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Show 3 F THE DAY PARK RANGERS TOOK ME FOR A RIDE A decade after hanging up the Smoky hat Arches is completely different. And exactly the same. By Jim Stiles said to myself more than a decade ago, "I won't be needing this monkey suit anymore. With minimal ceremony and only a touch of nostalgia (at the time), I dumped my gray polyester cotton blend uniform shirts and loden green jeans into a plastic bag and stuffed them into an open space at the back of my junk closet I thought I'd let them mildew for a while. It was late September 1986. After eleven years at Arches National Park, I gave up my glorious seasonal career in the National Park Service that autumn. In the history of the park, no one before or since has ever been stupid enough to work that many seasons at Arches and, specifically, at the Devils Garden "Well," I campground. Everyone agreed, including me, it was time to go. I still view those eleven seasons at the park with mixed emotions. Sweet and sometimes bittersweet memories of friends and fellow rangers lie beside recollections of perfect desert mornings and quiet nights and crazed campers and idiotic tourists. "Yes, we liked to say, "we have it all, right here at Arches National Park." In the m id-- 8 Os, we thought tourism at the park could not get much worse. My partner at the Devils Garden, Mike Salamacha, used to get out of the trailer before sunrise just to avoid the early onslaught of morning questions. We constructed signs and barricades in front of our rickety residence, futilely hoping to avert tourist interruptions ("Excuse me, ranger.. .er...I saw your 'RANGER RESIDENCE: Leave us alone you gravy sucking tourist pigs' sign, but where exactly is the dumping station?"). place anyway. We spent a few minutes racking our collective brains, trying to remember if there has ever been a felony arrest in the park for a real criminal. What we could both remember is a few jerks here and there, over foe years, that everyone wanted to beat senseless, but who usually ended up with a warning or a ticket. NPS law enforcement image is dictated by a set of criteria established in The foe late 1970s called NPS-9- . In an attempt to standardize law enforcement drill, foe Park Service established levels of training that all rangers with law enforcement responsibilities were required to meet. So, whether a ranger works at a low key place like Natural Bridges National Monument, where hardly anything happens, or a park area like the Grand Canyon's South Rim, where practically everything happens, the expected LE. skill levels are the same. And the "defensive equipment" is mandatory, especially in the fronteountry. That's why all foe rangers "pack a rod." Wendy's shift on this summer holiday was quiet. But while they may not spend a lot of time chasing bad guys at Arches, with almost a milium people passing through each year, there is more than enough to keep everyone busy. "It comes in spurts," said Wendy as we turned off the main road at Balanced Rock. "Well have a few slow days where nothing happens at all. And then suddenly we're up to our necks in emergencies." Just last week, a man complained of chest pains while hiking the Delicate Arch Trail. Rangers were on the scene in a matter of minutes and paramedics from Moab were right behind. Their incredibly fast response time made all foe difference when the man went into full cardiac arrest and, literally, dropped dead in front of them. With a portable defibrillator, they put the paddles on foe man's chest and shocked him, for better or worse, bade into the Real World. According to Wendy, at last report, he was doing well, recuperating at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction, eating his share of roast beef sandwiches. Medical emergencies. Broken ankles on foe Devils Garden Trail and subsequent carry-nu-t, technical rescues it's all in a day's work. In that regard things haven't changed much. There are no more fatheads per thousand tourists than there ever was. But there are so many more thousands of tourists. Thus...more fatheads. Wendy and other rangers recently extracted a tourist from foe top of Turret Arch. Why he was up there is anybody's guess. But with ropes and hardware and a lot of skill and patience, the man was safely removed from his predicament. I used to grow particularly weary of rim rocked hikers, who found themselves out on an exposed piece of sandstone and unable to move. Frozen with fear. Sometimes they were only eight or nine feet off the ground and it seemed like a waste of time to get out foe ropes and all that equipment for such a pitiful little rescue... "high-profil- e" "My god! Somebody help me! "Hello up there. Listen I'm foe a rope" ranger and if you insist, we can get up there above you with "Hellllllp me!" He looks ashen. His eyes are wild. "Let me finish, ok? You're only eight or nine feet off foe ground. ..ten at the tops. Why don't you just jump?" "What? Are Wendy you nuts?" Tears are streaming down this man's face. "I'm telling you, if you aim for the juniper tree, you're going to walk away from this with just a few scratches." Hove Didn't work. When we both left Arches, we knew visitation increases had to slow down. After all, in my decade of service, the number of Arches-boun- d tourists increased from 300,000 to 400,000. All those extra feet trampling the cryptobiotic soil. The mind boggled. Surely things would slow down a bit. 1997. It took a decade, from 1976 to 1986, for visitation to climb by another 100,000 people. In die next ten years, it would accelerate by four times that rate of growth. Last year, more than 800, 000.. .EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSANDL.visitors pushed and shoved their way through the cramped visitor center and crept up the paved park highway. J heard stories that foe rangers out there weren't having fun anymore and that hardly anyone had foe time to spend an afternoon asleep (on duty) under their favorite juniper tree. To me, this was a violation of everything dear and precious to any park ranger. Could it be that bad? Had I not realized how service as a screw-of- f seasonal? Were these lucky I was during those years of 90s of foe work for their paycheck? actually being forced to rangers I had to know. I always thought that if I ever found myself inside an NPS patrol cruiser again, I'd be in handcuffs and in a state of incarceration. Luckily, I didn't have to get that radical to ride with foe rangers. All I had to do was call Chief Ranger Jim Webster and Park Naturalist Andy Nettell. They set up some rides, gave me some times, and told me to have a good time. bumper-to-bump- er semi-enthusias- tic On foe Road with Ranger Howe So at 7AM on the Fourth of July I drove to the Arches Maintenance Yard. ..actually I was late 20 by minutes., jnd met Law Enforcement Ranger Wendy Howe at foe new ranger building (new to me, at least). Wendy is a Westerner by birth she came from Estes Park, Colorado where her father was an air traffic controller. She has worked at several national parks, induding Canyonlands and Yosemite, and for the last three years at Arches, where her husband Galen is also employed as a law enforcement ranger. We headed up the park switchbacks in a police cruiser, with a confusing anay of electronic equipment two way radio, a speed gun (radar), siren and light control console. The Works. Hovering over our heads was a pump-actio- n 12 gauge riot shotgun, bolted to foe headliner. Wendy was armed as well, with a 357 magnum sidearm, extra speed loaders, cuffs and mag-litBy contrast, I spent the first two years at Arches driving around in a CJ5 Jeep that was held together with duct tape. One day my boss, Chief Ranger Jerry Epperson, gave me a snubnosed 38 revolver wrapped up in a sock. I didn't even know how to load it "What am 1 supposed to do with this?" I asked Jerry. "Do you have an underwear drawer? he inquired. "Well, sure; Jerry. Doesn't everybody?" "Fine," he said. "Put this in the bottom of your underwear drawer. Every time you see the to do laundry. At the end of the season give me foe gun back." gim, you'll know it's time I thought it was a good system. Yet in 1997, with all that gear. Ranger Howe still does not come across as a ldckass cop. Despite the weight (and firepower) she has to wear around her waist, Wendy Howe is, first and n foremost; a ranger. And she likes it that way. Arches has never been much of a fully-equipp- ed multi-chann- el e. crime-ridde- "My godddddddridririririririririririi" Salamacha and I requested one of those firemen's nets but were turned down cold. Imagine foe liability issue in 1997. As a matter of fact, NFS rangers carry standard liability waiver forms at all times. If rangers assist a visitor in any way, if they jumps tart their battery, or open a locked car door (with the keys inside it), they need to get a waiver. Excuse me sir, but before I apply this tourniquet to your avulsed wound, would you sign this?" Oh the times we live in. At foe Devils Garden, I finally met my most current replacements. Arches HmtotoH foe campground ranger positions with unpaid campground hosts several years ago and hauled away the trailer when the Park Service discovered the only bonding agent holding the "ranger residence" together was deer mouse turds. Hie hanti virus! Pat and Ole Veseth have been hosting every summer since 1994. Larry O'Hara and his five Kamille hold down the other end of the campground. They do it for free. They're dog pound crazier than me...than I. Wendy ran out the dirt roads to the boundary at Salt Valley, Cache Valley and Willow Springs. It was clear to me that she works a lot harder than I ever did, and eem fairly mntont to be a road ranger, but with all foe people swarming over foe Arches fronteountry, there isn't much time to explore what remains of the backcountry. Time to roam...to range. That's what the rangers miss most By 2 pm we were back at headquarters; someone else had foe late shift that day and Wendy was ready to head home. I almost asked her if I could hit the siren just once and make farting noises on the radio, but thought better of it It might have caused her to question my professionalism during my own ranger days. Of course I would never have done such a thing. Into foe Fiery Furnace with Andy Nettell A few minutes later, I found park naturalist Andy Nettell at the visitor center. Andy was to lead the 4PM Fiery Furnace Walk, a guided tour that requires reservations and costs six bucks a head and which had been booked to capacity since the day before. Leading 25 tourists on a fairly strenuous and unmarked trail would worry me, but Nettell seemed unperturbed by the challenge. In fact, a person could get the opinion that nothing ruffles Andy Nettell he's alwwt imperturbable. "I've got a good job," Andy observed cm the drive up, "in a beautiful park, with a boss that's easy to work wifo...foere really isn't much to complain about." Andy came to Arches four years ago, from just across the road in Canyonlands. He's been there or here for almost a decade. Before he came to southern Utah, Andy did Park Service time at Philadelphia and Independence Hall. Interpreting the cracks and crevices and canyons of the Fiery Furnace had to be an improvement over foe crack in the Liberty Bell. We reached the Fiery Furnace parking lot a few minutes early but mast of the scheduled hikers were already there. While we waited for foe stragglers to show, Andy marked a little Hm with the group, explaining the best way to get through the Furnace without hurting themselves and then asked what they did for a living. I almost announced that I was a shepherd, but settled for unemployed. We all turned our heads a bit when the guy next to me identified himself as an employee of the White House; the OMB (Office of Management 8c Budget), and that, specifically, he oversaw the National Park Service budget Finally, everyone was there and, after a few more cautionary words, we headed down into 3 |