Mountains and Streams by Robert Wunner
a backcountry memoir.
About the book
This is a collection of reflections, trail descriptions, natural history and cultural histories based on notes that Bob took during his many backpacking trips in the mountains of northwestern California, mostly between 1995 and 2005. He often did research after a trip to learn more about the human history of where he’d been. He began hiking as a child with his father and brothers in the Marin hills, and later in the high Sierra. The summer after he turned 21, he solo hiked the John Muir Trail between Mt. Whitney and Yosemite, roughly 200 miles. Academic studies in botany led to work doing rare plant surveys, mostly for the U.S. Forest Service, that required camping out in all kinds of weather. I met Bob during huckleberry season, October 2000, and we went in search of huckleberry patches. Our first camping trip took place in an early November rainstorm. Bob could start a fire in any weather condition, even in a snowstorm.
By the time we met he had lost one of his hiking buddies, Eli, to lymphoma. Not long after we met, his friend Charlie Page was killed in a tragic, freak accident at work. Bob was running out of backpacking buddies. I had a desire to learn how to snow camp, and someone had directed me to Bob. He was a great teacher, and we became close backpacking partners. These writings are not a hiking guide, nor by any means a complete natural history to the region, but the collection of stories might be useful to students and those interested in getting to know the glorious backcountry that surrounds the north coast of California, from the Lost Coast to the Siskiyou, and east through the Klamath and Trinity River watersheds to Mt. Shasta.
