Murry Taylor
My blogs
| Introduction | Raised on a farm in Central California, Murry Taylor went to the mountains as soon as he was old enough to work there. After six summers working on timber stand improvement crews and marking timber for logging, he graduated from Humboldt State College with a degree in forestry. As a professional forester for the U.S. Forest Service, he pioneered the first Wilderness Management plan in the nation that set limits on human occupancy. At odds with the agency over its clear-cut logging policies, he quit in 1972 and returned to his first love, parachuting to wildfires. After a twenty-seven year career as a smokejumper in all eight western states and Alaska, he retired as the oldest active jumper to ever do the job. In 2000, his last summer, Harcourt published Jumping Fire: A Smokejumper's Memoir of Fighting Wildfire. His latest novel The Rhythm of Leaves was published in March 2011. He continues to write and practice labor intensive management on his 40 acre homestead in Northern California. |
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