Lyndel Meikle, a Montana native, spent thirty-nine years at Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site in an ever-evolving job which included giving tours of the historic mansion, reaching into a cow to straighten out the leg of its emerging calf (hint: take your ring off first), and doing road patrol in Yellowstone National Park during the infamous Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Perhaps her most important discovery was that you don't have to be just one thing in life. At work or out of it-climbing up a granite wall; working in Montana, Georgia, Vietnam, and Texas; teaching a high school blacksmithing class; poring over documents in an historical archive; or learning the prison art of horsehair hitching-she found a great world to explore. And it's still out there. Accidental Ranger leads the reader through a sometimes bewildering tale of forty-three years as a national park ranger. And along the way, an improbable cast of characters emerges.