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Show SCENIC ij PLAYGROUNDS III j OF AMERICA HI I By G. M. KILBOLRN ill 111 Hi A Boy Ranger in Alaska TO HAVE been the youngest ranger in the national park service, and to have spent a winter In a patrol cab-In cab-In in wildest of all the parks Mt. McKinley park, Alaska, at sixteen years of age, with his nearest neighbor neigh-bor forty miles away, was the recent experience of Bill -Myers of Lapeer, Mich., now a Journalism student at the Michigan slate college at East Lansing. Lan-sing. He returned In August, l'J-9, after thirteen months In Alaska. Tlje Job of being a ranger Included driving dog teams through snowy, wind-swept winter waste lands where his only hope of reaching the night's shelter lay In that unexplalnable but undeniable sixth sense of the dog leader which euables him to follow a trail long burled or a year old ; down steep Ice hillsides, or around ledges where footholds for the dogs and sleds had to be hacked In solid Ice, while great valleys yawned below ; or through rivers of water which ran on to of rivers of Ice caused by the breaking through of warm springs L-il ' "Ranger Bill" Myers. which overflowed the frozen valleys only to freeze on top of them. It Included In-cluded mining your own coal from the nearest mountain-side vein in zero weather, or rescuing mountain sheep that had stranded In a four-foot snowfall snow-fall and would otherwise have starved. It Included being shaken by an earthquake, earth-quake, which rocked the cabin and set his lantern swinging like a pendulum, but didn't wake the hard-working boy ranger to share the excitement with a guest, who later recounted It. The job included, In fact, nearly everything, every-thing, as witness his diary's record of January 25: "Got breakfast and washed the dishes; did a month's washing; cooked dog feed; baked four loaves of yeast bread; roasted a ham; made two shelves, and a cover for the water bucket; sorted and straightened a bunch of old nails; oiled the tools; got supper ready. And they say they loaf on government jobs!" Quoting the claim of the Far North that the dog team is the world's most efficient means of transportation, "Ranger Bill" explains : "Seven dogs, for example, can pull five hundred pounds (plus the driver) twenty miles a day, on a fair trail. Dogs and driver driv-er will consume about ten pounds of food a day. On five hundred pounds of food they can travel a thousand miles, which Is supposed to be further than any other animal or animals can travel, carrying their own food." The rescued mountain sheep had t be forced to eat at first, but were soon quite tame, eating hay, oats, rye-crisp, rye-crisp, dried apples, and potato peelings peel-ings alike, and nosing into forbidden cupboards. One, Bill relates, "was real timid the first day and would eat nothing, but 24 hours later he was eating magazines and sleeping bags." "Oh, Ranger, would you be afraid to hunt grizzly bears with a club?" asked a maiden tourist, recently arrived ar-rived via the Alaskan railroad. "Not if there were enough members In the club," he rplied. Back in civilization, the boy confides, con-fides, he felt awkward and shy: "I hadn't had on a white shirt, or a suit, for over a year. I had rarely seen a mirror, and my hair had been cut twice during the year. I was almost run over in Seattle, for I couldn't get used to the wear and tear of the cities after living 2,500 miles from them. ! "There was many a time when there j seemed no sweeter thing on earth than a good hot heal of meat and potatoes with a steam radiator to heat It over. But now that I have these 'luxuries,' I find myself longing for a good dish of dog rice and gravy, and one of those old cabins that we couldn't stand up in without bumping our heads. Linen sheets don't seem nearly as comfortable comfort-able as that itchy sleeping bag I used to roll up in. Nor do white shirts and B. V. D.'s compare with a Filson flannel flan-nel shirt and a suit of Mendelcott'j underwear for real comfort!" ((c). 1930. Western N'ewspaner Union. |