Few people have the opportunity to live and work in America's magnificent national parks, let alone in a wide diversity of those great parks. For thirty-two years, beginning when he was hired as a seasonal ranger until he retired in 1989, Roland H. Wauer's career took him to eight national parks, a regional office in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Chief of the Division of Natural Resources in Washington, DC.

In an “inside-out” look at his career, Wauer takes the reader on a wildlife adventure through a number of those parks, documenting his experiences with the birds and other animals in each one. An avid birder, he made significant contributions to what was known about the bird population, and avian habitats and worked on a number of research projects involving mammals, reptiles and amphibians, fishes, invertebrates, and other wildlife species.

Follow along with Wauer as he recalls flying squirrels, great gray owls, and Clark's nutcrakers at Crater Lake; Nelson's bighorns, prairie falcons, LeConte's thrashers, and sidewinders at Death Valley; flammulated and spotted owls at Zion; and mountain lions, jevalinas, pergergine falcons, cave swallows, and Colima warblers at Big Bend.