The Centennial: You say it's your birthday? Well it's my birthday too!

Full disclosure: This blog is produced by National Park Service employees in their free time. None of it is officially guided, approved, managed, or permitted by NPS. It should not be taken as anything official, and any content from it should not be considered the opinion of the National Park Service. What I'm really try to say is that this is a blog about the National Park Service, not a National Park Service Blog. To be honest we don't even know if we're really allowed to have this blog, but no one has yelled at us to stop yet, so it's probably ok.

So, this has been a BIG thing in planning, but we weren't allowed to share any of it publicly until it was officially announced. It been hard to keep it quiet, because as Parkies we want to scream about all the amazing things in NPS until someone throws us off the edge of the Grand Canyon. Now that it's all public, here goes:

The National Park Service turns 100 in 2016! And because we're just *that* cool we're gonna make our party so big that it won't even fit in a whole year, let alone a day!

It's been branded as the Centennial movement and there's a huge push to ensure we're still a relevant organization. Some parts of our mission are simple, like protecting natural sites from development. Others are a bit different, because they focus on remembering powerful events that shaped us as a country. Some of these sites are well known, like Appomattox Court House National Historical Park where the Civil war ended, or Ellis Island where millions of immigrants passed through on their way to the United States. Others are less well known, especially those from the modern era. Places like  César E. Chávez National Monument in California or The Stonewall Inn (and surrounding area) that is considered one of the most important sites of the LGBT civil rights movement.

Almost every major city has a National Park Service presence, but many people only associate the idea of the National Parks with places out West that they may never get to see. The Park Service is doing it's best to educate the public about how we can serve them, even if they don't make a multi-state trip to go Visit the Red Rocks of Zion or the lush rain forests of Olympic. We want to help people find their park, and there's going to be a TON of work on our part to do so.

The public facing focus of the Centennial is going to be the Find Your Park campaign! This is going to be a HUGE push to get people to come join us in the parks. Think TV, magazines, billboards, newspapers, social media, movies, EVERYTHING! As a serious Parkie this just makes me want to Squee with joy! We dump every ounce of our energy into trying to get people to enjoy the places we protect for them and so many people don't even know we exist. It will be really good to (hopefully) see people realize that we exist to serve THEM. Everything we do is for the general public and we really want them to come take advantage of it.

We've got big tie-ins coming as well. You know what people like? Parades! You know what one of the biggest parades on earth is? The Rose Parade! You know how many countries the Rose Parade is broadcast to? 200! You know what the theme of the 2016 Rose Parade is gonna be? THE FREAKING NATIONAL PARKS! Seriously, the amount of Parkie Pride is almost oozing out of my pores right now!

You know what else people like? Movies! You like having your eyeballs filled with giant pictures of beautiful places THAT BELONG TO YOU? We're gonna do that too! Can't say more yet, but just know that it will be awesome!

Well, there's a ball of awesome about the great stuff coming in the next year. If you want up to the minute info both the National Park Foundation Facebook page and the official National Park Service Facebook page will both be overflowing with info about all the cool stuff we're doing. Keep an eye on them and get out and enjoy it, because in the end it's EVERYBODY'S party!

Moving up and moving out: Letting go in the Park Service. - Part 1. Context.

Note: This post and the one that will follow it are two parts to the same story. It started with a brief post about moving on to bigger and better Park Service jobs, but after writing it I realized that without an understanding of the culture inside NPS it wouldn't convey the true emotional weight. This blog is dedicated to helping people get an inside view of what life in the Park Service is like, so I decided it would be better to provide the context first (In this post), and then follow up with the story in the next post. Both ended up significantly longer than I expected, but I wanted paint the complete picture to really explain why this was such a meaningful experience for us.

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At some point in their lives everybody moves away from home. For some people that time is when they go off to college, for others it's their first real job. For me, it was leaving my Home Park.

First, let's put a little bit of Park Service lingo out there: 

"Home Park"

A home park isn't a designated base that we're each assigned to upon our Park Service Birth. There's not a box on a form somewhere that says "Your home park is _________ ", and it's not something official you'll find filed somewhere in Human Resources. 

A person's "Home Park" is generally the first park they ever worked in. But, not always. Sometimes it's the first Park they fell in love with, their favorite Park Service site, or even a site they never even had a direct connection with, but feel strongly attached to. It's a nebulous, touchy-feely thing (like many things in NPS) but it's a strong piece of a Parkie's identity.

A person's Home Park is self-declared, and as such normally holds great meaning to them. In many ways, it marks a person's birth as a Parkie and can tell you a lot about a person. Eastern, Western, Southern, or Northern. Urban or rural. Monument, Historic, Recreation Area, Lakeshore, or Park; it can show what brought them to the Service, or what kept them. It can give hints of their personality though an infatuation with a hidden, quiet, secluded location or display an outgoing personality expressed through the brash love of a big, boisterous, untamed wilderness. It can tell you where they came from and where they've been since then. Home Parks can hold great meaning to people. Experiences, stories, friends, goals (and tattoos!) can all be tied to where you found your niche, made your park, and were reborn into your new home. As people have immense pride in home parks, it's common to discuss in parkie circles not just the park you currently work at, but the home park that shaped you.

So there, good readers, is a overly verbose explanation of a shadowy half-secret part of Park Service culture. 

I might also mention that while "Home Parks" are somewhat of a park-insider term, there's going to be very big push for the National Park Service's centennial in 2016 to help people find their own park. I can't say much yet, but what I can say is that It's gonna be an awesome year if you love the National Parks!

We now move on to the amazing community, the not-shadowy half-secret of the Park Service:

Over an NPS career you build a genealogy of your parks. From your home park you move and grow, and with each jump you help weave the tangled social fabric that makes the Park Service such a tight knit community. Throughout a Park Service career you will likely bounce from place to place for seasons, jobs, promotions, and status. Every time you land in a new site you're displaced, alone, and in a strange new land. Repeat this at hundreds of Park Service sites across the country (and a few we have scattered across the world) you build a working community that understands the difficulty of relocation and works to ease the transition as people come and go. Luckily, most of us share our love of the parks, so the first introductions almost always have an easy topic as people share "their" part of the Park Service.

Add in the remoteness of many parks and the small populations that serve them and you have the foundation for the Park Service culture of incredibly strong, friendly, supportive, self-sufficient communities, complete with their own stores, schools, hospitals, and other services. In a big place like Grand Canyon you have an amazingly tight knit community that exists as an island, even as millions of tourists flow through it every year. The locals all know each other, and if you have a job that lets you interact with other locals it's very common that anywhere you go you'll know every single local there. 

It can be a difficult transition for people who are used to a life with anonymity, or a life that their work and home lives are two very separate things. In many parks there's not really an on duty or off duty. You spend your free time giving lost tourists directions, and your work time joking with your friends (who also happen to be your coworkers, your bosses, your subordinates, the person serving your lunch, etc.) You often end up living every moment of your life as a living, breathing, part of the park, whether you want to or not. Some people hate this, and it chases them away from the Park Service, but others (like me) flourish in it. Your life becomes your park, and helping people see and feel the the place that means so much to you can be an amazing thing. It can give a meaning and purpose to live that might otherwise be lacking, and sometimes you get to feel like you really make a difference to someone. 

Back on topic: Now, you have a strong community system with constantly relocating employees with shared interests. What happens? Strong social networks! With only 20,000-30,000 employees (Depending on who’s counting) NPS is a pretty small organization, and it’s an organization in which many people spend whole careers. Match this with the high relocation rate and it’s very likely that only have a few (if any) degrees of separation from employees at any other park.

Take this example:

In 2012 SaintLost and I visited Puerto Rico. We did very little advanced planning, and had no real plans ahead of time to visit the National Park Site there (San Juan NHS). To be honest it hadn't really occurred to me that that NPS had a presence there, as Puerto Rico wasn't really on my radar as someone who was raised in a Western state. 

After a few days drinking Pina Coladas in San Juan we decided to mosey over and visit Castillo San Cristobal. We pranced over to the interpretive area near the entrance and chatted with the Ranger. We talked about his park and our park and wandered off to go explore. 

After an hour or so we wandered by one of their information desks. As we passed a Ranger said our names. She came over, said hello, and explained that the Ranger that we met when we entered the site had mentioned there were two Parkies visiting from Grand Canyon. 

Image Credit: CBD

One of us had blue hair at the time so I can't imagine we were hard to spot.

The Ranger explained that she had recently transferred from White Sands National Monument and wanted to know if we knew a Ranger she had worked with there (Who had since moved to the Grand Canyon). As a result of the tight knit community at the Canyon, we knew her friend quite well, and we filled her in on the happenings in her former coworker's life while she and another Ranger gave us a tour of the park. 

 Image Credit: CBD

National Park Service and the Caribbean? Sign me up!

That was an amazing experience. More than 2,000 miles away from our home park we were able to walk in and not only be surrounded by our extended Park Service family, but had a single degree of separation from someone. It's an incredibly positive feeling when you realize how far away you really are, but you still feel like you walked right in the door at home.

 Image Credit: CBD

Like many historic doors in the Park Service, walking through this one without looking can have dangerous consequences.

Now, lets take this another degree, because there's no understating how interconnected the Park Service can feel. This month, more than two years after our visit to San Juan, I took an online training. In that training was an employee who worked for San Jaun NHS, and with just a few chats back and forth they had passed on my hellos to the Rangers who I had met all that time ago, reinforcing the community ties that make the Park Service feel like an extended family.

With each Parkie conversation, a new connection is created. Each new connection links a multitude of extended Park Service family members forever, tied by our strong sense of community and love of the places we protect. 

Source: https://www.newton.ac.uk/files/events/themes/idd-350x276.jpg

Okay, that's actually a map of how infectious diseases spread, but I'd bet that Park Service friendship transmissions rates are even higher!

Together we support each other, across parks, across states, and even across countries as US Parks pair with other National Parks all over the world to foster America's Best Idea. 

 Image Credit: CBD

Sorry for the delay!

Hi everybody.

Sorry about the lack of posts. Our primary contributors recently moved from jobs at Grand Canyon National Park to new jobs (Still Park Service!) with the Pacific West Regional Office in Seattle. They have multiple posts in-progress but the effort of picking up and moving 1500 miles for new jobs has severely limited their ability to post regularly.

Please feel free to subscribe so you receive notifications as soon as we get back up and running on a regular schedule!

We also throw out a hello to the visitors who are coming via The Roaming Base Camp! Feel free to peruse the archive of past posts here.

Postcards from Alaska - Rebuilding a Whale

One of our SCA writers has been very busy at her current home up in Glacier Bay National Park. Without going into the things she's been doing on and off work (that's for her next entry), we wanted to showcase the project she's been involved in: Rebuilding "Snow", a humpback whale that died in 2001. You can find the details on Glacier Bay NPS's website, along with a brief editorial on the Student Conservation Association's website.

~CBD

A Rookie’s Perspective: Why don’t you love this?!

Editor's note: Alexa is a first-time NPS intern at Devil's Tower National Monument. We hope to have her chronicle her first season as a parallel to the "Postcards from Alaska" series. Her author bio is available at our Contributors page.



As the third full week of my internship comes to a close and my life feels less like a vacation, I’m still struggling to understand the tourist mentality.

“Let’s hit as many of these national parks in a single day as we can! If we leave Yellowstone by 8 a.m., we can hit Devil's Tower and Badlands before the closing ceremony at Rushmore!”

What? Why? Why won’t you stay for sunset? Why not just camp here tonight, watch the sunrise, and then go to Mount Rushmore? Hell, spend a few days here!

Every day, I see families, groups, couples, lone travelers stop for an hour or two to look at the tower before speeding off down the twisting exit road to the interstate.  Park.  Snap a photo.  Walk up to the base.  Retreat.  Leave.  Like clockwork.   How can you love this place if you’re only here for seconds?  How am I supposed to help you understand this place if you can’t even experience these beautiful Wyoming nights?  How will you ever appreciate this place (“in your own way”) if you don’t even know what a full day here feels like?  How will you ever know what the other side of the tower looks like?!

I try so, so hard to encourage people to stay longer. “You know, we have a really cool evening program tonight at the amphitheater.  It’s the perfect vantage point for the sunset!”

“Sorry, we’re trying to get to Rushmore by sunset.”

“Sorry, we’ve got a full day of traveling to Yellowstone ahead of us.”

“Sorry, we can’t.”

During my walks and programs and informal talks with visitors, I try my best to “give them the information so they can learn to appreciate this place in their own way.”  I try to talk about whatever they're interested in so they, too, can see how amazing this place is.  I try to show them all the cool, secret rock ledges to sit on.  I try.  But still, somehow, I encounter those who just can’t enjoy themselves here.

Normally, I would think that’s okay.  The geographer in me knows that everyone will appreciate places in their own way – positive or not.  But I just can’t help but blame the person spewing those horrible accusations (especially after I’ve shown them the cool rock ledges).

You’re never going to love this place if you’re only here for an hour, mid-day.  I know you just want to talk about the tower right in front of you, but turn around!  Look at the view! Look at the plains and the Black Hills!  If you don’t love it, I’m keeping these rock ledges for myself.

Before this internship began, I thought I’d be sharing cool stories with curious visitors.  I thought I would be talking about geology to people who are truly interested in learning.  I thought I would be encouraging people to step off the nicely-paved tower trail to go explore the red beds or Joyner ridge or one of the many wilderness areas that speckle my map with green.  It’s not that I don’t try; I do.  Maybe it’s because I’m at a smaller park/pit stop for those going between Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone.  Maybe it’s because these people have schedules to keep up with or itineraries to follow.  Maybe I just don’t share enough of my enthusiasm (I think if I try to share any more enthusiasm I will be numb).

I guess it just takes patience and practice to make it through the day listening to people rush rush rush when the land is telling you to relax and stay for a while. Or maybe it’s just me, no one else seems as bothered by it. Whatever the case may be, I have an incredible amount of respect for park rangers now after seeing the amount of people they have to interact with on a daily basis, especially those who insult our park.

A Rookie’s Perspective: My Life is Still a Vacation

Editor's note: This is Alexa's first post. She is a first-time NPS intern at Devil's Tower National Monument. We hope to have her chronicle her first season as a parallel to the "Postcards from Alaska" series. Her author bio is available at our Contributors page.

“...so one day my mother sat me down and explained that I couldn't become an explorer because everything in the world had already been discovered. I'd been born in the wrong century, and I felt cheated.”  – Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

I’ve always been an explorer, whether or not I use the term formally.  One year ago, I sat in an environmental history class with a professor and former National Park Ranger who thoughtfully and enthusiastically shared her knowledge of, in part, the history of the National Park Service.  Her enthusiasm matched my interest, and I am now interning at America’s first national monument.

Just a week ago, I arrived in Wyoming after a long, miserable trip from upstate New York.  My roommate picked me up at a small county airport about an hour away from Devils Tower National Monument.  I was exhausted and it was the middle of the night, but I still managed to gasp when I saw the shadow of the tower against the purple-y night sky.  My roommate probably thought my excitement was a little ridiculous, but I couldn’t hide how cool I thought the view was.

I still think the tower at night is better than in the daytime.  During the day, you see what you expect.  It looks just like what you see in the pictures (actually, it’s much better, but the details are the same).  But, when you visit the tower at night, you just see this mass of darkness against the best view of the Milky Way ever.  It’s something you can’t photograph and expect to be the same.

The best part of it all is that you can see the tower at night.   Not just the rangers.  Not just the raccoons that freak me out.  Not just me.  Anyone can see it or any national park because it’s not just my tower or the state of Wyoming’s tower. It’s public land.  I am still getting over the fact that we can all be here whenever we want because it is all ours.

--

I’ve only been here a week, so I kind of am still in vacation mode.  Every morning while I’m opening the Visitor Center, I see the tourists sleepily emerge from their warm cars and gasp at the height of the tower.  If I didn’t walk to work, I would be doing the exact same thing.  I just can’t believe that something so amazing can actually exist.  When I take the trail home from work, I can’t believe the red rocks and winding river are actually there.  The only thing tethering me down to the real world is the massive amount of paperwork I’ve had to do this week.

Which leads me to the actual work part of this: there is a lot of it.  I intern 8-hour days like a real adult and have lots of paperwork.  I have to cook my own food (help, mom and dad!).  I give (and plan) tower walks and short talks and evening programs just like the Rangers. I work in the Visitor Center. I rove the trails. But, still, it doesn’t feel like any job I’m used to.  It may be because it’s the first week, or it may be because I’m in one of America’s amazing parks and monuments.

Whatever the case, I could never have imagined this is what I would be doing for the summer.  I never want to stop exploring the boulder field and the red beds and the prairie grass fields.  I never want to stop the alertness I have while hiking to watch for rattle snakes.  I never want to stop telling people about the geology and history and culture of the Black Hills and the high plains.  It may be the new job high, but I feel like I’m on a vacation, and I never want it to end.

-Alexa.

More than rangers - Organization and job diversity in the modern Park Service.

Not everyone has the advantage of growing up as a park brat, but that doesn't mean that a life in the Park Service is out of reach. We talk with people all the time who are convinced that it's their dream job, but there's just no way that they could do it. They don't think they could compete, they don't think they could relocate, and most of all they don't think their skills are applicable to the service.

The reality is that the NPS is a complex organization, with thousands of different jobs and duties. The Rangers that visitors see are the public face of the Park Service, but for ever Ranger you see there are 5-10 support staff working to ensure that everything goes smoothly in the background.

Many of the contributors to this blog are members of the support staff. We operate in jobs that the public is never going to see, doing things that people don't associate with the National Parks. We don't wear uniforms, or give programs to teach people about the parks, but we bleed green and grey just the same. Our talents aren't suited to interacting with visitors day after day, but we still work hard to ensure that the parks remain safe, functional, and preserved for future generations to enjoy.

If you're interested in becoming part of the Park Service, but don't want to become a "Ranger", then it might help to have a brief overview of the organization of NPS.

NPS Employment within a park, monument, region, etc. breaks down into 5 main "Divisions", each with designated duties related to the Park Service mission.

Administration: The admin staff of parks handles things like payroll, budget, human resources, Information Technology, and purchasing. Other departments, such as Concessions and OPAC (office of planning and compliance), usually also end up as a subset of this division.

Facility Maintenance (also known as "Design and Engineering"): The maintenance staff works to cover everything from building and housing maintenance to trail construction and waste management. In most NPS locations this is actually the largest portion of the staff.

Science & Resource Management (also known as "Natural\Cultural Resources"): S&RM functions as the academic side of the Park Service. Staff who work for S&RM include Biologists, Botanists, Zoologists, Archaeologists, Paleontologists, Hydrologists, Geologists, and every other kind of "ologist" you could imagine. They work in tasks as varied of their specialties, with duties ranging from active research to historic preservation.  

Interpretation: These are the Rangers that people think of when they imagine the National Park Service. Flat hats with green and grey uniforms giving programs or guiding events in the park. Interpretation staff make up half of the "Ranger" title. They offer presentations and programs, provide visitor information, and cover all kinds of other work designed to help people learn about, and enjoy their National Parks.

Visitor and Resource Protection: V&RP includes the primary other "Ranger" type. Law Enforcement Rangers. This division also includes programs like Backcountry Management, Fee Collection, Wildland and Structural firefighting, Emergency Services, and campground staff.

Once upon a time in the Park Service a "Ranger" was expected to be everything for a park. The law enforcement, the scientist, the interpreter, and the maintenance staff. These days the requirements of each job have become compartmentalized, because you can't expect every employee to be a federally credentialed law enforcement officer while also having a degree in Botany and knowledge on how to work a bulldozer. Because of this the Park Service family is incredibly varied in skill set, and just because you can't track a deer through the woods or give a Ranger Program to a crowd doesn't mean that's not a place where your skills can be put to use.

So, if you think that you'd rather have a Bison for a neighbor than an apartment building, or you feel like you'd rather be paid in sunrises than cold hard cash, consider taking a look joining the NPS family. You'll kick yourself every time you see your paycheck, and you'll wonder why you signed up for 150-mile grocery runs, but every time you get to step out and enjoy the beauty around you you'll understand that it was the best bad decision you ever made.

~CBD