The inner workings of any business can be fascinating. When it’s a national park, well, you are definitely going to have my attention.

I’ve ready plenty of adventure, outdoor and travel books. But this was different.

Across Yosemite’s Wilderness: A Trailblazing Woman’s Career Protecting the Park’s Backcountry (Falcon, 2025) by Laurel Munson Boyers is all of those things, plus an insider’s view of Yosemite National Park and then some.

Boyers was the first woman to do full-time mounted backcountry patrol and was the park’s first female wilderness manager. Those firsts make her story worth knowing.

The book is part memoir and travelogue. Boyers was born in the park and then spent more than 30 years working there. She takes us to parts of the park most of us will never see.

Her love of the park is undeniable. So is her worry about the balance of having people enjoy public lands while at the same time preserving them. It’s a dilemma most land managers wrestle with.

Artwork by her brother, Lex Munson, brings an added depth to the book.