Meet the Author With Christopher Barns

Lifelong wilderness expert Christopher Barns will join us to talk about his new book, Mesa Verde’s Secret Garden. Christopher Barns retired from the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center in 2015. He was the lead author of the Bureau of Land Management’s 2012 Wilderness and Wilderness Study Area policies as well as a coauthor of many reports and law journal articles on wilderness management.

Mesa Verde’s Secret Garden is an authoritative history of Mesa Verde National Park’s management. The book utilizes
unpublished primary sources from the park’s archives—including internal memos, public reports, interviews, and
anonymous marginalia—and contextualizes them in the evolving (and often conflicting) federal and local priorities for
wilderness, conservation, and the national parks. The result of this painstaking research is a fascinating chronicle of national-park administration and development over a nearly 120-year history that provides unique insights into the people
and protocols that have shaped the very landscape of Mesa Verde.

We’ll have copies of Christopher’s book available for sale in store!