World Ranger Day

Day 292: I was a lot younger then, but this is where it began: Carbon River in the summer, Mowich in the winter. My love of the Park was already well-established (and particularly of the Carbon River District), but lack of university credits held me back from even attempting to apply for a paid job as a backcountry ranger. I was still determined to serve the Park, and made such a pest of myself at Carbon that John Wilcox decided to take me on as a volunteer. I worked on a variety of small projects at Ipsut my first summer: painting signs, wilderness patrols, cleaning out fire pits, making visitor contacts and so on. When the summer wound down and the visitors dwindled to two or three on a good day, John asked me if I would be willing to take on winter duty at Mowich. Local thieves had ransacked the cabin several times the previous winter, making off with our emergency supplies (first aid gear, the Stokes litter) and even a 400-pound wood stove. John thought having a "presence" at Mowich would be a good deterrent. I agreed and took the assignment.

In order to keep the thieves off balance, I worked an irregular schedule, snowshoeing in five to ten miles once a month, staying in the cabin for as much as ten days. Radio contact was dodgy in those days, so essentially, I was out of contact with the world. I won't say it was a cozy job. The smokehole of the cabin was buried in snow, so lighting a fire for warmth was out of the question. It was also dark inside with roof-level snow blocking the windows, so I generally spent my days in the "yard," reading from a chair jammed down at a relaxing angle in a snowbank, my feet propped up on another. In the years I served in this capacity, I only had one incident, and that involved an overdue hiker who had failed to sign out. I followed his tracks up and over Knapsack Pass, assured myself that he had not been swept away in an avalanche, only to find out that he'd returned safely some days earlier. That was as close as I ever came to a human contact in the winter.

Summers were quite the opposite. Although Carbon was considered the Back of Beyond by Park management, we got our share of visitors during the summer months, considering how far away we were from civilization. During one notable summer, I had injured myself in a climbing accident and therefore had to forgo the backcountry patrols which I so dearly loved. Walking with a cane, I paced the parking lot and road for days on end, and must have answered the inevitable question a hundred times, "Is this the road to the summit?" I would patiently explain that if the driver simply went on another hundred yards, they would arrive at a tent camp, end of the road.

Ah, the memories I have of Carbon and Mowich! Spider House, the "splasher" mousetrap contrived by my roommate, pulling winter firewood out of the icy lake with a peavey, blackflies...and the good things as well: campfire circles with troops of Scouts, evening programs, Spray Park carpeted in Avalanche Lilies, the jokes trail crew played, reading John's uproarious poems in the log book fill my mind whenever I think of the Carbon years. Half-inch hail, windstorms and running five miles of road with a chainsaw may not have been fun at the time, but events like those make some of the best tales when the rose-coloured glasses of hindsight blunt the misery of the moment. Sunny days in camp and sightings of pine martens don't captivate an audience as thoroughly as the struggle to escape a blizzard while sick with a strep throat. My mental meanderings usually take me down those most arduous paths, and leave me marvelling at how I ever survived, to say nothing of why I kept going back for more. The Carbon years taught me that I was made of sterner stuff than I'd ever imagined, imbued me with a drive which endures even today.

Today is World Ranger Day. I don't recall seeing anything about it in my government email this week, but I'm not surprised. Many of us, paid staff and volunteers, work in the Park because we love it and couldn't imagine being anywhere else. That's good enough for me.