January 19, 2026 Issue

Pick of the Issue this week is Paige Williams’ absorbing “Call of the Wild.” It’s a portrait of an auxiliary “all hazards” team of elite outdoorsmen who help park rangers at Great Smoky Mountains National Park pull off the most difficult extractions. The team is named BUSAR, for Backcountry Unit Search and Rescue. It was founded by Andrew Harrington. 

Williams describes Great Smoky Mountains Park. She calls it “a Bermuda Triangle of volatile conditions.” She reports, 

Visitors have been known to climb to a high point to watch a sunset, forgetting that they’ll need light to get back down. They don’t think to bring water. They misjudge distances and underestimate the landscape, which isn’t just steep; it’s slippery, snaky, rocky, rooty, humid, buggy, foggy, and misty. Each year in the national park, there are more than a hundred backcountry emergencies.

She profiles Harrington, who is an ardent outdoorsman and homesteader. She says of him,

He ate daylilies, violet greens, chickweed, shepherd’s purse, greenbrier tips, sheep sorrel, thistle stalks. He learned how to make bamboo-pokeweed spring rolls, persimmon ice cream, spicebush muffins, dandelion jelly, pan-fried groundnuts, watercress soup, acorn cookies, roast squirrel glazed with honey and balsamic vinegar. If a wild hog came onto his property, he killed, butchered, and ate it, then freeze-dried the leftovers. He dried stalks of goldenrod and mint on racks.

Williams talks with other members of Team BUSAR. They’re an impressive crew. One of the piece’s most striking passages is a list of their names (and nicknames), together with a line or two on each, indicating their experience and background:

Big Bill is Bill Ivey, a Smokies wildlife ranger and a marine reservist who is six feet six. Jernigan is Jernigator, who, this year, at age fifty-five, left his software career to become a wilderness E.M.T. and a park ranger, the life he’d wanted all along. Captain Morgan is Andrew Morgan, a physician’s assistant and a former member of the Army Special Forces. Superman is Ken Miller, a retired surgeon who serves with nine local, state, and federal SAR organizations but—so goes a joke—assures his wife that he belongs to only one. (Several years ago, when Miller turned eighty, the guys were so excited about throwing him a surprise party that they forgot to invite him.) Lando, Ben Landkammer, grew up in Montana and trains canines. Silkwood, Mark Silkwood, is also ex-Special Forces, and an Army contractor. Cody Watson, BUSAR’s quartermaster, recently retired early from the Air National Guard; he’s an E.M.T., as is John Danner. Zack Copeland, who chairs BUSAR’s board, is a former wildlife biologist turned poultry farmer. Howitzer, Andrew Howe, is a civil engineer and a competitive mountain biker. Kelly Street is a Knoxville lawyer and a former military-intelligence officer. Caleb Edmiston is a chiropractor who, like Herrington, has competed in mixed martial arts. Greg Grieco played football at the University of Tennessee and now runs a nonprofit that rescues bear cubs. Obi-Wad, Jeff Wadley—a pastor, an author, and a former Civil Air Patrol officer who’s been working SAR missions in the Smokies for more than forty-five years—teaches courses on “lost-person behavior” and may be the greatest living expert on airplane crashes in the park. Daz, Andrew Randazzo, started a company that provides continuing education for medical-industry professionals; he did emergency-response work in New York City during the covid-19 outbreak, and near the border of Syria and Turkey after the earthquakes in 2023. Ski is Brian Borkowski, who flies Black Hawk helicopters for the Tennessee Army National Guard.

Williams also vividly describes two rescues that BUSAR successfully carried out.

My favorite part of “Call of the Wild” is the last section, an account of Williams’ experience camping with the BUSARS. Some of them have brought their kids and dogs with them. I relish this passage:

Street built the fire the way Herrington had taught everyone, using tinder, fatwood, and Vaseline-soaked cotton balls, hit with a spark from a ferro rod. Every busarcarries personal fire-starter kits and a twenty-five-pound pack filled with gear: headlamps, extra batteries, survival blanket, chem light, grid reader, pens, hemostatic gauze, trash bag, dry bag, gaiters, gloves, spork, M.R.E.s, flagging tape, two types of tourniquets, HotHands, 550 cord, multi-tool, folding saw, microspikes. Showing me all of this one day, Sharbs held up a small item and told me what Herrington had told him: “This is the best fire starter in the history of man.” It was a Bic lighter.

Williams has a wonderful eye for detail. Consider this delightful passage, for example:

The kids were up at daybreak, congregating beneath the parachute, having already swung on the rope swing, picked on one another, cried a little, and gotten into a cooler of sodas. One was eating sour cream and shredded cheddar for breakfast until a dog slurped it off her plate. Another made a “rifle” out of duct tape and sticks. Two had turned huge dried leaves into “fairy hats.”

“Call of the Wild” is a memorable portrait of an extraordinary group of people. I highly recommend it. 

Postscript: “Call of the Wild” reminded me of another excellent “search and rescue” piece – Nick Paumgarten’s “Life Is Rescues,” a report on Iceland’s sprawling system of emergency-response volunteers, known collectively as Slysavarnafélagið Landsbjörg, or, in English, the Icelandic Association for Search and Rescue—ICE-SAR.