The Cave

One of the more interesting things I've slowly been noticing since I arrived here is the relationship between Guadalupe Mountains National Park and Carlsbad Caverns Nationals Park, known to each other in NPS shorthand as GUMO and CAVE (technically NPS shorthand dictates that the first two letters of the first two words in the park name be used, i.e. ROMO for Rocky Mountain, but they made an exception for the caverns, which would've been stuck with CACA, which is ironic given the amount of bat guano in the cave).

The two parks share a non-profit and probably 25-50% of their visitors. While working in the VC at GUMO, I often find myself related cave tour info and opperating hours to visitors stopping in on their way to the caverns, which is the destination park for tourists in the area. People on vacation to the region usually allow a day for each, and come down to GUMO to bag Guadalupe Peak (which I've decided is the most popular trail in the park, surpassing even our .4 mile paved nature trail).

In playing ultimate and going on a special employee only cave tour one night I've talked with quite a few people who do my job (interpretation) at the cave, and I've come to the conclusion that I am so glad that I work at GUMO and not the cave. The cave people (ha!) are stuck underground out of the sunlight all day, generally walking the same 3 miles of paved trails through the natural entrance and big room every day over and over again. I still haven't been on half of miles of trail that Guadalupe has, and I bet even the spectacular formations of the cave get stale after a while.

The cave rangers also have to deal with a ton more people. Carlsbad Caverns is rightly a destination national park, offering sights found nowhere else in the world. Compared to the cave, the Guadalupe Mountains are just that, mountains, and there's plenty of those around. I'm glad most of the tourists stick to the cave, I love my job at GUMO, but I couldn't do it at the cave. I can't really see myself leading tours of 50+ people every day. I'm just not that friendly, and frankly, I'm a little weird, I cringe at the thought of knowing that the little jokes I'd try to insert into cave tours to primarily entertain myself would likely bomb horribly, creating terribly awkward situations. I'll stick to talking to 1-4 people at a time on the trails or behind the VC desk at GUMO.

I'm also glad I don't have to deal with the volume of stupid tourist questions that rangers at the cave deal with. The worst I get is the indignant look of frustrated surprise that people give me when I tell them that no, you can't drive to the top of Guadalupe Peak. Some of the ones cave rangers get asked include "what time do you open the gates to let the bats out?", "do you plan on expanding the cave at any point?", and the comment "thanks for air conditioning the cave, it's really hot out today". I think I'd snap having to deal with that.

Of course, the cave rangers do have their perks. The constant 56 degree temperature in the cave makes for comfy work environment during the 100 degree summers here. Come late May I might just have changed my opinion on working in the cave. The rangers there also get to apply for special use permits for the many caves in the park, and they're allowed to invite their friends along. I was lucky enough to be included on one of those tours a couple weeks ago when 7 of us when down the natural entrance at dusk while the bat flew out to go visit Hall of the White Giant. To get to the hall requires about 45 minutes of crawling, squeezing, and climbing through passages that start right off the natural entrance trail, through you wouldn't know it was there. The hall itself contains a 20 foot stalagmite (the White Giant) and a ton of soda straw formations. We couldn't continue on, but if you did, the second largest chamber in the park, the Guadalupe room, is further down some more narrow passages. The park only lets 8 visitors a week sign up for this tour, so I felt lucky to get to see it, especially with park personnel on their off time.

A week ago I went to the cave to take advantage the free entry I receive thanks to my GUMO employment and see the main sights for the first time as a geologist (I had previously visited in 2001). Pictures included below.


The Bashful Elephant, on the Kings Palace tour


The Big Room from the far end


The Hall of Giants

NPS Sports

Despite living in the middle of nowhere I have been able to continue my participation in team sports here. When I arrived I was relieved to see a basketball hoop in the parking lot by the seasonal housing, a way to get some exercise without having to run laps on the access road. I go out there and shoot around pretty much every day, sometimes for up to an hour. Most of the time it's so windy I have to aim 5 feet to the right of the basket to have a prayer of making the shot, but shooting around it more about the time I spend out there than my shooting percentage. It's a great way to relax after a days work, though it's not like I need to de-stress or anything given all I do is hike and talk.

In any case, I was shooting around enough I got my jumper back. I found this out while playing 2v2 against some guys on the fire crew last week. For the first time in 4-5 years I was able to break down a guy off the dribble, and pull up and make a shot. And the fire crew guys were decent too, it's not like I was schooling chumps. Now the fire crew is trying to put together a team to go and challenge the best 5 Carlsbad Caverns has to offer. I'm looking forward to that game.

Speaking of schooling chumps though, I've also found a pick-up frisbee game. It's Park service employees only, and we play once a week in Carlsbad. I'm usually the only one who drives all the way from GUMO, but I've had company a couple times. It's by far the lowest quality pick up I've ever played. There's no stall count, no real understanding of the rules (tons of picks, no calls), and turnovers are so prevalent that playing 4v5 isn't looked at as a disadvantage. No one aside from me has a forehand or has played organized ultimate. I'm like Blake Griffin playing against a highschoolers. Despite all that though, I love it. It makes my week. Something about playing the sport of ultimate just washes away any bad or troubling thoughts and lets me simply run around and have fun. Plus as always the people who play are really cool, and it's great to get to know people outside of my 10 person social network at GUMO. Cave people and the cave itself are all very interesting, but that's the subject of another post.

Home Sweet Government Home

The Jeep, my house (my room is in the near corner), and the rest of the seasonal housing complex.


My basketball court with a view. I probably shoot around here, ignoring the 50 mph winds, at least 5 days a week for some exercise and what's turning into some highly-valued me time.

It's been an exciting week here at the Guadalupe Mountains. One of my favorite perks of being an employee (technically volunteer intern, but same difference) here is getting to carry a radio around when I go hiking. The park is so small that all the divisions (interp, maintainence, law enforcement, fire) use the same radio channel, so I get to hear all the park goings-on. It's like listening to NPR if all they did was sporadically report boring or offbeat news. Here's the week in review:

Tuesday: The park mules get a workout hauling a 300 lb man who broke his ankle down from the high country

Wednesday: A morning wildfire (only 140 acres) gets the park personnel moving early, reports of engine location and fire status fill the radio waves for two hours until the fire is out. The event ends humorously when the GUMO fire engine gets locked inside the ranch where the fire was. Apparently the rancher though having his own personal fire fighters was worth the potential kidnapping accusations.

Thursday: A car flips on the highway near the park, GUMO EMS and law enforcement respond. Interestingly enough the driver of the flipped vehicle is nowhere to be seen. He is eventually found a mile down the road smoking a cigarette.

Friday: A cow gets loose and it takes the entire morning for two LE's (Law Enforcement Rangers) to figure out which ranch it belongs to how to get it back inside the fence.

Saturday: The local highway patrol officer sees fit to stop a car for speeding every 10 minutes, leading to awkward conversations for me while hiking Guadalupe Peak. I would be talking to some people on the trail, and the next thing I know someone's driver's license number and criminal record are being relayed loud and clear from my backpack. Probably not information for the public domain, but, I have to keep the radio on and loud enough so I can hear it should someone try to contact me, so there's not much I can do.

Sunday: A report comes in of an unconsious woman sitting in a vehicle on the side of the road. After 20 tense minutes of scrambling the local ambulence, it turns out she was just asleep and the 911 caller didn't bother knocking hard enough on the car window to wake her up.

The other great perk of working here is being privy to the key that opens everything. Even as a lowly intern, my one key has opened every gate and building I've tried it on, and I'm apparently welcome to use the key to access somewhere whenever I want. So, if you want an exclusive tour of the park including sights visitors can't access, stop on by and I'll show you. If I'm doing roving interp that day it'll even count as work.

As for the perceived bureaucratic downside to working for the government, I haven't really noticed it. Sure it took maintainance nearly a month to replace the clothes dryer that broke just before I showed up, but it seems the park service in general is a pretty laid back, if not the most laid back, branch of the federal government. I'm also low enough on the totem pole here (i.e. at the bottom) to not have to deal with some of the forms and regulations required of the higher ups that can give them a bad rap.

All in all, I'd recommend the park service, it seems no more uptight than any other workplace I've heard of my friends working at, and while the key to your office lets you access the storage closet, the key to my office gets me into a historic 1930's ranch house in a pristine wilderness canyon.

A Cast of Characters

I've been at Guadalupe Mountains National Park (or GUMO in governmental shorthand) almost 3 weeks now. I continue to love the fact I get to hike for my job about 40% of the time, though now that I'm getting to know the trails, I'm finding myself told to work the desk at the visitor center to answer questions more. Fun fact, if you call up the national park on any day not Monday or Tuesday, there's a decent chance I'll be answering. I work the desk another 40% of my time, with the other 20% spent doing odd jobs for the natural resources division or preparing for a 10 minute park geology presentation I'm supposed to be giving at some point.

In my last post I talked a little about the people I'm sharing the park housing with. This whole park is run by a staff of no more than 40 people, including all maintainance, law enforcement, interpretation, and natural resources personnel. Most of the senior rangers, or anyone with a family really, live in Carlsbad and commute the hour back and forth every day. That leaves the seasonal volunteers and rangers (usually either retired couples or younger single people) in the park housing. I counted the other day and found that within this subset I have a total of 9 potential friends, meaning that, including me, there are only 10 people remotely close to my age who live in park housing. I've met all of them now and get along with them all, thankfully.

On the other hand, none of them are of the long-term friend type for me, and in most cases seem to get along with other people within the 10 person subset better than me. Still, I've had some great conversations with them so far. The park service attracts people from all types of backgrounds, but these people all generally share a common personality type, that type being they are people who love living in a wilderness area a long drive from anything. This personality quirk helps bind an otherwise diverse group together. This subset of 10 includes 6 men and 4 women, I am the 2nd youngest, most are late 20's to mid 30's. There are 2 maintainance, 3 law enforcement, 3 fire, and 2 interpretation (that's me) among us, and our varying schedules (everyone has different sets of days off since the park is always open and busiest on weekends) make hanging out difficult. The lack of activities besides drinking or watching TV also limits the social ability of our group, which can often devolve into rounds of shots of at 10pm because 10pm is a lame time to be going to sleep. I am fine with an occasional night of moderate to heavy drinking, but the frequency with which I have witnessed these boredom-induced nights of shot-taking is beginning to raise my concern that a bigger issue exists among my potential friends. After the last two weeks of introductions and trying to be sociable and friendly, I am going to be having more solitary nights from now on.

The national park service is a great racket for work. I've met some people who work at Carlsbad Caverns as well, and many of the younger seasonal rangers at the two parks have spent their recent lives hopping from park to park, holding temporary positions and working and living in some of the country's most amazing locations. As soon as this possibility of employment occurred to me, I had dreams of ski instructing in the winter and working in the national parks in the summer. Not a bad life at all, and the rangers I've met who are doing it can't say a bad thing about it.

The relative ease of the work, and the workers contentment to simply live in an amazing place, however, has led me to be reintroduced to a type of a person I have not interacted with since high school; the person without a strong career drive or an ambition to succeed or excel at something. These people also work for the government, and view those coworkers with ambition skeptically, as those people are nearly always douchebags who care more about their next job than the one they are doing now. Employment in the government for those who want a raise seems all about by-the-book compliance and brown nosing your way into a higher GS pay grade, and the type of person who loves to live in the wilderness rarely loves living by the book as well, creating a void between senior rangers and seasonal rangers that is easily detected, even in just the 3 weeks I've been here. The downside to this is that my ambitions and life dreams of a Ph.D. and scientific research have rubbed members of our 10 person social herd the wrong way, and I have felt vibes of anti-intellectualism directed my way, or inklings of resentment as they see my masters degree as proof that I think that I'm better than them. And the thing is, there's a part of me that does, a part of me that has always viewed with a certain degree of shame a person whom I thought had no desire to fulfill their potential.

All negatives aside, the people I share my park housing existence with are funny, entertaining, unique, and enjoyable to spend time with a majority of the day. I am learning to simply enjoy the company of other people without judging or comparison, and I hope that they are understanding and forgiving and do the same for me, because I'll admit I can be an asshole sometimes, but I'm working it. I am using this experience to my advantage, and trying to learn from my fellow and older seasonal housing residents what living to one's potential actually means. Or what have a successful life implies and how it can vary not only from person to person but within oneself over time. This is a group of people vastly different from me, but yet with many similar basic desires, and I look forward to continuing to hang out with them. The point of this sabatical from academic work was to see what else is out there, and already just 3 weeks in, I am seeing it, and for the most part, I am enjoying it.