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.