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.