Okay, slightly embarrassing confession time. I have always prided myself on being courteous and professional to visitors at parks where I've worked, and I had many complimentary letters in my personnel file to attest to this. But sometimes stuff just slips out. One summer I was working not for the National Park Service but for a commercial cave in Kentucky called Diamond Caverns (in Park City, and part of the Mammoth Cave system, but not part of the park). It had gorgeous formations, but was fairly deep and had about 120 steps down into the cave, that ended at a concrete walkway that was slippery on one side that was a little steep. So I always had people walk around the other way.

I had a tour of about a dozen people, and we'd already gone into the cave. Since this is a commercial operation and every time you turn the lights on it cost$$, they send people into the tours up to five or ten minutes after they've already started to avoid running extra tours. The guide just catches the newcomers up and proceeds. A couple were coming downstairs, and I shouted to them "Please go around to your right. Your right--no, around to your right" as they came around to the left and nearly slipped. Muttering under my breath, "geez--are you deaf?" and the others heard me.

Yup, they were deaf. Boy did I feel stupid. BUT--I used my limited sign and copious finger-spelling for the entire tour and wowed the rest of them and pleased our deaf visitors, who confided to me that no one had been able to talk to them in the other caves they had visited. I sent them from there up to the National Park and told them which ranger to ask for because she knew sign language.

This was a state minimum wage job, and we worked for tips, like in waitressing. For all that visitors with special needs always made for more work, I always got much better tips when they were along and people could see how seamless I could make a tour and still include those visitors. This was where my college and professional training paid off (most of the tour guides in private caves were high school kids who didn't have a clue about being naturalists). And those are some of my favorite memories of the years I was an interpretive naturalist, when I could make places come alive for many visitors in ways they hadn't been aware of before.

SRS