20060904 High and Low

To satisfy the park service mission of conservation and enjoyment, the National Park Service, an agency of the Department of the Interior, needs people. Visitation to most national parks is seasonal in nature—more people visit Yellowstone in the summer season than in winter while in the Everglades the opposite is true. Thus the need for people fluctuates with the season.

Visitors have the greatest chance of contacting three types of park employees: Maintenance workers cleaning restrooms, park rangers known as “visitor use assistants” operating campgrounds and entrance stations, and park rangers called interpreters staffing visitor centers and leading talks and walks. During the busy season, chances are that park employee will be a seasonal hire.

Seasonal park employees, usually working for three to six months, cling short-term and tenuously to the bottom rung of the organizational ladder. They pay their own travel expenses to a job that may be thousands of miles from home. They receive no health benefits, no retirement benefits, and have no guarantee of a job the following year. They must sign agreements stating that they understand that they may be terminated at any time due to funding shortage or any other reason. An underperforming permanent employee, hired virtually for life, may be placed on a performance improvement plan. A seasonal may be terminated or simply not rehired the following year.

I have been a seasonal park service employee for nine years, being fired twice a year. I have two seasons as a maintenance worker, three as a visitor use assistant [VUA], and thirteen as an interpreter. While I would love to have fringe benefits, I accept the conditions under which I work. Provided I can find work I have the freedom to move around the country every few months visiting some of our nation’s most amazing places and meeting interesting and sometimes powerful people from around the world.

In the summer of 2001 President George Bush visited Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. There to announce a funding commitment to improve service-wide deteriorated infrastructure, he addressed a live audience of park employees. Seasonal interpreters and VUAs in flat hats occupied the front rows of the temporary seating beneath the magnificent Sentinel Tree, a giant sequoia. Attired in dress uniform with felt flat hat, necktie, and “Ike” jacket, I was placed front row center.

Park Superintendent Dick Martin, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, and the President all spoke. Following the rhetoric, while professional shutters clicked and videotape rolled, the President shook hands and exchanged pleasantries with audience members for more than half an hour.

Ever should we have a serious discussion, I’m afraid the President and I would find little to agree upon. Certainly this glad-handing was more of a photo opportunity than a summit conference. “I’m proud of the work that you rangers do.” “Thank you Mister President, and thank you for coming to visit us.” Still I must admit that, as the lowest of the low in the federal government chatting for a moment with the highest of the high, the most powerful person on earth, I was thrilled.

You would hardly believe the hoopla surrounding the President’s visit to Sequoia. Perhaps counterproductively in a park desperately needing additional funding, the park put on its best face. Potholes were filled, signs repaired and trashcans painted by maintenance folks and others well up the park chain of command.

Secret Service agents, at least the ones we could discern, arrived more than a week in advance to check travel routes for the presidential motorcade of glossy black smoked-windowed SUVs and to inspect facilities the president might visit. A perfectly coifed gentleman dressed in polo shirt and dress trousers walks into the Lodgepole Visitor Center. Around his middle, pouch turned to the front, rests a small fanny pack that doubtless would trigger the alarm at any airport security checkpoint. Seconds behind him follows another man similarly attired and equipped. The interpretive exhibits hold no interest for them. Instead they stare under eaves, into corners, and behind doors. My years of training and experience tell me these are no ordinary visitors.

Two days ago Katmai received a most important visitor, newly-appointed Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne. Preparations could not have been more casual. One maintenance worker remarked that if the Secretary has a problem with the way we run things every day, then we need to look at the way we run things.

The Secretary and entourage of a handful of government officials and one or two security people arrived via Katmai Air, the same carrier that brings most members of the public. This was to be a pleasure visit, so all were dressed in blue jeans and the like. Other than my supervisor Pete Hamel working overtime as tour guide and a law enforcement ranger accompanying the Secretary on his fishing day, from my viewpoint Brooks Camp operations were not affected.

As with President Bush, the Secretary and I would have little common ground in a discussion of politics, especially as it relates to environmental issues. Still, I was honored to meet the man. He treated me with warmth and respect.

Yesterday was my 52nd birthday. While a group of rangers and visitors, including wader-clad Secretary Kempthorne, were waiting out a lengthy mid-afternoon bear jam, Ranger Sabrina asked if I would like a cake or brownies for my birthday. I declined both, so she asked what would I like? My response, loud enough for the Secretary to hear, was that I would be honored if he would attend my program that evening in the auditorium. He had not attended Sabrina’s program the previous evening.

As program time approached, Peter advised me that the VIPs already had begun alcoholic beverage consumption at the lodge, so they likely would not come to my program. I would have loved to present a program with a strong message proclaiming the value of national parks to someone in a position to affect them, but I realize that all visitors, VIPs or not, have their own agendas that may not include ranger programs.

Pre-program chatter with the visitors is going quite well. Niki was in the audience for at least the fourth time, and I was sharing with the crowd our adventures on the Katmai Coast. In walks Secretary Kempthorne who announces that someone in the room has a birthday. He leads the audience in singing happy birthday to me!

Well! In the audience were the Katmai Superintendent Ralph Moore, the Secretary’s special assistant for Alaska, and the Secretary himself. If I can be immodest for a moment, the highest official in the Department of the Interior may have learned a little something from the lowest.

Earlier in the day Greg, a lodge employee, had offered to buy me a drink after work to celebrate my birthday. Following the evening program I changed into civvies and dropped by the lodge. The Secretary and his group were drinking wine and playing Trivial Pursuit. They paused to sing Happy Birthday yet a second time! This cannot be real!! But wait, there is more.

I excused myself to move to a table of Yahtzee-playing Lodge employees for my birthday drink of Diet Coke. As we yakked about what we were doing for the winter, Secretary Kempthorne sat down for a game. I begged off as Yahtzee bores me. The Secretary then asked me to join, so what could I say?

I realized over the next hour that the Secretary of the Interior and I do have a couple of things in common after all. First, Yahtzee bores him too. Within a few minutes he was drumming his fingers and looking around the room, apparently wishing he were elsewhere. Second, since he will be serving as Secretary at most for the final two years of a lame duck administration, he and I are both short-term employees of the Department of the Interior.