During her days as a park ranger, Lucia Perillo loved nothing more than to brave the Cascade Mountains alone, taking special pride in her daring solo skis down the raw, unpatrolled slopes of Mount Rainier. Then, in her thirties, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. In "I've Heard the Vultures Singing," Perillo confronts, in stark but funny terms, the ironies of being someone with her history and gusto for life being suddenly unable to walk. ("Ground-truthing" is what biologists call entering an environment and surveying what is there via the senses of sight and sound.) These essays explore what it7;s like to experience desire as a sick person, how to lower one7;s expectations just enough for a wilderness experience, and how to navigate the vagaries of a disease that has no predictable trajectory. "I've Heard the Vultures Singing" records in unflinching, honest prose one woman7;s struggle to find her place in a difficult new world.