National Park life
I’ve lived a life only a very small percentage of the populace has had the privilege to experience. More than forty years my park ranger husband and I lived at the whim of the National Park Service. Not that that was difficult. Stephen, my husband claims he retired from the best profession in the world. We moved a lot, but his job took us to some of the country’s most fascinating and beautiful places. Our daughter grew to adulthood in a very unique environment, the park community. In forty years I’ve collected some great annotates of the people who visit national parks.
Snow on El Capitan, Yosemite National Park
We were married in Yosemite. Our first year, we lived the spring and fall seasons in the Crane Flat Ranger Station duplex. We loved the place. It is a beautiful log structure on the side of a mountain built by the CCC in the nineteen twenties, with gorgeous oak counter tops and wood heat. Over the years, the NPS added generator power, which was iffy at best, and gas cooled refrigerators that when we were away for more than a couple hours froze everything.
That fall there was an early snow storm that dropped a foot of snow and caught vacationers by surprise. As I drove home from work in Yosemite Valley, I kept passing cars abandoned in the middle of the lane and had to drive around them. When I pulled in behind the house and went inside, there were a dozen people standing around, awkward and shivering. A minute or two later, Ranger Stephen arrived, much to their relief. We set about building a fire in the cook stove and making coffee.
The room full of people held out one hand to the warmth and sipped coffee with the other while Steve and I closed ourselves into the bedroom. When we emerged slipping into our coats, they all gasped out, “Where you were going?”
“A party in the Valley,” we said. They stared at us as if we were alien. Over the years we’ve rescued quite a lot of people in a variety of circumstances. All of them grateful and showering us with thanks. These people are some of the treasured experiences of living and working in a national park.