Baby Ranger

Day 213: Here's a story from when I was just a "baby ranger." I don't think I've ever shared it on my blog, but it merits being preserved for posterity. In my opinion, anyway.

I'm a volunteer. I've always been a volunteer. Never wore the green and grey for a variety of reasons, but I still consider myself a ranger, and most of my uniformed colleagues have no problem with that. It was back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth (or close), and I was working in the forgotten corner of the Park, green as any little gourd which ever grew on the vine. I'd been left in charge of things while our tech (we called them "techs" in those days) took two weeks' leave. I was alone, and had no particular sense of unease until one day when I was in the shed with the open safe where we kept the radios and the money, and our solitary weapon was locked firmly in a separate compartment therein. Suddenly, the interior of the shed darkened, and I looked around to see a tall man in the doorway, leaning against the jamb and effectively blocking my exit. I wouldn't have weighed 100 pounds in those days even if you'd hosed me down in full uniform. I rested only marginally easier when he said in a drawling voice, "Hi! Is this where I can take my snowmobile to the summit?"

I put on my best smile and said, "Oh, you can't take a snowmobile to the summit, not here, not anywhere in the Park."

The man felt compelled to dispute my authority. "They told me I could take it up there from someplace over here."

I replied, "Whoever told you that was wrong, sir. Snowmobiles aren't allowed in the Park."

That still failed to satisfy him. "I got this letter from the superintendent, Briggly." (William Briggle was our superintendent in those days.) "He says I can take my snowmobile to the summit." He began patting his pockets, as if in search of the letter. I waited politely, my smile still firmly in place. "I'll show you. Briggly" (again with the y ending) "says in the letter I could do that." More patting of the pockets, and I was really hoping he'd shift his stance just long enough for me to dart under his raised arm into the outdoors where I could run for my life. "It says so in the letter I got from Briggly."

"Sir," I said, still trapped inside the shed with the money and the radios clearly visible at my back, "someone has misled you badly. Snowmobiles are not allowed in the Park. Someone is pulling your leg."

At that point, a voice I recognized came from in back of the shed, "Nope, we're pulling yours! Meet Scott. He's from East District." It was our trail crew boss who had known me for years. That was not the only prank they pulled on me during that season, and I never did figure out how to pay them back for it, although some years later, I sent a hapless intern out for paperwork stored in the basement of the warehouse. After moving any number of boxes to reach the non-existent access door I'd directed him to find, he realized the warehouse didn't have a basement.

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.

Old Friends

Day 289: I haven't been to Carbon River/Ipsut in over a decade, too afraid of what I might find in the aftermath of the 2007 floods. I had heard all kinds of stories, and every one of them made me want to cry. But let me back up a bit to explain my connection with this special place.

When my uncle Gus was in college, he took a seasonal job with Mount Rainier National Park as a ranger at Carbon River. The family made a few trips up to see where he was working, and in those days, it truly felt like we were voyaging into the Back of Beyond. The road to the Park crossed the Carbon Canyon on a high, rickety one-lane bridge planked lengthwise with timbers spaced such that a car's wheels would just fit. The under-layer of the bridge deck was made of similar timbers at 90 degrees to those on top, but spaced so widely apart that when you were on the bridge, you felt as if the car would slip between them if it should happen to stray from the lengthwise planks. My mother was terrified of it, but Gus piloted the car across with ease and we continued up the south side of the river until we reached Ipsut Campground. There, I experienced a great disappointment. Gus had explained that the Carbon River looked muddy because it was full of glacial silt; I misunderstood the word, and expected to find SILK fibers on my fingers when I withdrew them from the water. But I was entranced by Ipsut and Carbon River from my very first visit, probably because Gus was my favourite uncle.

That year or the next, my father passed away. I was only nine, and it hit me hard. Gus, still working for the Park, managed to wangle permission from his superintendent (or so the story goes) to take me in with him to stay at his duty station at Lake James for ten days. That term in the backcountry set the tone of my life. More than anything else, I wanted to be a ranger (preferably one who was somehow involved with science).

Many years later, I started working at Carbon as a winter volunteer. By then, I had hiked extensively in the district and knew it like the back of my hand, both on trail and off. We'd had a number of things stolen from the Mowich cabin (our Stokes litter, a 400-pound wood stove, all our first-aid gear), so I became the winter "presence" to keep the thieves at bay. I didn't keep a regular shift, but when I snowshoed into Mowich, I generally stayed at least 10 days in a cabin almost entirely buried in snow. In all the years I pulled this duty, I never saw a soul. I also worked at Mowich in the summer.

Aside from the professional connection I have with Carbon, I also have a deep personal attachment to the area. I don't expect most of my readers to understand, but those of you who are closest to me will know what I mean. It was that which kept me from visiting Carbon these last ten years: a fear that I would find devastation among my dearest friends and family: the roots and rocks and trees who figure quite centrally in my life.

If it hadn't been for a report of a rare plant along the Carbon road (now a foot-and-bicycle trail), I probably would have gone the rest of my life without facing the demons looming so largely in my mind. However, I was dispatched to search for it, and if possible, obtain an herbarium specimen. Armed with very scant information as to its location, I set off for Carbon today, trying to bolster myself to face the unavoidable. In that, I had quite a surprise. The flood damage was no worse than what I had seen in prior floods except at Chenuis (the pretty bog survived) and at Ipsut Creek (there's a new bridge, but the old one still spans the creek's previous channel). There are some twists and turns in what used to be the Longest Mile, but I'd call that an improvement! I did not go farther than my old campsite in the campground, so I don't know what condition the trail might be beyond that point, but by and large, it's the same old Carbon.

I'll sleep a lot easier tonight, and I'll certainly be making a return trip to visit those old friends along the road. I never did find that darn plant!

In Days Of Old

Day 276: Okay, don't everybody fall down laughing. Yes, that is indeed Your Humble Narrator, way back in the Carbon River days. Just for chuckles, I dragged the slide out of my archives and had a friend scan it for me, but age will take its toll on slides and Crows alike. I'm not sure which of us fared the worst. I will admit that the uniform I wear today is a few sizes larger...well, the pants and shirt, anyway...hat size decreased when the Afro disappeared...and the insignia changed from the shield design to the current round patch. That said, I transferred one of the old patches to my new hat, proud to be one of the "Old-Timers" in the Park.