.”
“The daily currency of these recreational biologists was awe.”
“And he – too angry at things he could not name – did not have the words to untangle anything, and so he walked away.”
“Everything looks nice in mid-September.”
“Did the constellations shudder?”
“It was like traveling into the center of a deep wilderness and realizing you already knew the place by heart.”
Fun facts:
A wolf’s nose has 280 million scent receptors compared with a German shepherd’s 225 million.
I knew that wolf reintroduction resulted in a restored natural ecosystem but I didn’t know it had a name. Now I do – it’s called trophic cascade.
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