2024 Indiana Authors Awards, Debut Shortlist   2024 Nautilus Book Awards , Silver Winner, Memoir & Personal Journey / Essays   2023 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards , Finalist, Travel and Essays Jeff Darren Muse is a fatherless, childless Hoosier who wouldn't and couldn't stay put. Part Generation X travelogue, part love letter, part reflection on White male identity,  Dear Park Ranger  searches for purpose, companionship, a lost father, and home. Muse must break trail to find his way. From the farms and football fields of central Indiana, to snowy West Coast wildlands, from desert canyons, to meandering rivers, to a city built by slavery, he interrogates his younger years shaped by insecurity and wanderlust, as well as later choices such as marrying "Ranger Paula" and pursuing a tree hugger's career. At turns humorous and self-deprecating, redemptive and resolute, this is one man's stirring gut check through inner and outer terrain. "An evocative consideration of the dualities of beauty and pain found both in nature and ourselves." - Kirkus Reviews "[T]his whole book is a lesson in leaning in—into the natural world, yes, but also into what's going on in our own hearts as we figure out who we want to be in this world, how we want to love, and what we want to leave behind." - River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative "Muse is my kind of writer. A wanderer, a searcher, a Southern Western Hoosier, a son of a difficult father, and a displaced man with a deep sense of place." - DAVID GESSNER , author of All the Wild That Remains "Muse contemplates the widest breadth of passions ... place and race, wildness and domesticity, depression and elation. These essays are graceful and full of grace, pure pleasure to read." - ANA MARIA SPAGNA , author of Uplake "Anyone who has searched for meaning in an uprooted life, weathered the storms of a long marriage, or rejoiced in untamed nature, will recognize a kindred soul." - SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS , author of The Way of Imagination "Muse has given us a fantastic book—moving, humble, thought-provoking, and humorous. I was swept along with [his] interrogation of memories and meanings." - IRIS GRAVILLE , author of Hiking Naked "Love, loss, landscape, regret, forgiveness, and the vagaries of time—Muse reckons with it all here, in essays that make you want to hit the trail with someone you cherish." - JOE WILKINS , author of Fall Back Down When I Die "For Muse, loving the land was the easy part of growing up. It was his mother's steadfast belief in him that gave him the strength to survive the rest, while her love fostered in him the ability to love his dear park ranger so deeply. It is a pleasure to read this quiet tribute to strong women." - KATHRYN WILDER , author of Desert Chrome "In this wondrous book you'll come upon an old friend—honest and true, not unhurt, hopelessly in love with the land." - TED O'CONNELL , author of K: A Novel "Gorgeous sentences add up here to more than the sum of their parts, creating a whole that will linger for lucky readers." - SONYA HUBER , author of Pain Woman Takes Your Keys "Muse may be restless, childless, fatherless, but he is not rootless, and this brave book helps to root him, anchor him. As it was for the great writers who are his heroes, essaying is the means by which Muse gathers and ponders the things that make him himself. That make us ourselves." - BOB COWSER JR. , author of Green Fields About the Author From crawdad creeks and public wildlands to college classrooms and prison gardens, Jeff Darren Muse has worked throughout the United States as an environmental educator, historical interpreter, and park ranger. As a writer, he is inspired by Brian Doyle's dictum: "The essay is a jackdaw, a magpie, a raven. It picks up everything and uses it." He has published in Ascent , The Common , High Country News , and River Teeth , among others. Today, while working seasonally as a wilderness ranger in northern New Mexico, Muse lives with his wife where the aspen-studded Sangre de Cristo Mountains tumble into Santa Fe. In his award-winning memoir,  Dear Park Ranger , Jeff Darren Muse writes: "You will not care for what you do not know. Start now. Start knowing it." From crawdad creeks and public wildlands to college classrooms and prison gardens, he has worked throughout the United States as an environmental educator, historical interpreter, and park ranger. Born and raised in Indiana, Muse graduated from Mt. Vernon High School in 1987 and DePauw University in 1991. With master's degrees in science and creative writing, he has been employed by numerous agencies, public universities, and nonprofit organizations, from McLeod Plantation Historic Site and Zion National Park, to The Evergreen State College and University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, to Hudson River Sloop Clearwater and North Cascades Institute. Be it north, south, east, or west, he embodies the Crossroads of America.