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BS: Mudcatter park rangers
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Subject: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: Peter Kasin Date: 25 Mar 05 - 10:59 PM There are more than several Mudcatters who are rangers of one sort or another; or at least have he word "ranger"in their moniker. Interpretive, law enforcement, national, state, regional, city, USA, UK, OZ....how many rangers are there on Mudcat? What kind of rangering do you do? Or does that word have a different meaning in your moniker, such as being on the lookout for folk songs? Just some idle BSing here, but it would be interesting to know if there is this sort of sub-group here in Mudville. Chanteyranger |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: Joe Offer Date: 25 Mar 05 - 11:11 PM Interesting question, Mr. Chantyranger, Sir. Looking through the list of names under "Send a Personal Message," this is the list that comes up:
Now maybe some of us would think of Kendall as having been a ranger, but he was more of a warden, I think. That was in one of his many sordid past lives.... And I suppose we have some closet rangers, too, who haven't used the title in their Mudcat name. Hey, I was a summer camp counselor - does that count???? -Joe Offer, who used to investigate rangers (and wardens) for their security checks- |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: GUEST Date: 25 Mar 05 - 11:52 PM For a couple of years in the late 60's I was a ranger/naturalist at Blackwater Falls State park in Tucker County, WV. I led nature walks for the guests, helped them identify the flora and fauna (trees and birds,etc) and showed nature films on the days when it rained too hard to go out on the trails. Padre, who forgot to reset his cookie |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: Amos Date: 26 Mar 05 - 12:33 AM My sis-in-law, who's never been a member here, was a gun and saddle type of park ranger throughout the West in her younger years. The money was so thin she went into administration and worked her way up to GS14 in the national park service finance section. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: open mike Date: 26 Mar 05 - 01:10 AM i think that you will find that silly i mean stilly river sage may have ridden the range at one time or another...perhaps at Ellis Island or other national parks, forests, or what have you. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: Joe Offer Date: 26 Mar 05 - 01:22 AM Chanteyranger isn't the kind of ranger I investigated - I did clearances on law enforcement rangers. At Yosemite, they were like police officers, and didn't have much to do with introducing people to bears and such. They had to attend a law enforcement academy, take EMT (emergency medical technician) training, and one other major requirement that I forget - a special park ranger school, I think. In the smaller parks, they did a wider variety of work. I much preferred working with the rangers in the smaller parks. I had to clear a number of backcountry rangers at Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks, and they were a different breed altogether. They'd start work in April or May every year, living and working in a cabin in the High Sierra until September or October. They'd get back and forth by helicopter if they had to - but they usually stayed the entire season in the backcountry. One ranger had a baby over the winter, and the baby and her husband lived with her in the backcountry cabin during the following season. Backcountry rangers are incredibly rugged, self-sufficient people. Really interesting folks. I had to do one clearance at Yukon Charley National Park in Alaska, about as far away from anywhere as you can get. The park operation moved to Fairbanks during the winter, and I was working the case in mid-December. Not much sunlight on that trip, I'll tell ya- but the ranger was a wonderful guy, and he took me to his 1930's log cabin and introduced me to his team of sled dogs, and showed me the Alaska Pipeline. And then there was a chief ranger at another park in Alaska. I interviewed her in her office, at water's edge. I could see whales off in the distance, through the picture window in her office. I developed a bit of a crush on her.... But it's the Chanteyranger kind of ranger that I really admire. These people really get to know and love their parks, and they're a joy to talk with. I wish the U.S. Government would pay them better and give them better working conditions. It's impossible to get rich on a park ranger's salary - and it's even unusual to have a year-round job. And believe me, they work hard. Oh, Liam's Brother is a ranger, too - in New York. -Joe Offer- |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: GUEST,Qoth he Date: 26 Mar 05 - 02:02 AM ....then there's the glasgow rangers |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: gnu Date: 26 Mar 05 - 06:40 AM I am a de-ranger. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: RangerSteve Date: 26 Mar 05 - 06:47 AM I'm a ranger with the New Jersey State Park system. It's strictly a law enforcement job in this state, but people expect me to know something about nature, so I carry some of the Audobon books in my patrol car and read up on the local plants and animals when things are slow. The same goes for local history, too. I patrol about 30 miles of the Delaware River shore line, along with a canal, a railroad bed converted into a hiking/biking trail, and a lot of the surrounding area, and between April and November, a very popular campground. The state keeps buying land, which is a good idea, but they don't hire rangers to patrol it, so all of the above is patroled by me alone. I still enjoy it and can't think of anything else I'd rather do, especially since I'm not qualified to do much else. I also perform on a local Grand Ole Opry-type radio show with a studio audience, and I get recognized by total strangers while I'm patrolling the area, which is kind of cool. Steve |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: Stilly River Sage Date: 26 Mar 05 - 01:34 PM All over the U.S., and all over the interpretive landscape: U.S. Forest Service National Park Service Army Corps of Engineers NY City Urban Park Ranger Yeah, I was a "professional seasonal" for many years before facing the music, so to speak. When you have kids, you end up with mortgages and braces and such, and the traveling isn't so good for a family. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: Joybell Date: 26 Mar 05 - 11:09 PM So that's how I got all that good info. about wildflowers and grasslands SRS. Cheers, Joy |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: Metchosin Date: 27 Mar 05 - 01:00 PM Not a ranger, but the less glamorous job of a park technician responsible for compiling interpretive assesment reports on various BC provincial parks and areas under consideration as provincial parks. I did natural history field work and other research and compiled and edited data collected by summer park assistants for the assessments. I spent a lot more time in the library and at a desk than I would have preferred, but despite that, I still consider it one of the most fulfilling jobs I've ever had. Also did a short stint as a park naturalist while working there. I left for basically the same reason as SRS, to become a full time Mom, but I couldn't shake my love and obsession with the outdoors. I apologized a lot to my kids, when they were young, because I spent more time looking under rotting logs, than baking cakes and cookies and keeping a home tidy. At one point, my family presented me with a bumper sticker which read, "My Only Domestic Quality Is That I Live In A House". LOL |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: The Shambles Date: 27 Mar 05 - 02:01 PM I am Tonto. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: Stilly River Sage Date: 27 Mar 05 - 02:17 PM Metchosin, I had various job titles in those agencies, but it boiled down to doing naturalist work with the last three. With the USFS I was doing forester work; I think most of these positions, as a seasonal, came with the "technician" job description, but the person in the uniform the public saw was always a "Park Ranger" since they weren't making any distinctions. And it's so often the technicians who are the ones in the public eye every day. My kids also have had to live with the syndrome of parents who were rangers. The result is that I was thrilled to find a large yard and a house on a creek in town because that gives us such great access to the natural activity of the area. We celebrate our tarantulas, toads, snakes, geckos (introduced), birds, coyotes, bunnies, etc. and most of my kids' friends know that flashlight tours of the yard in the summer are a real treat. My conundrum here is that I don't like hiking or camping when it's super hot and when there are ticks and chiggars so we don't get out to parks as much as we could. To travel and camp in the cooler weather we compete with every other family of school-age kids, so camping in cool weather is extremely crowed and I hate that. One of these years I'll be able to afford taking a long camping trip to the Northwest. I hope. :) SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: Metchosin Date: 27 Mar 05 - 03:27 PM Hope to meet you if you do SRS. In BC the rangers job description weighs heavily on the enforcement and the park maintenance side and the pay is piss poor for their skills and what they are expected to cover. Also most positions now are temporary auxillary, so you only get employment for about 14 to 18 weeks and then you get dumped. Great if you have some other financial backup. Naturalist positions now rely heavily on volunteerism. My conundrum was that I married a city lad, and although he let me drag him off into the bushes to live, given his druthers, he's not particularly keen on roughing it. Fortunately for our kids, he is a magnificent chef and never seems to have had a problem with me doing my own thing over the years, bless his heart. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: Ebbie Date: 27 Mar 05 - 04:49 PM I work for and with park rangers- does that count? This house museum that I live in is a state park site since the property was put into the lap of the park system in 1984. I get to hear a lot of stories about squatter's cabins, park sites' vandalism, building cabins and all that. My idea of optimum living is of being in a large house (for house guests) on the edge of a national or state forest for roaming and traipsing and wildlife, and with a good enough road and a large parking lot in front for musicians' vehicles. Oh, and a good year 'round stream not far away. I'm not asking for much, huh. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: Rapparee Date: 27 Mar 05 - 05:28 PM Humph! I'm surrounded by National Forests (Targee, Caribou, etc.), National Grasslands, Gray's Lake Refuge, and some National Parks nobody's ever heard of -- Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, and Craters of the Moon. For fishing I've got the upper reaches of the Portneuf, the Snake, the Madison, and Henry's Fork within easy driving. Every year hunters -- REAL hunters -- take elk, deer, and other game. And do I get to go out and enjoy all this?????????? Dang right I do!!! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: Ebbie Date: 27 Mar 05 - 06:16 PM But do you invite us to come make music? Noooooooooo. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: GUEST,CarolC Date: 28 Mar 05 - 11:55 AM I've never been a park ranger, but I did work as a seasonal interpretive naturalist for one season. Great job - lousy pay and job security. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: GUEST,Rapaire Date: 28 Mar 05 - 03:45 PM And, darn! I forgot to mention the State Parks! Or all of Sun Valley! Or the Frank Church Wilderness Area! Or the Lolo Wilderness! Or Hell's Canyon! Or.... Ebbie, you know those bumper stickers that say "If it's tourist season, why can't we shoot 'em?" I'm saving your life. Actually, you're free to come visiting 'most any time. Heck, I'll be in Juneau in August after all, with some friends, and I thought we could kip out at your place. Right now, there's only 16 of us, but at least a dozen stay sober at least half the time. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage Date: 28 Mar 05 - 04:19 PM You can only live on the seasonal's salary if you have no bills and no family. When I was in school between the Forest Service seasons I used to be able to collect unemployment, as long as I signed a form saying I'd quit and go to work if I was offered a job in my field. Not many fire fighting or forestry jobs offered in the winter in Washington state. I was the first woman hired to work in the woods on my district, so it was hard at first to get the extra overtime, but I finally did, and it helped also. (That's a topic for a different thread.) I did quit a couple of times, but was far enough along in the quarter that I could finish the classes through the mail. It was frustrating as an Interpretive Naturalist professional (this was part of my Parks and Rec degree, by the way) to see that the only way to get above the federal GS-9 ceiling was to stop being a naturalist or historian and start being a paper pusher. It's like any of the teaching professions--if you want to make more money, you must give up what you love and become an administrator. It's a great loss to those professions. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: GUEST,Jim Dixon Date: 28 Mar 05 - 04:52 PM I only know one folksinger who is (or was) an official ranger, and unfortunately, as far as I know, he has never posted at Mudcat. That's Charlie Maguire, the "singing ranger." Here's his personal website: http://www.charliemaguire.com/ And here's the webpage about him set up by the National Park Service: http://www.nps.gov/miss/charlie/ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: GUEST Date: 28 Mar 05 - 08:11 PM Whoooooo. Rapaire, what's 'kip'? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage Date: 28 Mar 05 - 08:46 PM Two NPS singing rangers I remember particularly well are Linda Russell and Rita Cantu. Linda was at Federal Hall in Manhattan, singing in the great accoustics of the rotunda, and on the side singing with a couple of other NPS folks. Rich Patterson was one. They had a group called Prairie Smoke, after a favorite flower of Linda's from her childhood in Wisconsin. Probably more information than you need. I know that Linda hasn't worked for the NPS for many years now. Rita was at Great Smokies. A quick search on Rita looks like she's with the US Forest Service now. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: ranger1 Date: 29 Mar 05 - 01:15 PM I'm a park ranger for the State of Maine. We aren't divided up into interpretive/law enforcement/maintenance classes here. We have to be jacks of all trades (or in my case, a jill). I clean toilets, give nature walks, enforce rules and regulations, mow lawns, build bridges, paint buildings and picnic tables, shingle roofs, cut down trees, and maintain trails. I also fill in for the park naturalist, the manager and the "receptionist." The receptionist is the person stuck in the booth collecting fees and answering the phone. We like to let ours out once in a while to keep them sane. For the most part, I love my job. The few drawbacks are low pay and the fact that it is a seasonal position, but I've been with the state long enough that I'm on permanent re-hire status and have a tidy nest egg in my pension account. Like RangerSteve, I can't think of anything else I'd rather do, and also like RangerSteve, probably not qualified for anything else. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: GUEST,Chanteyranger Date: 29 Mar 05 - 01:37 PM Jim Dixon: Now you know two! :-). Actually, as Stilly River Sage points out, there are more singing rangers than THE singing ranger. Liam's Brother, for another example. Joe: Amen! Ebbie and Carol C: It counts in my book. Chanteyranger |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: Stilly River Sage Date: 29 Mar 05 - 02:15 PM As a naturalist in the Great Smoky Mountains I had to spend hours and hours in the visitor center and the kiosk outside it in the summer of 1984, when the Knoxville World Fair opened. I had turned down their job earlier, then I changed my mind about the position I'd accepted. (Leading tours at Boulder Dam--it wasn't until I started that I realized they expected me to memorize a tour script, and didn't think it was important that I know how things acutally WORKED, like how electricity generators operate, etc) I bailed out and called the Smokies to tell them I was available again. In the Smoky Mountains they had this unfortunate habit of writing out the entire schedule for the summer and plugging every person into every slot months in advance. One of those jobs had been designed for a man with a heart condition who was barely ambulatory. When it came to it, his doctor still wouldn't let him take the job, so they offered it to me, not explaining about this inhumane schedule. 36 hours a week in the booth or behind the counter in the VC. I had a walk one day a week. I am a pretty good naturalist, and enjoy the interaction with people in that naturalist setting. But the people who walk up to the kiosk in the parking area have exactly three questions: 1) How do we get to the top? 2) Where is the bathroom? 3) Where is the coke machine? You could hire a mentally challenged human to answer those questions, or a chimpanzee, but it would be considered cruel and unusual punishment to do so. So they drove a talented naturalist insane by putting her out there. I didn't last the summer. I quit in late August, totally disgusted with the place. My boss was great, but the job structure was awful and between the horrid schedule and the lousy park housing, no one in their right mind could tolerate it. I've enjoyed the jobs where I did many things, and I enjoyed the jobs where they added responsibility through the season because they realized I could handle the work and it saved others having to make long drives, etc. It meant a nicely varied resume over the years. After that job in Sugarlands near Gatlinburg, TN, I vowed never to work in a large park again. The little ones are much better, and you have more opportunity to do new and varied things. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: CarolC Date: 29 Mar 05 - 10:10 PM Thanks, Chanteyranger. That means a lot to me. I must say, there's nothing like getting paid to watch birds and identify wildflowers. ;-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: CarolC Date: 29 Mar 05 - 11:57 PM Oh, wow. Tripping down memory lane... The park I worked in was very small, SRS. It was a municipal park, and there wasn't even an interpretive center built yet. In fact, it was the first Nature Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma (Mary K. Oxley Nature Center), and probably one of only a small handful (if that many) in the whole state. We used one of the rooms in the maintenance building as our office, and one of the park pavilions as our place to teach classes when we weren't out in the woods with the kids. Because it was a new center, most of my job responsibilities involved going out into the woods and find out what was there. The founder and director of the center was from Missouri, so he knew almost nothing about what lived in that park. It was our job to find out for him. Bob was the one who taught me about the Newcombs Wildflower Guide, and I am forever grateful. I did some of the first artwork for the nature center newsletter, and helped develop teaching tools for some of the nature classes. And I collected and identified the first swamp rose mallow ever officially collected in the state of Oklahoma. Bob got credit for it though, but I don't mind. But I was a bit pissed off when the grounds crews for the golf course next to the nature center mowed my swamp rose mallow down the week after I found it). When the other seasonal naturalist and I weren't out collecting and identifying plant specimens and observing the local fauna, we were guiding nature hikes for kids whose main exposure to nature was at the zoo (Naturalist: "so, guys, why do you think that squirrel is living in that tree?" Kids: the ZOO put him there!"), and teaching ecology and orienteering to girl scouts and summer bible school kids. I loved doing that job. But I needed something more permanent and with better pay. So I became a zookeeper. :-/ There's irony for you. P.S. As a result of this thread, I did a Google search for the Oxley Nature Center and discovered in Oxley's site that Bob Jennings, my old boss, passed away not too long ago. I took the invitation in the site to send an e-mail with some of my reminiscences of working with Bob, and was also intrigued to discover that Bob had been a member of an acoustic guitar forum in his final years. Birds of a feather and all that. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: Stilly River Sage Date: 30 Mar 05 - 12:21 AM Carol, I'm really sorry to see that Bob Jennings has passed away. Of course I know about the Oxley center, Bob was very proud of it and we spoke about the area over the years. I think I first met him in 1976. I took him bird watching out on San Juan Island in Washington State in 1985 and I remember what must have been a particularly funny scene when the two of us tried sneaking up on some burrowing owls. He had been ready to spit nails when the chief of interp (a real idiot) took the visiting NAI folks (that's how I knew Bob) on a tour of the park and stopped for the California poppies but went flashing past our rare visitors (Western Meadowlarks). That's why I took him out to look for owls--it helped him cool down a little. :) SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: Stilly River Sage Date: 30 Mar 05 - 12:28 AM NAI = National Association for Interpretation (a group that came into being with the Western Interpreters Association and the Association for Interpretive Naturalists merged). |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: GUEST,CarolC Date: 30 Mar 05 - 10:29 AM I just got an e-mail from someone at Oxley saying that my reminiscences are going to be added to Bob's memorial page. Bob taught me most of what I know about being an interpretive naturalist. He was a good teacher. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mudcatter park rangers From: GUEST Date: 30 Mar 05 - 05:55 PM apeaking of rangers has anyone heard from roger lately? I've not seen him around in ages. |
