Email
PrintGolden Eagles
Retired baby boomers discover second careers in the national parks
Physicist and volunteer backcountry ranger Joe Greene says his new avocation has helped him learn how to be “more comfortable with groups of people.”
(page 1 of 4)
After a thirty-year tenure with the State of Utah’s Human Services programs, Nancy Adams embarked on a new career in the Tetons. “I’d always admired park rangers, but I never thought I could be one,” says Adams, an ex-policy analyst turned wildlife emissary. “I’m really enjoying this time in my life.”
The fifty-five-year-old Adams is part of a crew of volunteers roaming the trails and roadways of Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks, breaking the mold of a typical park employee. These workers are retired and new to the National Park Service, having left behind long and interesting careers in fields unrelated to the outdoors. In an era of decreased funding and budget cuts, volunteers like Adams have become essential to managing some of America’s most treasured public lands.
The Park Service does not track the number of retirees serving in its ranks, but Grand Teton park has dozens of older volunteers who make up about a third of the seasonal staff, says Jackie Skaggs, park spokeswoman. “We simply hire people based on the skills that they have,” she explains. “The retirees who bring experience from previous careers, of course they can apply those skills here. They may have a savvy about things that a young person hasn’t been able to learn or experience yet.”
Many of these older, seasonal employees return year after year. Skaggs cites the example of George Angelo, a teacher from Park City, Utah, who has been working each summer in Grand Teton for more than thirty years. “We have a lot of long-term seasonals whose hearts and souls [are] in this park,” Skaggs says. “A number of them … are graying.”
The Bear Necessities
While raising three children on her own, Nancy Adams never had the time or means for lengthy outdoor adventures. Family vacations were spent close to home, exploring Utah’s parks. “My primary focus was raising my kids and my job,” she says. “Now that I’m retired, I’m doing the things I love: volunteering and being outside. I think it makes me a better, more interesting person.”
While Adams was grateful to retire early from the stressful responsibilities of supervising Utah’s Human Services Policy Analyst Unit, it was important for her to continue doing what she calls “meaningful work.” At the suggestion of a friend, she filled out an online application for summer positions in Grand Teton National Park, which she figured would be the perfect way to combine her love of being outside, traveling, and volunteering.
In the spring of 2007 Adams got a call from park ranger Kate Wilmot, who offered her a position with the newly created Wildlife Brigade, a volunteer unit that encourages positive and ethical wildlife viewing in the park. The brigade carries out its work through patrolling both developed areas and the backcountry. Adams, uncertain exactly what she was agreeing to, took a deep breath and accepted the offer. “I went into it not knowing what to expect,” she says, “and I’ve ended up with this passion for bears and wildlife. You never want to stop learning and growing as a person. It’s exciting and fulfilling to do something you didn’t think was possible.”
Each morning during the summer, Adams loads into “Old Blue,” a Dodge pickup that won’t do more than forty miles per hour, and heads out on patrol. She keeps her ears tuned to the radio for “moose jams” and other campground or roadside wildlife spottings. She works with many species of wildlife, but bears were of particular concern last summer due to a scarcity of food sources. Drought and unusually warm temperatures produced a poor berry crop, which brought the bears into more human-populated areas in search of food that was not properly stored.
Adams says most park visitors understand and sympathize with the “Be Bear Aware” campaign that the Wildlife Brigade promotes, but she laments that “there were a handful of people for whom it just didn’t click. They give you that look like, ‘Oh, well ... too bad for the bear.’” With obvious sorrow, Adams explains that the park had to euthanize four bears last summer, which is about three more than normal. “I felt like we had failed the bears,” she says. “My job was to prevent that from happening.”
Adams grew particularly attached to Bear 399, a grizzly sow with three cubs frequently seen by the roads near Jackson Lake Lodge [see “The Saga of #399."]. She watched the cubs mature over the course of the summer under the nurturing and watchful eye of their mother. “399 would never get too far away,” Adams says. “If the cubs weren’t quick to come, she’d bark at them and they’d come running. One of the triplets liked to dawdle; get up on his hind legs and look up into cars. But she’d always wait for him. She did everything she could to take care of her little brood.”
Even when the summer ended and Adams was back home in Salt Lake City, she kept track of her bears through newspaper articles. Bear 399 became embroiled in a well-publicized controversy over bears feeding on gut piles left by hunters in the park. (Grand Teton park allows elk hunting in certain areas.) She was relieved, she says, when 399 and her cubs survived the season and returned to home range farther north.
One of Adams’ responsibilities—and favorite parts of the job—was trekking in the backcountry and talking with hikers, climbers, and backpackers about bears. “I lost ten pounds, which was good!” she exclaims, laughing. “It was hot, sweaty, physical work, but probably the most gratifying thing I’ve done in a long time. I can’t say I always knew what I was doing, but I learned. It’s good to say you can still learn something.”
