Fate Is A Mountain

By Mark W. Parratt

Book Overview

Parratt's family summered at the Sun Camp Ranger Station on Saint Mary Lake in the 1950s and 1960s. Their story covers the glory days of living and working in America's Crown Jewel, Glacier National... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0615229875
• ISBN13: 9780615229874
• Release Date: May 2009
• Publisher: Sun Point Press
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Have been looking

i was thrilled when I came across this book with Smitty Parratt!!!! i went to school with Smitty and remember vividly the day we were told that Smitty was in the hospital, that he had been attacked by a bear while on vacation. When he was well enough, went to visit him a couple of times. All of us kids were thrilled when he finally made it back to school! Smitty, if you read this, I hope you are well. You have always been a force in my life, to how brave you were and are! Life is Good!

Same childhood, different places

I also grew up in Glacier National Park. My parents took us there in the summer of 1960 to a place called Many Glacier, a place far removed from the Little League baseball fields in Oregon that I longed to be on. However, I found a place of mystery, beauty and adventure that only a 10-year-old can truly appreciate. After reading Mark Parratt's book, I was instantly transported back to those days when I ran around Glacier, totally without adult supervision, and lived to tell about it. I remember Mark quite vividly from those days; he was the Fire Marshall, in charge of the Fire Cache at the Many Glacier Ranger Station and someone who I looked up to as a role model. Mark's book is filled with the type of stories that a 10 or 11-year-old boy from that point in time, can relate to. I seriously doubt that this story could happen now in this day and age of electronic media and instant gratification. We had to make our own fun, find our own games to make-up and play. And most importantly, we had to use our minds and imagination. I could relate to every story Mark told of his adventures with his brothers as I did pretty much the same with my brother and sister. I highly recomment this book for any "baby-boomer" who wishes to relive the past for a while, but I also recommend those same people give this book to their grandkids as an example of the kind of adventure that money can't buy.

Fate is a Mountain

Beautifully written. Enjoyed the input/views of Mark Parratt's brothers. They really gave you a different perspectice on the story.

Marvelous Back Country Stories

Mark, Monty and Smitty Parratt had a big back yard between 1950 and 1964, the million-acre Crown of the Continent in northwestern Montana called Glacier National Park. The boys' father, the late Lloyd Parratt and his wife Grace brought the family to the shores of the park's St, Mary Lake every summer where Lloyd worked as a seasonal ranger naturalist for the National Park Service. Later, Mark Parratt served as a fireguard and the late Monty Parratt worked on a Blister Rust crew. Since Mark and Monty were avid fishermen, the book includes many great fishing stories along with climbing and hiking adventures, the trials and tribulations of living in a remote cabin accessible only by rail, a stormy night in a fire lookout, canoeing on a rough St. Mary Lake, and encounters with wildlife. For local residents, these stories will bring back old memories; for park visitors, the delightful exploits of three young men in their coming-of-age years will cast the trails, lakes and mountains along the back bone of the world into a deeper perspective. Comments appended to some of the stories note how the park has changed over the years. The harrowing centerpiece to the book is "The Otokomi Grizzly Bear Attack" of July 18, 1960. Ten-year-old Smitty Parratt was badly mauled by a grizzly bear as he returned from a fishing trip to Lake Otokomi with two ranger naturalists and two tourists. The story of the attack, the injuries, the rescue and the aftermath demonstrates courage, resourcefulness and grit while serving as a cautionary reminder that wild places are wild. The "Fate is a Mountain" (June 1962) and "Lone Climber Missing" (July 1963) stories describe mountain search and rescue operations at Mt. Henkel near Many Glacier Hotel and at Going-to-the-Sun Mountain in the St. Mary Valley. Search-team members routinely place themselves in harm's way while looking for missing climbers, as Parratt describes in a late-night moment on the slopes of Mt. Henkel: "Suddenly, a tremendous crash echoed from above. Instinctively, we all dove into crouching positions next to a nearby cliff face. A shower of lose scree was rapidly followed by a thunder of large bounders that careened over our heads and plummeted toward the valley below. Smaller pieces of snow and rock pelted our hard hats for several moments." Compiling these stories was obviously a labor of love and of remembering bygone days where a family's life intersects the world of a beloved tourist destination and wildlife preserve. If there's an omission here, it's the lack of a story about the Montana flood of June, 1964, quite possibly the state's worst natural disaster, that caused extensive damage to roads and facilities throughout the park including those at St. Mary. The book provides a rich, insider's look at the world of Glacier National Park as it was over 40 forty years ago. As the park approaches its 2010 centennial, these stories as part of its history add to our understanding of the place and the peop