BY KAREN BOSSICK
As a girl growing up in Ketchum during the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, Dana Quinney found magic in the wilds.
It ignited a passion in her that led to a career in field biology.
Now she’s penned her memories about traipsing through hillsides covered with buttercups, watching beaver in beaver ponds and exploring old mines in the memoir “Wildflower Girl—A Lifelong Journey Beyond the Trail.”
The book covers what Quinney calls “the four hills of Ketchum,” as well as “the ghosts of North Fork.”
It recounts attending school at Ketchum Grade School and Hailey High just before it became Wood River High, the founding of Ketchum’s library, The Gold Mine, the time she counted eyelashes on a fearless pronghorn doe and how her father plowed Corral Creek Road so Hollywood filmmakers could film a scene for “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”
The movie, named one of the best American musical films ever made by the American Film Institute, won one Academy Award and was nominated for four more.
Quinney will read from her new autobiography “Wildflower Girl—A Lifelong journey Beyond the Trail” at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 3, at the Hailey Public Library. The reading is free.
“If you ask most people if they know the current phase of the moon, what plants once grew wild where their home now stands, what forces shaped the landscape outside their windows, what creatures scurry through the nearby grass, would they know?” she asks. “This book is a small celebration of the richness and magic that such knowledge can bring to anyone who reaches.”
Quinney went on to become a scientific illustrator and then a field biologist, leading college expeditions to remote spots of the globe.
She also served as the biologist for the Idaho Army National Guard for more than 20 years, restoring burned areas to native plants, caring for rare species and publishing studies in scientific journals.