Banff National Park is in crisis, its managers quarelling, its field staff demoralized, its biodiversity in decline. In the headlines, environmentalists scrap with developers and with the bureaucrats sympathetic to them. Deep in the backcountry, mountaineer and map dreamer, Gregory Phillips, explores the ancient front range landscape. There, the paths of the mountaineer, bears, park wardens, wranglers, wolves, and spirit prospectors intertwine. And there, Phillips discovers a misguided plan to give away the wilderness heart of the park.