Book: The Back Road to Crazy

The Back Road to Crazy

Stories From The Field

By Jennifer Bové (University of Utah Press, 2005)

Strap on your snake chaps and slap on some sunscreen as biologist Jennifer Bové takes you out to the field in the company of biologists working in wildlife studies, botany, and resource management. This exuberant and entertaining collection of stories ranges from Myanmar to the Midwest, from Argentina to Alaska and many points in between, offering tales that are by turns thoughtful, funny, tragic, and just-plain-crazy! Authors include National Geographic photographer Mark W. Moffett, World Wildlife Fund Chief Scientist Eric Dinerstein, and pioneer female biologist Barbara B. DeWolfe.

Here's an excerpt...

“Running the Wind”

By Jennifer Bové

The Wind River is cold. Not the kind of cold that begs a swim on a scorching summer afternoon (there are relatively few of those in the Pacific Northwest), but the kind of cold that seeps down the neck of your wetsuit and freezes the very fluid in your spine. The waters of the Wind course from high, quiet places in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest where the snow pack doesn’t melt until well into June. Crystals of ice succumb reluctantly to thaw and dribble through cushions of moss into rivulets that quench creek beds and thirsty mainstem tributaries like Paradise, Dry, Trapper, Panther, and Trout Creeks. This aggregation of icy water brings with it tiny particulate hints of summer’s emergence in the high country and welcomes spawning summer Steelhead into the Wind. Even on a bright morning in August, the water sank needle sharp teeth into my skin, but my anticipation didn't falter. I couldn't wait to slip into the wide, turbulent pool at the base of Shipherd Falls and start snorkel surveying for Steelhead.

I looked over at two of my teammates who were kneeling at the water's edge. Becca smiled a silly frog-faced grin at me beneath the snug rim of her dive mask, and Nate stuck his thumb in the air. I knew they were itching to get started as badly as I was. Landy, however, was still maneuvering over the wet rocks on the bank, clutching a snorkel in one paw and balancing with the other...

Reviews for The Back Road to Crazy:

"The Back Road to Crazy is an entertaining and enlightening buffet of firsthand anecdotes about conservation fieldwork. It's all here: drama, adventure, toil, tedium, tears, laughter, mystery, terror, wonder, and ecological insight throughout. Overall, The Back Road to Crazy is a colorful path to wisdom." - Chip Ward, author of Hope's Horizon: Three Visions for Healing the American Land

“Jennifer Bové — a seasoned field biologist who has wagered her own life against slippery rocks, idiotic field assistants and a territorial cougar in order to get good data — has pulled together the accounts of more than 25 field biologists with a knack for storytelling. They recount often grueling but always memorable field escapades, including marmot chases, snake bites, sprained ankles and skin-searing temperatures. These writers and poets may seem crazy, but if they didn’t put their die-hard concern for animals over their own well-being, the imperiled creatures that still roam the earth would be in far worse shape than they already are.” - Hilary Watts, High Country News

"Much romanticized and therefore misunderstood, conservation fieldwork is brought down to earth in this piquant collection of essays. Bove has compiled inspiring, trying, sometimes tragic, and often disgusting tales from field researchers who work to preserve natural habitats around the world. Definitely to be read outdoors, wearing boots, with the smell of skunk lingering in the air." - Jessica Coulter, Utne Magazine