The Final Goodbye

Waves at the Wilderness

Week 10 the finale to what has been an amazing summer and it was short for me and surprisingly spent with two divisions. With the way that my two days off worked with the division of interpretation I only had a three-day work week, one of those days spent with Law Enforcement. With interpretation I worked at watch hill visitor center on Wednesday helping some of the junior rangers who had questions that needed to be answered. Thursday I helped the ranger with a program for a local school group, this brought me out to the wilderness center. They had me follow a ranger on a beach walk and help answer any of the questions the kids had. The program went very well and the kids really enjoyed getting to learn about the beach and all the shells that washed up there. Thursday I also went around throughout the park and said my goodbyes to all of the employees I worked with. Saying goodbye to all the people I meant and learned from this summer was the most difficult thing I have done all summer.  It was like saying goodbye to your family after you move into college on your freshman year.

From my Last Sunset on the Island

On Friday I got to work with Law enforcement and patrol one last time before I drove home. While on patrol we talked to a couple people about nudity and also had to stop talk with some about the dogs on the beach. On my final walk through one of the tracks of land we have between two communities we caught two individuals having sex. We walked them out to the patrol truck after having them put their clothes on. We then gave them a citation for disorderly conduct.

I would like to thank all of the Fire Island National Seashore employees for taking me in and making me feel welcome. I would also like to thank them for teaching me more than I ever imagined I would learn in just one summer. Finally, I would like to thank the ProRanger program for giving me this opportunity this summer to learn and grow within the national park service.

Mountain of Files

            Week 9 was with administration again and there was never any down time throughout the entire week. I started the week of with the IT department working on resetting a server to use as a backup for the new server. This took longer than I thought it would take because we had trouble getting the server to boot up from the proper area. Then after that we had to update the software to make sure it would work with the computer network it would be hooked up to. I ended the day back at headquarters learning about the fun that was in my future.

            Tuesday and part of Wednesday I was in the chief of administrations office helping him to clean out his filing cabinet that had all of the current and past jobs that fire island filled. The chief said that this was the first time in a long time that it had been done. I was to pull all of the files out

Archived Positions

and look on the organization chart to see if the job was on there. If the job was not I would archive it and set it aside, but if it was I would write down information on the position and sort it by division in the filing cabinet. There were over 200 positions that had to be sorted, some positions were older than I was. On Wednesday I also went to a quality of life meeting which is where officials from almost every community meets with the county police and with the national seashore to talk about problems that need to be solved.

Credit Card Statements

            Thursday was another day of files but this time the files were credit card statements from 2012-2016. This was another long day of sorting but it was a little easier to get done than the position sorting. I had to empty out 2012 and 2013 so that I could put 2014-2016 into the filing cabinet. Near the end of the day Thursday and all of Friday I helped with the inventory check list for administration and for maintenance. This entailed me to walk around the office and the maintenance yard searching for computers, trucks, printers, boats, and more to make sure we still had these things in our possession. It really helped me to understand just how much inventory each division has, and also helped to understand what needs inventory numbers and what doesn’t.

            Week 10 is with interpretation   

Program Visit: FIIS

My second program visit began with a drive from Philadelphia to Fire Island National Seashore.  Despite the fact that we were traveling mid-day on a Monday afternoon, the Long Island traffic was bad!   I was joined on this visit by Junior (Pro)Rangers Finn and Aislin.

We were able to drive onto the island and park near the lighthouse and ranger station.  But, beyond the state park on the very western tip of the island, no cars are allowed without a special permit (during the winter months) and not at all during the summer.  There are no roads on the island – only boardwalks that connect some communities and sand.  Visitors either park and walk to their destination or arrive at one of several ferry points and transport their supplies via carts.  

After meeting ProRanger Justen Williams for a tour of the ranger station and visitor center, we set off for Watch Hill which has another NPS Visitor Center and park housing.   It is accessible to rangers via a 45 minute drive down beach or from Long Island via a ferry.  We set off down the beach and learned a lot about the park from Ranger Claire Formanski who has been visiting or working at the park since her early teenage years!  We also saw another ranger making a law enforcement contact with some visitors as we passed by.

Original Coast Guard radar equipment in the rear section of the current ranger station

 

Checking out the Visitor Center at the Lighthouse

 

You never know what will wash up on shore!

After some evening adventures and some early morning play on a rainy beach, we drove from the ranger station to park headquarters.  This trip is about 30 minutes each way across the causeway and further east on Long Island. At headquarters, we had the opportunity meet with Superintendent Chris Soller, Chief Ranger John Stewart and Ranger Claire Formanski.  There was also an opportunity for the junior rangers to get started on their workbooks!

Superintendent Soller, ProRanger Williams, Chief Ranger Stewart and Ranger Formanski

It was a pretty dreary afternoon.  We spent some time at the ranger station talking with Ranger Luke DeDominici who supervised the intern last summer.  We also played a little “Guess that Park” and the junior rangers completed their tasks and received their badges.

Justen and the junior rangers work on their badges

Ranger DeDominici congratulates the junior rangers

We returned to Watch Hill for a quiet evening.  On our final morning, Justen was stationed at the Watch Hill Visitor Center so we met him there and engaged in some more activities. 

Justen manning the desk at the Watch Hill Visitor Center

Then we packed up and headed back to the lighthouse.  What visit to a national seashore would be completed without climbing the lighthouse?  So, we climbed all 192 steps to the top – stopping to take notice of step #100.

Fire Island Lighthouse Step #100 of 192.

So, on the first bright and sunny day of our visit, we bid goodbye to Fire Island N.S. and headed up the road to Boston!

Up next:  Boston

4 Years Later

Aerial Photo of the Breach

                Week 8 of the internship has been spent with resource management studying how the island has bounced back after hurricane sandy came in and rolled right over it. When the hurricane came through it caused sea water to wash over and destroy some of the dunes. In one part of the island it caused a breach due to the sand being washed away. This was what most of my time was spent studying in my week in resource management. The first part of my week I did over wash studies which is the areas where the water passed over the dunes and caused them to washout leaving new areas for plants to grow and build the dunes back up. This entailed me to carry around a camera set up which had a one meter by one meter square it would take pictures of so that the scientists could decide the vegetation coverage and see what plants are growing back. There are 8 over washes on the island, each with at least 60 plots and we were able to get two done in one day. Most of the plots are growing back strong but there are some plots that continue to get washed over when larger storms come through.

Dragging for Ticks 

                The breach is another large topic on the island, it was opened up by hurricane sandy and has since cleaned the water in the bay making it more inhabitable. It is still moving and the edges of it change with every bug storm that comes through the island. The scientists are very interested in the movement of the breach so every month they map out the edges of the breach. For this they use a Trimble which tracks your location with GPS while you walk on the water’s edge at the breach. After this you go back to the office and upload your points and it creates a line and with this data they can see that the breach is moving. They track the edge of the breach every month and have been doing so since three days after the hurricane. This is the most accurate data that there is on the breach so far.

Spring Ladies Tresses

                Other than that I got to work on setting up acoustic trackers for bats in the Williams Floyd Estate. We also set up cups for working on mosquito research, looking to see if the Zika virus is here on the island. The Floyd estate is an area that the park does tick drags as well, looking to collect deer ticks for lime disease studying. I was also on the hunt for a rare orchid called Spring Ladies Tresses that grows near my housing, we found six and have one of the largest populations of this flower in New York.

                As you can see the resource management department here is always busy, and even with all the previously stated activities from the week there was still deer studies and vegetation studies happening in order to figure out what to do with the deer overpopulation.

                Week 9 will be spent with Administration.   

Word of the Week: Patience

Week 7 was spent with maintenance, fixing machines and boats that still needed to be finished. If you remember back to my first week in maintenance I was working on the hull of a boat repairing holes in it. I got to work on the same boat again only this time it was a little easier. All I had to do was wire up a new radio. At the time I thought this was a difficult task because it took me an entire day to hook everything up and test if the radio was working but I had no idea what was my future with maintenance was.

Day 1 of Track Fixing

  The boat radio took place on Monday and when I went to work on Tuesday I had no clue what was about to happen. We were borrowing a Caterpillar 257B which is very similar to a Bobcat, and the machine had tracks so that it would move across the sand easier. Our problem was that the drive wheels for the tracks had bearings that had locked up and it had taken them two weeks to get the parts and get the old track and drive wheels off. My task along with two other maintenance employees was to put the new tracks on and change the drive wheels and bearings. The machine didn’t want to do anything easily for us, everything that needed to be changed had to be fought with and caused us to think for hours about how to defeat this machine. We had to pick the machine up by the track with 2-ton chain hoists so that we could fit everything where it needed to be. Then once that happened bolting everything in was difficult. To hook up the tensioner we had to push down on it with a fork lift, then use a ratchet strap to get it into position finally. The machine tested all of our patience and forced us to work together as a group to fix it.

View From Wheelhouse of the Barge

Luckily for us we had finished the machine by Friday and all we had to do then was load it onto the barge and take it over to the island. After taking the barge over to the island we then had to drive our fixed machine over to our work site. we were thrilled when everything went on without any problems and it was the first official test of our repairs. The heat and humidity caused us to get called back early allowing for a nice calm ride back on the barge. 

Week 8 is going to be with resource management. 

Most Beautiful Spot in Fire Island National Seashore

My Summer View: Fire Island National Seashore

Before Coming to the Beach You Should Know

Evidence picture.

                I alluded to this in my earlier blog that I was going to put the nudity laws here on hold until a later time and that time is now since it was my second week in law enforcement. First the weekly update is upon us, I started my week the day before the fourth of July and it was spent preparing for what was expected to be a busy next day. We also caught two individuals with a controlled substance and drug paraphernalia. The fourth for me was a busy day, which I will be talking about in a separate blog that will be released shortly after this one. Tuesday was a rainy day which allowed me to experience the report writing system IMARS while assisting an officer write a report about a controlled substance case. Wednesday is when I had experience with the laws on nudity when dealing with more than one group who thought nudity was still allowed on the beaches of the seashore. Thursday was a day at the range helping the rangers sight in their rifles, most of my day spent looking down range with a spotting scope.

Sign from the Ranger Station Office

                There are old signs in the maintenance buildings which have a warning on them that the beach is a clothing optional beach. Those were hung at all the entrances to the beaches before hurricane sandy came and demolished the island and the dunes around the beaches. Before the hurricane people could sunbathe nude, this meaning that they could not leave their area without at least bottoms. For a while the park had tried to push for clothing required beaches but couldn’t get the law to pass due to the public backing the clothing optional beach. When hurricane sandy came she destroyed the 40 plus foot tall sand dunes which protected the public who didn’t want to see the nude sunbathers. This helped pass the law making all the beaches within the seashore clothing required beaches. There was and have continued to be people and groups of people who do not agree with the law and try to fight it by still going nude. At this point the officers are still trying to educate the public who have not been spoken to before, and for those who have already been educated about the law they give them a citation. One main problem associated with the law is the vandalism to the sign which say clothing required along with people stealing the signs. This leads to people not knowing that the beaches are clothing required, which is why the rangers are still educating the public. Until the people of the island realize that the laws will not change just from them taking the signs down the rangers will have to keep educating and writing citations.

                That is the best way to describe the nudity laws and why they had to change after hurricane sandy. Week 7 will be with Maintenance.

                

Battle Anniversary and a Trip to Antietam with LE

Park Ranger Vehicle

What a summer it has been, and I finally realized at the end of my 5^th week here at Gettysburg that it is half way over! But as each week passes, the more myself and my fellow ProRangers at other parks are learning and being able to add the skills we are learning to our tool belt. With saying that, my fifth week would be spent with law enforcement, and I learned more in one week then I would have thought. My first day would be spent with seasonal LE Ranger John Ludwick, who would teach me the ins and outs of radar, how to judge car speeds, EMS, how he does his traffic stops, and much more. But first before we went out on patrol, we had to find some inventory for our administrative staff to help them out! So we searched high and low for what we needed to find, and knocked a good amount off the list, which administration was very thankful for, as we all get something good out of helping another division out with tasks.

Ride for the Anniversary Weekend

We then headed out and did a traffic stop for speeding, as Ranger Ludwick was showing me how to use the radar, how to lock in speeds, then the procedure of making the stop. It was a great experience running radar, especially with Ranger Ludwick, who is a great teacher and better Ranger. Everyone has their own small things they incorporate during a stop, so every piece of advice for me to try from all of the LE rangers here are getting added to my tool belt. The rest of the day was spent patrolling the park, and me asking him many questions that will help me become a better ranger in the future, and I was very thankful for the time and advice I got while riding along that day with him. The next day I was with LE Ranger John Sherman, as we would patrol the park and conduct traffic stops with a different kind of radar that his car is equipped with. Again I spent the day talking and asking Ranger Sherman about how he does certain tasks, and what the best path would be for to reach the goals I want to when I eventually get into the NPS as a LE officer.

My driveway as a parking lot on
Anniversary Weekend

Then finally, Battle Anniversary weekend is upon us! What the battle anniversary is for us when the battle took place at Gettysburg, we celebrate it by putting on special programs over the three days for visitors that want to get a better interaction with what took place on those days of the battle. For those that don’t know, the battle took place July 1,2,3 of 1863, so this year is our 153^rd anniversary of the battle. My task for the weekend, along with our other LE Intern Mike, was to manage parking and traffic throughout the park where the programs were taking place.  This may seem like an easy task to some, but it was quite a task at times when cars would come in droves. But we were able to manage it, and learn the easiest ways to deal with it, while eliminating some other ideas we had that didn’t work. By the end of the weekend we were pros, and were told by the Rangers that we did a great job throughout the weekend. While not parking cars, we were also tasked to patrol the park and watch for any other traffic problems or criminal activity, while the other rangers were doing road blocks or EMS tasks. While we didn’t see anything, it was nice being able to roam the park, and interact with visitors and help them with any questions they had about the park or the special events going on that day. Overall, battle anniversary was a great experience that I am happy I was able to partake and help with, and will definitely see myself coming back to help with in the future!

Angelo and I working the Fireworks Show

On Saturday the 2^nd, I was able to go on a special detail with our Chief Ranger Jeremy Murphy down to Antietam National Battlefield to help with their firework concert/show, and work with fellow ProRanger Angelo! It was a nice hour or so drive down, and was a good time to get know my Chief ranger better, and ask questions about different divisions within the National Park Service that I am interested in and learn more about. I was able to get a lot of information, and was also able to get to know Chief Murphy more. Going down, I was expecting this show to only have about five to ten thousand people there. Well what I didn’t realize was that this is a huge event for them, and that the crowd would be about fifteen to twenty thousand people. When we got down to Antietam, we went to the visitor center observation deck, which was where the HQ/check in area was. After checking in, I was introduced by Chief Murphy to other Chief Rangers from nearby parks that were there to help with the event, as well as other rangers who were pulled in to help with the event. We then got briefed by Antietam Chief Ranger on the event, what to look out for, and then were sent to our posts. This is where I finally meet up with Angelo, and caught up with him. Our duty for the night was to park cars, and make sure everyone got out safely. Again, let’s just say by the end of the night, we were pros. The concert was great, fireworks were amazing, and a flyover by the US Air Force definitely capped off a great week for me! I hope everyone enjoyed their 4^th of July weekend, and hope you continue to read throughout the rest of the summer! God Bless the USA!

The Many Hats of Interpretation

        Week five is being spent with interpretation all over the island in the various visitor centers and ferry terminals. The week was full of excitement but it was also full of downtime which is when book about the island were read along with books about local plants and animals. The island has a very unique aspect involving the rule of no vehicles on the island. If you want to come visit the park you either have to walk, drive your boat, or catch a ferry over. This causes there to be an expected rise in visitors in the visitor centers around the times that the ferry arrive. This was in every location i worked even in the ferry terminal, when the ferry arrives you have about a half hour when the visitor center is packed full of people but then the rest of the time it is either empty or has a couple people in it.

The Ferry Ride Over to Watch Hill

          The first two days was spent in Watch Hill Visitor Center, this area has a large salt marsh along with beach access. Near the Visitor center there is a gift shop, snack bar, and a restaurant. The marina has over 100 boat slips in the marina so you would think that the visitor center would always be full. Sadly when I was there the numbers were low, but instead of sit there and be bored other interns wanted to go canoeing and work on the program they would have to eventually give. I thought they would appreciate a guinea pig on the first trip so that they could run the material by and see if it is interesting. We also began reading about the local birds so that when visitors asked what was flying around we could answer them.

Sign After Exiting the Ferry

           The next couple days were spent at Sailors Haven Visitor Center, the surrounding area has the Sunken Forest along with the beach. It also has a gift shop and concessions stand along with a 40 slip marina. When I was there is rained which hurt the amount of visitors which wanted to enjoy the island. Similar to what happened in Watch Hill there were book for the birds, plants, and marine life which were read. There were more interactions with visitors there which allowed me to test my own knowledge of the island after my five weeks here.

Sailors Haven Visitor Center

           The final day was spent at the Watch Hill Ferry Terminal on the mainland which allowed me to interact with a little over 430 visitors. This was the ultimate test of my knowledge of the area and where the best places to visit were. There was also a Boy Scout group which were working on weeding the surrounding flower beds and planting native milkweed for the local pollinator garden. This was by far the most exciting day with only small windows which allowed you to catch you breath before the next wave of visitors arrived. There were a record amount of people who used the ferry terminal and this was mostly due to this being the fourth of July weekend.
          This marks the Halfway point in the internship, and with the way my internship worked i am with Law Enforcement again for week six



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Concessions, IT, and Budget Oh My!

Booklet of The Centennial Programs

                Week four of my internship was spent with administration, learning about everything that each person does in a normal work week. I had more information come my way than I had in my first week of college. Every day I was with someone new learning about what their job was and how they accomplished their task for the week. With such a small department most people have more than one responsibility and that just made my task of trying to learn even more difficult.

The Boat Ride Over

                I spent my first day with our budget guy learning about the software and how to add and manage transactions on the parks credit cards. The park has a very strict budget and most of the day was spent making sure all of the divisions are within budget and are not looking like they will be low on money for the remainder of the year. The second day there was an emergency trip to Sagamore hill with the IT guy in an attempt to fix the phone system and some of the computers which would not allow anyone to log on. We then drove back to Fire Island National Seashore (FIIS) and worked on some of the computers there along with a copier. Day three was spent doing concessions and learning about the other side of the intricate permitted driving allowed on the island. The morning was spent at a meeting with different officials from the communities on the island and also Suffolk county PD and the Superintendent and chief ranger from FIIS. This was an interesting meeting and really allowed me to see what the communities’ biggest concerns were. In the afternoon we took a trip out to sailor’s haven to visit with owner of the concession company to talk about the next ten-year plan. My fourth day was with the chief of administration which was a day filled with many different roles and left my head hurting. We went over housing, special projects, payroll, and many other things in just eight hours. The chief also has to keep an eye on everyone in his department on top of doing all of these jobs. We also went over what the park was doing in honor of the centennial this year. The final day with admin was spent at the all employee meeting learning about all the different divisions…learning more about all of the different divisions. This was a lot to take in over the course of one week and I am lucky to have another week with them to continue learning.

                Week 5 is with interpretation; after this week I will be hallway done with my internship.   

Bambi has Been a Bad Deer

                The third week of my ten-week internship was spent with resource management. The resource management division is tasked with the job of keeping track of the natural resources our park has to offer. They track numerous deer within the park, they look at the impacts the deer have on the vegetation, and they track our piping plover. This is just the short list of things I got to do this week. The resource management division is tasked with much more than this.

Presentation on Deer Problem

Surverying the Weak Under-story

                The first objective I was given was to track deer along the island. The park does this to track the movement of the deer. They are interested in seeing where the deer like to go for the different seasons. The deer are also having an effect on the amount of under-story within the forests on the island. The under-story is made up of smaller trees and plants which are on the bottom layer of the forest. These small trees are needed to replace the older trees within the forest when they finally die. The sunken forest is one of two American holly maritime forests in the nation and the deer are eating all of the little holly saplings. The park is looking to start a deer management plan to drop the number of deer in that park and help the under-story

return in the forest and help strengthen the area. The plan is still in the works which is why they are still doing studies of both the animals and the vegetation.

                They also had me working on keeping track of the piping plovers within the park. There are seven active nests in the park with three of them already having chicks running around the beaches. In order to keep an eye on the chicks and the parents we went out on the beach with binoculars so that we could see the birds from afar and wouldn’t disturb them as they sat on their nests or kept track of their young.

Here is a Plover foraging 

 Week four will be spent with the administration team at park HQ.

What the Normal Visitor Does Not See

Week two was spent within the maintenance division of the park service. The group of guys I was with were very welcoming and eager to get me out there and teach me things I didn’t know before this week. Some of the things I learned this week were how to replace the floor when it is rotting away, how to put in a new front and rear door, and how to fix the fiberglass on a boat. They had me helping them wherever I could and if I didn’t know how to do something they made sure teach me the best they could.

My big project of the week was fixing the boat and getting the top of it ready for some new canvas. The boat had sat out of the water for a while and the canvas on top of the boat had worn out and torn off. With the seasonal workers coming back and the need for boats more now than in the past couple months, one of the maintenance guys and I were tasked with taking off the GPS, radar, and all the lights that were on top of the boat for the new canvas to get fitted properly. All of the bolts were corroded due to the salt water so this task was not as easy as expected. After hours and hours of trying to get the bolts loosened up there were then wires you had to either cut (in the case of the lights) or had to find a way to disconnect and get out of the way (in the case of the GPS and the radar).  When we finished with this we then had to repair the side of the boat which had been hit up against the dock. The hole in the boat was right under the rub rail and was about a foot long. After taking off the rub rail foam had to be put inside of the hole to fill the area and then we placed a patch with epoxy coated over it on the foam. After this we let it dry for a day and placed the rub rail back onto it.

The maintenance guys are more than just the cleaning crew that keeps the bathrooms nice, during the week they had every type of job from the cleaning to fixing boat motors so that the law enforcement guys could get around. They fixed boardwalks so that the visitors didn’t trip and hurt themselves. They were fixing park housing and replacing walls, doors, and floors so that the new seasonal workers could move in. During all of this they were still helping out visitors when asked questions about the park or they gave out directions when asked where places are. They are a very resourceful group always trying to reuse when they can or fix rather than replace.

Week two was hard work but very rewarding, I am with resource management next week.