Before the 1970s few women were employed by the U.S. Forest Service. During the 1960s and 70s new environmental and fair employment laws meant that the agency began to hire talented women in professional careers. For the first time women began working as wildlife biologists, geologists, soil scientists, and fisheries biologists for the Forest Service. A Hunger for High Country is the story of one of these women. Set in the national forests surrounding Yellowstone National Park, A Hunger for High Country is part memoir and part profile of a time and place. Susan Marsh finds her background and values often put her at odds with the agency she works for, and what was supposed to be her dream job in Montana ends in sorrow and frustration after a six year long struggle to fit in. Humbled by her failures, and the part she played in her own downfall, she begins again in the mountains of western Wyoming where she finds refuge and inspiration in nature. Susan Marsh shares with us not only a vivid portrait of what being a professional woman in a land management agency was like during this time period, but also of the Forest Service itself. Encounters with wolves and grizzly bears, outlaws and renegade lawmen, and moments of beauty inspired by wonder in wild country become the scenes through which Marsh’s palpable appreciation for nature are fully rendered on the page. A Hunger for High Country will appeal to anyone interested in the Forest Service, wild land conservation, Yellowstone, and women’s experiences in the West. Susan Marsh, author of A Hunger for High Country, recalls: "Montana had long glowed like a votive in my heart." In a poignant beginning to her memoir, Marsh describes dropping to her knees and forearms, "forehead pressed into the soft, forgiving earth, clutching tufts of alpine rush as if their wiry strength would hold me" as she mourns her impending exit from the Gallatin National Forest in 1988. This is a taste of the rhythmic, lilting, and often poetic language Marsh uses to describe her thirty-year career with the U.S. Forest Service. ---Donna Sinclair, Portland State University A wilderness memoir set in the mountains surrounding Yellowstone National Park, a story of personal quest and a portrait of conservation of a changing place. I wrote this book to describe how people were treated and how the land was managed. Not as the crown jewel of the national forest system, with six major mountain ranges and legendary trout rivers on the northern border of Yellowstone National Park, but as just another "multiple-use" forest that could have been anywhere. Trees were seen as crops.A living forest was called "standing volume."   Having held jobs in support of the timber program in Washington and Oregon, this was not a new concept to me, but somehow it didn't seem to apply in a place of low rainfall and high elevation and spectacular mountain scenery. Visiting foresters from the west slope of the Rockies found reasons to chuckle over what was included in the Gallatin National Forest timber base."Hell," one old forester from the neighboring Beaverhead National Forest said."They'll have to load those pecker poles with a pitchfork."   Ultimately, A Hunger for High Country isn't just about people like me who struggled to fit in. It's a portrait of the Forest Service, but not in the sense of airing a bunch of dirty laundry--in the end, I defend the agency. I also mean the book to be a portrait the wonderful wild places found at the headwaters of the continent and the world's first national park. I hope to illuminate the value of the national forests that we are so fortunate to share and to relate my own story in terms of how these precious forests helped heal my spirit and transform me--from an angry, resentful person to one who is magnanimous and grateful for the experiences, good and bad, that have taught me how to live. Before the1970's, very few women were working for the United States Forest Service.However, because of new environmental and fair employment laws, Susan Marsh was hired on to the U.S. Forest Service around Yellowstone National Park. This was the first time women were being hired in the U.S. Forest Service as geologists,scientists, and biologists. Yet, what was thought to be her dream job became six years of frustration due to her inability to fit in, leading her to begin again in the mountains of western Wyoming. Before the 1970s few women were employed by the United States Forest Service. During the 1960s and 70s new environmental and fair employment laws meant that the Forest Service began to hire talented women in professional careers. For the first time women began working as wildlife biologists, geologists, soil scientists, and fisheries biologists for the U.S. Forest Service. A Hunger for High Country is the story of one of these women. Set in the national forests surrounding Yellowstone National Park, A Hunger for High Country is part memoir and part profile of a