I recently read an article in the spring 1998 edition of “Ranger,” a publication of the National Park Ranger Association, written through Jennifer Blake, Bill Blake’s daughter, who, after his retirement, is the Head of Parkguard in Bill’s Midwest region and I spent a lot of time together on incident control team assignments and traveled thousands of miles on multi-week motorcycle trips.
Jennifer’s article describes what it’s like for a child to grow up in a National Park Service family.When she wrote it when she was 21 and majored in journalism at Northeastern University in Boston, her parents worked at New River Gorge National River, West Virginia, where he and she served on payroll.
Their reports are similar to those of other young people whose parents paint for land control agencies.
I asked Jennifer if she could republish the article she wrote 22 years ago, and I didn’t prevent it, I encouraged her to write an epilogue as an update.She said yes, and either of us is next.
Bill gabbert
Childhood in NPS contains many memories
By Jennifer Blake
My father is Yogi Bear.Smokey Bear and Woodsy Owl’s worst enemy united in one.My father’s a ranger. And he never worked at Jellystone Park, his career moved our circle of relatives across the country 3 times and gave me the memories and photographs that explained my childhood.
I can’t think of my father without thinking about his uniform. The forest green pants and the famous Smokey Bear hat are as intrinsic to their appearance in my brain as the color of their eyes. Today I feel strangely at home every time.I see someone dressed in them.
Memorable adventures
This uniform came to constitute the small adventures that mark and give color to the lives of young people: don’t forget to visit ranger stalls, cross apple orchards to spy on bears stranded in trees and trips to mountain lookouts to spy on wildfires in the same way the highs young people do not forget to learn to ride a bike , what moves me most in those memories is the assurance I felt in knowing that my father and all his powers as a ranger, who in a kid’s brain were and powerful, were never left behind.
Being a ranger, and still is, more than my father’s work; This component of her identity fascinated me with this identity and I tried to immerse myself in it as much as possible.I was born in Fredricksburg, Va., when my father worked there in the national war camp.His first stories about the exploits of my ancestors.in the same land in which he ran provoked a hobthrough for the story I still carry.I’m probably one of the few people who has visited almost every single major war site in the Civil War before the age of 15.
The stories my father told me whilst hiking via the woods were more appealing than the tale of children.If he had any doubts about the attention I paying to his words, they were erased when my kindergarten instructor sent house a note telling my parents that I had interrupted a tale she telling the class: “Bears do not just sleep in winter,” I proudly informed my classmates.”They hibernate.” I uttered the word as if it were a special secret that had been passed on to me from my father – and, in a way, itArray
That same elegance then made a trip to my father’s ranger station.We lived in Elkton, Virginia, at the time and the hotel was located in the Blue Ridge Mountains, amid autumn foliage painting.I’ll never know how proud I was that day. In fact, I don’t know if, at five years old, I had a genuine sense of pride, but I know I felt special that day, because I was the child that all rangers knew, because I was the one wearing a suit.Oversized yellow fireman hat and looking to aim at the hose, because it was my father who got on all fours and growled like a grizzly bear when he showed bear traps; it’s significant to me at all times.
The Parks Department, like the army, creates a surrogate family. Rangers transfer to other parks in the United States: I’ve lived in Virginia (twice), New Mexico, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, California (twice) and West Virginia – and each new park introduces a new organization of friends.I spent many Thanksgiving and Christmas days with other rangers and their families and never stopped feeling at home.Once, my brother and I were in a school production that asked us to run to the audience and return to our parents in tow.We lived in Yosemite, California, and my father had been called in an emergency; However, my brother and I did not hesitate to catch our “Uncle Jim”, who followed My Father’s Workplace is one of the first places I climb when I get home.They greet me with excited hugs that most people only get when they stop at remote grandparents.
Getting around is easy
It’s not that moving from time to time was easy.Opening new schools is up to the root canal and primary surgery on my laugh list.The cultural surprise I experienced when I left California for West Virginia was worse than when I left Boston to live in London..
I left the beautiful scenery of Northern California and a four-classroom school with 65 other people to reach the ruined and depressed southern West Virginia.I was just appealing to the other young people as an object of torture (I clearly don’t).I forgot an episode in which a high school student, fat and unwashed, grabbed my e-book and put it in his pants.) Beckley didn’t greet strangers with open arms.and a third-class counselor set me aside once to ask if I was high.
Many benefits
But I know that the benefits of “growing up in the Park Service” have far outweighed the disadvantages.On the one hand, when I went to college, I had few qualms about being kicked out with a lot of new kids.And I proudly demonstrate wisdom I learned it from my father and from our countless journeys through his many parks: the other day I had a curious look at some of my friends when one of them picked up a stone in the street and said it looked like an arrowhead: I pronounced it temporarily as the curtain unsuitable for an authentic Indian arrowhead.
My father’s career had taken him in many instructions — park rangers do a lot more than safe visitor’s picnic baskets from pesky bears. He’s taught defensive driving at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (a fact that have become all too transparent when he attempted to teach me how to drive); he’s served on presidential coverage teams—teams of park rangers assembled whenever a president visits a national park — for Ford, Carter, Nixon and Clinton; he was selected to paintings at the bicentennial birthday party for the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, where he held the door open for Queen Elizabeth; and he served a 30-day detail on the ’88 Yellowstone fires, which ravaged what my father calls “the Mother Park.”
A few years after the fire, my circle of relatives visited Yellowstone.The park was still very broken by the fires and my father seemed to have a story about each and every tree burned.The force of nature manifested itself in the strips of green grass.and a lush forest that remained intact and juxtaposed with the fire-ravaged parts.My father told us that as the fires burned, it seemed that the sun never set because the force of fires produced such a massive glow.
This view reminded me of a song about Smokey the Bear that my brother and I were kids.
Smokey the Bear, Smokey the Bear.You can locate a chimney before it starts to light up.That’s why they call him Smokey, that’s how they gave him his name.
In 9th grade I attended a convention on the conservation of young people and the leaders taught us this song as a joke, everyone laughed because I already knew it, I sang it with pride.
The Park Service celebrates American heritage; I celebrate the Park Service as my legacy.My years of training are closely wrapped in it – inseparable.I emigrated to the city, but I still have a penchant for those famous hats.There is a Park Service Visitor Center in downtown Boston.drag an unsuspecting friend there because it reminds me of my home.The painting in this guest center is the same brown color as in all other Park Service visitor centers (my mom called this opaque tone “Park Service Pardo”); it also has the same books, the same bathroom panels and the same donation box next to the cash register.
I know that if I asked the rangers enough, one of them would at least know who knows my father and because of that, they know an intrinsic component of me.
Epilogue, August 2020
It has been more years than I care to admit (ok – 26 years) since I lived with my family in a national park. And yet, national parks across the country still feel like home to me.
I recently walked thirteen hours in Rocky Mountain National Park.We never lived there, however, it looked like a kind of back house the moment I saw an arrowhead.This is the gift I won when I was a child from a ranger and I’ll appreciate it.My brother will have to feel the same way because he himself is a proud ranger.
A few years ago, I was running in San Francisco, in a bar and sitting next to a party that had just returned from Yosemite National Park (where I was lucky enough to live from the age of 7 to 13).however, pay attention to them as they spoke with admiration of what they had seen.And then one of the women talked about the little school in the valley (my old school!) And he said he’d love to reach out to someone who had attended school there.proud to turn around and introduce myself.
National parks are one of the most consistent things in my life.I kept moving as an adult and my career is nothing like what I thought it was when I wrote the original article all those years ago.But I smile at each and every one of them.I see someone dressed in a green and grey uniform in a Smokey Bear hat.I’ve been a city woman since I moved to Boston to go to college, but the national parks will be one of my touch stones.
From Bill: When the Smokey Bear fire site prevention crusade began in 1944, it was known as “Smokey Bear” without “the” in the call.But in 1952, Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins wrote what has become a hit song called “Smokey the Bear”.They said the addition of “the” took a step forward in the rhythm of the song.A small guest e-book published about the bear in 1955 followed the example of the composers and also used the correct type edition” the “of the call.This has created confusion, however, the call of the Fire Place Prevention icon is and has been Smokey Bear.A new edition of the song was written to answer the call.
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Jennifer’s handwriting makes me smile for the day!Thank you, Jennifer.
Congratulations to Jennifer on some pieces. The same thing; Invoice for attention and publication of works.
bill
Having worked my summers at college in Rocky Mtn.Park, it brings back a lot of memories.I fought fires in Jellystone in the early 1950s.I returned to Yellowstone after the 1988 fires.I worked for the United States Geological Survey to re map in and around Yellowstone.after the Great Earthquake.Lake Hagabin that formed as a result of the earthquake.I can go on and on, but hey.
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