20080222 Plot Twist

20080222 Plot Twist

On Tuesday last was scheduled my first ranger-led sunset canoe trip onto Florida Bay in at least three years. I wanted a good crowd so via email I spread the word to Gulf Coast, Shark Valley, and Pine Island. Someone took the initiative from there and posted the event to the park website. The trip quickly booked to standing room only, with a waiting list of five couples.

I had the bird walk the morning of the trip. Rain fell the entire time such that my group and I never left the Visitor Center breezeway. No matter, the birds on the flat put on quite a show.

Throughout the day rain and wind traded center stage. An encore was predicted for the evening. Several participants called to cancel. Near show time a squall line lay northeast to southwest across the radar screen, west of Flamingo headed east. The north wind blew about 15 knots. Still, I was reluctant to cancel. You never know.

As the audience assembled on the Florida Bay basin seawall, I warned them of the forecasted drama. "Moderately heavy rain is predicted and I can see it on the radar. Stronger winds may develop, forcing us to turn around. Still, I am willing to start the trip." Another couple dropped out. Some of those remaining distributed the impromptu rainwear of choice, black plastic garbage bags. Surprisingly, just as many people waited on standby as dropped out. Every place on every boat was filled with no one left out. Even Stephen.

As our flotilla of 12 canoes and kayaks paddled onto the bay, the wind dropped to about 10 knots. While gray clouds covered 98% of the sky, a hole appeared to the west. Miraculously, about an hour later the sun appeared in that hole surrounded by its own beams. It flamed in glorious climax until being doused by the bay.

As we paddled back to Flamingo in nearly dark dénouement, the overcast broke and a brilliantly white nearly full moon lit our path. The wind, in our faces for the early part of the return, stopped all together.

Had some force acted counter to the foul weather that threatened this introduction into Ranger Steve Robinson’s favorite Everglades genre? You never know.

20071113 Put Away the Chapstick and Break Out the Bug Spray

20071113 Put Away the Chapstick and Break Out the Bug Spray

With the Arizona land bubble deflated if not burst, the afternoon of the 10th became the time to move east. The work season in the Everglades begins on the 18th, so I’d have the time to drive slowly and take several breaks over the next two thousand miles or so. I almost always do the first and rarely the second.

What I seem to be able to do is time these long journeys with record oil prices. Crude is approaching $100 at this writing, the highest it has ever been. Gas prices are up about 80 cents per gallon over last year and go up daily. I wonder how long I can afford to make these twice yearly cross-country drives? But I digress.

As I drove toward New Mexico in the late afternoon, enough moisture moved in to produce clouds and a lovely sunset. Rain fell, but evaporated before ever reaching the ground, a phenomenon they call virga.

Nighttimes on these trips are spent in the back of the truck. My bed is warm and comfy despite the conditions outside. In fact, when rain falls I can execute a forward roll from the cab through the sliding window to the campershell and be in bed without ever stepping outside. Returning to the cab can be a bit of a trick, but is doable. For the quiet I prefer parking along country roads but for convenience often sleep in truck stops.

I remember when I first came across the concept of an infinite universe. I couldn’t conceive of it. Something must be on the other side. In numbers can’t I have infinity plus one? I have recently discovered what lies beyond infinity—it is Louisiana.

Texas seems to go on forever. You wake up in Texas, drive all day, and go to sleep in Texas. You drive and drive the second day and you are still in Texas. Still, I like driving across the Lone Star state in the daytime so that I can watch the transition.

After being in desert from the east side of the Sierra Nevada in California, all across Arizona, New Mexico, and west Texas, the hill country of central Texas provides some eye relief in the form of greenery. I love the desert, so much so that I am trying to buy land there. I must admit, though, that green is easier to look at than tan and brown. Beyond the hill country to east Texas begin the bayous.

Boy was it dry in Arizona. In the more than a week I visited the humidity never rose above 20% and was often much less. During the day I was always drinking. Reaching for chapstick became reflex. My hands cracked and bled. Now, as I sit mindlessly scratching my bare legs ouside the Mississippi Welcome Center on I-10, I reallize it’s time to put away the chapstick and break out the bug spray.

20071107 Warm and Dry

20071107 Warm and Dry

Arivaca, Arizona, sits on high desert between Tucson and Nogales and west of Interstate 19. Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, a ranch until 1985, occupies much of the land to the east and south of town. The town site, less than 20 miles from Mexico, is just a few square blocks. Arivaca Mercantile--a well stocked little market, a feed store, a cantina, the post office and a library are the places people meet.

Most of the 1700 Arivacans do not live in town but rather within 5 miles of it on parcels 5 acres and up. Land is still relatively inexpensive here compared to Patagonia on the east side of the Interstate and well water is drinkable and plentiful. Over the course of a year the sun shines in this part of the country more than just about any place else, making Arivaca prime for solar power. Since late 2003 I have been interested in land here.

Specifically I have been looking at a remote ranch, situated almost three miles down a rough rocky road leading north of town into the Las Guijas Mountains. No one else lives within two miles. BLM manages most of the adjoining land. A ranch house built piecemeal beginning in the 1930s sits in a basin at about 3800 feet, surrounded by ocotillo and mesquite-covered hills.
From the house one can see no power lines, no antennas, in fact no structures other than those that belong to the ranch. City power? Dream on…remember, no power lines. When I first became aware of the place on a realtor’s website, solar energy provided the juice. A classic windmill stands in a saddle between hills. It still turns in the breeze and in the past drew water from the well at its base, but today solar panels power a submersible pump.

In the spring of 2004 I looked seriously at the property, for sale at that time, but did not offer. The long rough road concerned me, as did a well-worn footpath across one corner. Being so close to Mexico you can guess who uses it. Also, Pima County charges extracts exorbitant property taxes.

Despite passing on the place, I still wanted it and dreamed about it. I dreamed of a place where I could live on renewable energy for the most part and raise some if not much of my food. I wanted a place where friends could visit and stay for extended periods.

Well, I’m back and seriously looking. The place is not listed for sale but the owner is willing. We are in negotiations. I don’t think we’ll agree on terms but hey, I’ve gotta try. And what the heck, with daytime temps in the mid-eighties and almost no chance of rain, Arivaca is a warm and dry place to spend some time at this time of year.

20071026 Not One, Not Two, But Three

20071026 Not One, Not Two, But Three

As a seasonal ranger I move every few months. Everything tangible I own must fit either in my Toyota pickup or my 5’x10’ enclosed cargo trailer. As mindful as I am about my truck and trailer already being full, I still keep acquiring stuff. A couple of years ago the wildlife refuge where I am staying at the moment was tossing a cafeteria table in need of only minor repairs. This would be perfect for my home office. Who could pass it up?

Last winter Everglades ranger Leon Howell was reducing his 13-guitar collection and had a wonderful Gibson Songbird he let me have for next to nothing, at least compared to what it was worth.

I already owned a guitar, an Alvarez.

My Alvarez is a completely adequate guitar and quite pretty really, but the Songbird is a really nice sounding and playing instrument. How could I let that go?

Two guitars. With the addition of the Gibson I owned two guitars. I don’t even really play guitar. I play around on the guitar but I don’t really play guitar. After a bad day at work, a day where one of my programs flops or I come down with a case of foot-in-mouth disease, dinking on the guitar puts me at ease. But me with space limitations, what was I doing with two guitars? Isn’t one enough?

Well, believe it or not I now own

not one, not two, but three guitars.

After my friend Ranger Steve’s recent passing, his thoughtful wife Amelia gave me the Yamaha guitar he played when he first arrived in the Everglades in what, 1979?

She also passed along the hard case, adorned with a number of well-worn Everglades-related decals she designed herself.

Some years back Steve had relegated this beater to second or third string, playing it when weather and other conditions forced him to leave his newer guitars at home. The guitar needed a bit of TLC. The tuning machines turned but were not happy to do so. Each string sat at a different level above the fretboard.

How Steve played it in tune and without buzzing I’ll never know, but I heard it played sweetly more than once on the schooner Windfall.

Lucky for me the Bay Area is home to a very fine guitar repair shop, Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto. For a modest price they put right this historic guitar, a guitar with about 30 years of Steve Robinson in its pick-scraped finish and

salt-corroded hardware. The guitar is still weathered but plays well.

Just because it doesn’t look good doesn’t mean it doesn’t sound good. Have you ever seen the guitar Willie Nelson regularly plays? Though my playing does not do justice to Steve’s guitar (and it will always be Steve’s guitar), I am honored to be its current custodian. But three guitars?

Really now, one of them has gotta go. I’ll let you guess which one won’t.

20071025 Please, No More Stuff

20071025 Please, No More Stuff

For ten years now I have lived the nomadic park service lifestyle, not that I developed deep roots anywhere during the preceding 43 years of my life. Hence the title of this blog—Never Owned a Sofa. It’s true. This wandering began early. With my father’s work installing Cold War era missile silos for a defense contractor, our family moved frequently. I never completed a full academic year in just one school until the sixth grade.

So, the seasonal lifestyle, moving every few months, suits my itchy feet just fine. Problem is, how to accomplish the moves at minimum expense while keeping enough possessions to make life reasonably comfortable.

My first season I took to Sequoia what I could fit in my old Honda Accord equipped with a clamshell-type plastic rooftop carrier. You know the ones, you get them at Sears. They are gray on the bottom and white on the top, have a square footprint, and have a honey bee decal. Everything I owned that would not fit in the car and carrier was crammed into a 5’x10’ storage unit.

One summer at Sequoia NP was enough to tell me that I needed more stuff. The college dorm life may be fun when you are 19, but hey, that was a LONG time ago. At the end of that first season the Accord went to a good home, replaced by a used Toyota pickup with a camper shell. I enjoyed more creature comforts the second summer.

My first winter season at Everglades came after the second summer in Sequoia. On the cross-country journey my belongings totally filled the truck’s cargo area front to back, side to side, and top to bottom. Motels? You must be joking. Each evening I camped out beside the truck.
Generally the camping was fun. I cooked meals on the tailgate with a white gas Coleman stove I resurrected from a couple of dead ones Sequoia campers had pitched in dumpsters. For sleeping, I have a one-person bivy shelter with semi-circular hoops to create some space inside. It goes up in a heartbeat.

Now not all of the places I chose to camp were camping areas per se, because I would drive until I was tired then just find a dark place. Out-of-the-way freeway offramps were popular. Sometimes, though, I had to drive two or three hours beyond tired to get away from a city.
One late night I pushed eastbound through light rain to reach the east side of Dallas/Fort Worth (so as to avoid morning rush hour traffic coming into the city). The city seemed to go on and on and on. Finally, it must have been 1 or 2 in the morning, I came to an area with few lights so I pulled off and turned right. For a mile or two I drove south down what seemed to be a lonely highway, staring at the white lines like a drunk just to stay awake. Not finding anything like a turnout, I just pulled off onto the grassy shoulder. Out came the bivy shelter and instantly I slept.

What must have been just a few minutes later a radio-transmitted voice and a bright light awakened me. A car engine idled. I could here a crackly voice reciting my name and address. These must be the cops. Indeed they were.

The two gentlemen were exactly that, gentlemen (as well as cops, or deputy sheriffs to be precise). They courteously asked for identification without even asking me to exit the shelter into the rain. I explained the situation—that I was on my way to Florida, too tired to continue, and would be on my way at first light.

Not a problem. It seems that some neighbors had heard the truck stop, were concerned for my welfare, and asked that someone come to check. The officers did caution me that, one, the highway would be quite busy with commuters in the morning and, two, that I would be wishing I had not camped in the grass with the chiggers. They were right on both counts. Have you ever had chiggers? I had many, but that is a story for another day.

Right then I decided I must have either more space or less stuff so that I could sleep in the bed of the truck. That way I could sleep in cities and sleep whenever I was tired and sleep out of the elements when I wanted. Less stuff was out of the question. How could I do without my pair of Yamaha 3-way attenuated studio monitors (speakers) weighing in a 65# apiece? It had to be more space.

More space translated into a cargo trailer. I would be able to haul all of my stuff and sleep in the truck. What the heck, my truck already had the hitch and wiring that towing required.
After the third summer at Sequoia, with a little time in San Diego staying with my buddy Clay, I was able to accomplish a couple of things I would have trouble doing while living in parks. First, I got rid of most of what I had been storing for three years. If I hadn’t needed any of it for all this time, couldn’t I do without it? Using my sister’s house in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, I held a garage sale and gave some people some really good deals.

I also had time to shop for a trailer. One day the perfect trailer just popped out from the classified ads. A U-Haul type enclosed cargo trailer with a 5’x10’ box. Plenty of space! For the first journey east all of my belongings filled the trailer to but 1/3 capacity. I had the entire bed of the truck for a comfy bed.

You’ve heard the expression that work expands to fill the time allotted for it? Similarly, my possessions expanded to fill the space allotted, namely the trailer. Just as the truck before it, within two years or so the trailer was filled front to back, side to side, and top to bottom. Even after giving away my precious studio monitors a couple of years ago, the trailer is still full. And heavy!

At 53 my brain is full or seems to be. For every new factoid I must jettison one of the old. Well, not that I must, as if I have any active role in the process. It just happens. I do have some control over tangible things. These days I’m quite careful about what I acquire, since any new addition means some exisiting thing must be left behind.

My sister Shannon, who I love dearly, is one of those people you hate because she always remembers birthdays and anniversaries and acts in time so that gifts arrive on or before the important date. With love she would send me family pictures complete with frame, books, and other massive objects. With my trailer full, for every new object she would send I would abandon something I already owned. Finally, I had to tell her, "Please, no more stuff!" Now she sends food.

20071014 Picture Perfect

20071014 Picture Perfect

Picture it: a park ranger naturalist in one of our nation’s premier national parks like Yellowstone or Sequoia, flat hat silhouetted against the ephemeral oranges and reds of the setting sun, helping park visitors to make the most of their visits to one of America’s wonders. What a great job! Wouldn’t we all like to have it? The job is so good that the rangers work for free, almost. Seasonal rangers anyway.

Since the job is just playing for pay, some say that seasonal park rangers must be willing to take some compensation in the forms of sunrises and sunsets. Sounds good, but when the doctor wants payment for setting your broken leg, half of that aforementioned sunset may not be sufficient. In twenty or thirty years, the rest home may not accept sunrises. And how would you store their value until then? Banks accept dollars, pesos, and euros, but sunrises and sunsets?

For this reason, some seasonal rangers would like to become permanent employees of the National Park Service. Just who do they think they are? They have wonderful jobs in majestic places, and yet have the audacity to desire health benefits. On top of that, they’d like retirement benefits and some job security. Now that’s going too far. But still some of them try.

Seasonal naturalists can walk some rocky trails, but the path to permanent employment requires technical climbing skills or the key to the secret passageway. A secret passageway? Can preferential treatment for some be given by the government that espouses equal opportunity? You betcha. Status as a veteran, the spouse of a permanent employee, a disabled person, or a particular gender, race, or ethnicity can, in some cases, unlock the passageway to a permanent job. While other applicants perhaps more qualified on merit alone struggle up the switchbacks, these special people stride easily through a level tunnel constructed especially for them. Some very good people never make it over the mountain pass the hard way and eventually leave the service. I can think of two right off the bat, Holly and Tia.

Holly and I worked together my first winter season at the Everglades almost nine years ago, where we were both campground rangers trying to get our feet in the interpretive door. Holly had been several summer seasons an interpreter at Yellowstone. Naturally outgoing and charismatic, Holly also wrote wonderful programs. How do I know? I read her script for her campfire program on, you guessed it, fire. Or more specifically, fire ecology. Holly’s programs are so good that to this day Yellowstone uses videotapes of her performances as part of training for new seasonal interpreters.

Holly, a woman in her 20s when we met, enjoyed being a seasonal but ultimately was looking for a career. She tried for a permanent interpretive position with the park service for some time, diligently dotting the eyes and crossing the tees on her applications. No luck. Or is it luck?

Tia and I met my very first season with the National Park Service, a magical summer in Sequoia National Park. I drove the park garbage truck. She was at the top of her game as a seasonal naturalist. I wanted to be a naturalist so in my off time I attended ranger programs including several of Tia's.

Tia is as good as they get. She grabs the audience and does not let them go. More importantly they do not want to leave. Her Giant Sequoia ecology walk stands as the finest single interpretive program I have ever seen. At each stop she adopted a different persona, including Mother Nature, a college professor, and others with a minimum of props. We all wanted to see who she would be next, all the while learning about the natural history of the world’s largest trees.

Tia worked ten summers in Sequoia all told. She advanced to a supervisory level, helping to plan the summer season, scheduling a staff of 12 naturalists working multiple venues with only three cars. Eventually she became a GS-9 level seasonal, almost unheard of in the park service.

Like Holly, Tia tried for many years to get a permanent position as an NPS interpreter. Time and time again someone else was chosen—a veteran, a spouse of an existing permanent employee, and even some well-qualified people. OK, I'll admit that the third class is not necessarily mutually exclusive from the first two.

Both of these wonderful interpeters went on to permanent jobs elsewhere. Holly eventually found permanent work with West Eugene Wetlands, a non-profit partnership of various governmental agencies and other non-profits dedicated to the preservation of, you guessed it again, wetlands. She serves as the environmental education coordinator. Tia stayed with the Department of the Interior but jumped agencies to the US Fish & Wildlife Service. She started her first permanent government job as the volunteer coordinator for a complex of wildlife refuges in the San Francisco Bay area. More recently she became an environmental education specialist, her forte, with the same complex.

The point of all of this is that the National Park Service had the chance to benefit from possibly lifelong service from these two fine interpreters, a couple of the finest and most dedicated. The Service passed. Repeatedly. What’s wrong with this picture?

20071002 My Hero Becomes Legend

20071002 My Hero Becomes Legend

W. Somerset Maugham, in the opening paragraph of "The Moon and Sixpence", notes the difference between a person made great by circumstance and an inherently great person.

I do not speak of that greatness
which is achieved by the fortunate politician or
the successful soldier; that is a quality which
belongs to the place he occupies rather than to
the man; and a change of circumstances reduces
it to very discreet proportions. The Prime Minister
out of office is seen, too often, to have been
but a pompous rhetorician, and the General without
an army is but the tame hero of a market
town. The greatness of Charles Strickland was
authentic. It may be that you do not like his art,
but at all events you can hardly refuse it the tribute
of your interest. He disturbs and arrests.

Like the fictional Charles Strickland, the greatness of the real Steve Robinson was authentic. Who else could disagree passionately with you on many fundamental issues and still like you as a person? A gifted naturalist, orator, and musician, Steve touched and inspired many thousands of national park visitors over a 20-years+ career. As husband, father, and friend he touched many others, including me. Beyond that, I believe he influenced everyone he met. This was his greatness, his art. One could not meet Steve and remain indifferent. One could feel his power and know this was no ordinary human being. I’m not saying that Steve was perfect. He was human after all. His mortality manifested itself yesterday morning, as he peacefully left our lives physically but never spiritually.

The spirit of Steve Robinson can be found in every program I present as a park ranger. Is my style like Steve’s? Perhaps in loquaciousness we are similar and I have certainly adopted other elements of Ranger Steve, but there is no other Pied Piper of Flamingo. Steve’s belief that what we do as interpreters can be worthwhile if we make it so—that is what permeates my work and always will. Had I not met Steve in the fall of 1998, I doubt I would still be a park ranger nine years later.

Steve encouraged me in my work early on, when I knew little of the art of interpretation and much less of the vast, complex, never wholly knowable Everglades. "You da man!" he would understatedly utter, able to use an annoying cliché without it seeming either. He was right. I am just a man. He is more.

Popular culture today seems to worship the anti-hero, a ruthless selfish sort. Whatever happened to noble heroes? They are still around. Steve Robinson is my hero, a larger-than-life embodiment of what I would hope to be, a mathematical limit approachable but never reachable. My hero, once just a great human, has now become legend.

20070927 Live at The Buttonwood Cafe

20070927 Live at The Buttonwood Cafe

Another memory from the Everglades in tribute to Ranger Steve.

The Buttonwood Café is the place to be when Steve and Amelia perform. The Two of Us, as they are known professionally, pack ‘em in, especially the park service staff. As the Buckleys, the Haapalas, the Van Adders, the Toths, the Temples, Laura and Steve, Tony and Tina, Ellen, Craig, law enfocement, and the current year’s campground and interpretive staffs arrive, one round plastic table is shoved against another and another in string of pearls that esses from one end of the room to the other. The pizza is lousy but hey, who can mess up a pitcher of beer? Really, it is all about community.

The Flamingo community includes not just staff, but many, many visitors who come year after year. We come to be a part of the rhythms and the harmonies, not just in the music but in the place. The waters of the Everglades, the lungs as Steve calls them, breathing in and out with the wet and dry seasons. The tides coming in and out of Florida Bay, marching under orders from the moon unless countermanded by the wind. The wind clocking around from the southeast to the south to the west and eventually to the north as a January cold front passes, bringing chill and maybe even a freeze until it eventually continues on around to the southeast once again. The white ibis flying out from Eco Pond to the mangrove islands every evening at dusk. Wading birds in general moving from one forage opportunity to the next, currently using the one due to expire first like the oldest milk in the refrigerator [another Steveism]. The mosquito populations rising from pleasant to bearable to panic then thankfully falling. Through songs like "Seminole Wind" and "Big Yellow Taxi", The Two of Us challenge us, as members of the Everglades community, to live in harmony with these rhythms.

Steve and Amelia are always up for ‘open mike’. Anyone who has talent can join in on a song or two. Allyson plays flute, Jeanette plays violin, Chris beats the drums, and various other people sit in from time to time. Donna regularly sings "Down in the Everglades". Sundae laments "Desperado". Rob reminds us, "There ain’t no bears in Bear Lake!"

Okay, so I’m not musical. I’ve owned a guitar for nine years and can play three songs, none of them well. I can play six or seven chords, correctly about forty percent of the time. C, D, and G I pretty much have down. B7 is stretching it. I harbor no delusions of rock stardom.

In addition to a lack of musicianship, I’m not a singer. At least not a singer anyone wants to listen to and not a singer who wants anyone to hear me. Still, I love to sing. For years my only regular public performance was to shout "Ring!" at the appropriate moment during Steve and Amelia’s rendition of "Oh Bla Di Oh Bla Da". After years of repressed desire, I finally decided to act. If CJ has the guts to get up and wail Neil Young’s "Pocahontas", then I guess I can do something too. After all, I’m still working on my fifteen minutes of fame.

At the time, and geez, this must have been early 2004, Oh Brother Where Are Thou? was popular. CJ felt he could sing "Man of Constant Sorrow" but needed backup. In addition to backing up CJ, I would sing lead on "In the Jailhouse Now." Our work with Steve was minimal, but Steve needed little. "Just give me the chords." CJ and I mostly rehearsed by singing to the recordings in the Taj. Rob Temple, captain of the schooner Windfall, joined in with no rehearsal at all.

The night of the show CJ and I were both nervous. Like Steve I don’t drink, so Rob and CJ’s choice of sedative was unavailable. I just visualized. One comfort was that I knew Steve would be there as a steadying hand, playing the right chords. Another was that by the time we sang at the end of the show, the audience consisted of mostly friends who would applaud no matter how bad I was.

And bad I was. And bad into a microphone! Still, I did it. I sang backup. "In constant sorroooow, for all his days." I sang lead. "I told him onst or twice, to stop playin’ cards and a shootin’ dice…" I even yodeled.

Predictably, my friends clapped and cheered. They did so not because I was good, but because I did it. I consider this night one of the cherished accomplishments of my life, right up there with running two marathons and keeping my sanity. The Two of Us made it possible.

20070927 Idle Time

20070927 Idle Time

Generally I accept responsibility for myself and my actions. I pay my bills and taxes, don’t file nuisance lawsuits, and as a government employee give the government its money’s worth.

That same government fires me twice a year.

Everglades National Park is happy to see me in November but in April they force a good-bye.


Katmai National Park welcomes me in early May. Four and one-half months later the party is over. This means that I have no income for about three months of each year. No earned income, anyway. I am paid for not working. I am on the dole.


How do I justify taking money I did not earn? The park service needs seasonal workers. The seasonal nature of visitation dictates the seasonal nature of the work. For some positions, especially in maintenance, local candidates could fill positions. It is my opinion that not enough qualified local residents could be found to fill interpreter positions. Thus people travel from all over this vast land to work the relatively low-paying 4-6 month jobs as naturalists and historians, tour guides and trip planners in our nation’s national parks.

The government that hires these people does not pay transportation costs. An interpreter from, say, Michigan, must come out of pocket for travel to south Florida to work in the Everglades. In 2007 I paid my way from Florida to Alaska, recently paid to fly myself and my belongings from remote King Salmon, Alaska to Oakland, and will shortly be paying to drive my truck and small trailer from California to Florida.

No one forces me to move twice a year at no small expense. I choose this lifestyle and I enjoy it. Still, I believe that receiving unemployment compensation between my park service seasons helps me to defray the costs of relocating for the benefit of the Service [and me].