Quotes from the South: “If it ain’t p*ssin’, it ain’t coolin'!”

The National Park Service believes it prepared a future law enforcement officer for work on the water, but what it really did was bring me even closer to my dream of becoming a pirate. 

I spent the past week by Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge completing MOCC (Motorboat Operator Certification Course). If you need a new favorite hobby, I highly suggest this. 

The first day of the course covered navigation, basic boat maintenance, and safety requirements. By day 2 we were on the water putting what we learned into practice. 

The first thing you learn is that each boat's operation is extremely different, so it's vital that you spend time with your park's specific machine. We got a lovely crash course in both super-smooth new boats, and those that have had a little more wear and tear, preparing us for whatever condition our boats may end up in.  

MOCC offered more than just boating instruction. It was a chance to learn with our neighbors in Fish and Wildlife, with employees outside of law enforcement, alongside those who were refreshing their advanced boating skills and those who had never set foot on a boat, and with people of all ages. Sharing this experience, and each of their stories, was enlightening, motivating, and exemplified how these trainings are not just boring department classes, but a true representation of the culture of the Park Service and every organization dedicated to preserving our nation's history and resources for all. 

It's also just FUN. 

Quotes from the South: "Hotter than Satan's House Cat!"

This week an FBI SWAT liaison dropped by to follow up on a training scenario that played out a couple weeks ago. For some background, security in Charleston has been ever increasing as a result of the Charleston Church Shooting, and local law enforcement groups want to be sure they are prepared for anything. The nearby FBI SWAT team picked out Fort Sumter as a great terrorist/active-shooter training site, and made the scenario work with the support of the NPS. To say I was disappointed that I missed it would be an understatement, there were helicopters involved…

The FBI liaison took some time during our quarterly full-staff meeting to answer any questions employees had left regarding the scenario, and to clarify some best practices for a real-life active shooter event.

On another interesting note, Fort Sumter’s LE staff is responding to recent suspicious activity at the Aquarium. Staff reported a visitor giving repeated, unwelcome advances to employees and displaying other suspicious behavior. After communicating with local agencies and establishing that the subject has been previously noticed by law enforcement, the park inconspicuously distributed the subject’s photograph to the front line staff, who have been instructed to notify LE in case the visitor returns.

Quotes from the South: "He's a few sandwiches short of a picnic basket"

This Sunday, as the neighboring church bells rang throughout the morning, we began tackling the new LE Office. Organizing this is the clearest representation of what it means to put an LE unit together. Boxes fill the space, miscellaneous, leftover items from the previous users get in the way, gear returns and exchanges must be made, EMS supplies are needed, and everything from markers to proper gear racks must be bought. But it’s less of a challenge than a chance to make it perfect, which this division takes steps towards every day.

In our down time, Erin and I watched trainings on the GAP Analysis, which highlights the importance of understanding the reasons behind officer involved shootings, and advocates for policy change and more readily available emotional support throughout an officer’s career. The type of support an officer receives following a shooting of any kind can make or break their ability to continue their career. Chief Byrnes and I sat down over coffee to share advice and talk about his experience in the park service, his past in archaeology, his transition into a Chief position, and his excitement for the upcoming future of this park.

At Charles Pinckney (CHPE), I got a look at the Hurricane Preparedness Plan, involving tons of plastic wrap, sand bags, and artifact evacuation, carefully matched with specific tasks for each department. Inside the curatorial building, we talked about the significance in such an artifact-centered park. Without clearer records, and with a regular influx of donations, it’s hard to identify and properly catalog artifacts to determine if, and how, they should be displayed, especially when only one person is charged with handling the entire inventory. One lesson I learned about both LE and proper care and representation of artifacts, is that without these vital departments, serious park problems only gain attention once they become a crisis. The best plans we can make going forward are those that stop the crisis before it begins and come from the support of proper staff.

Later in the week, we toured the aquarium neighboring Liberty Square, which shares a perimeter in our jurisdiction. Besides being able to enjoy sea otters and jellyfish, we were able to foster a better connection with our neighbors who are the first to call in if they see anything suspicious in Liberty Square, and offer access to their security cameras when needed.

The week ended with Remembrance Day, an annual Gullah-Geechee celebration remembering and honoring those who lost their lives in the Middle Passage from Africa to the east coast.  They began with a vibrant guest speaker and slowly processed, drums in hand, to the beach for the first half of the ceremony. With music and dancing they made their way to the dock, prepared a beautiful offering of flowers and fruit, and released it into the water.

Quotes from the South: "How are you?" "Fine as frog's hair."

In the true style of southern hospitality, I received multiple emails welcoming me on board to Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park before I had even stepped in the office. My first day was smooth, most of the office had off for the holiday and most people spend Memorial Day on the beach, not at the forts, so we were able to tour around the park without the usual crowding. I saw the tunnels of Fort Moultrie, the visitor center covering the complex history of the site from the Revolutionary War until WWII, the center’s observation deck overlooking the shore, and the nearby docks where the maintenance and LE boats wait to sail to Fort Sumter.



Later in the day, I met Chief Ranger Ben Byrnes (Starbucks in hand) and Cavin Clark, an NPS retired ARPA (Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979) expert preparing for a training session later in the week. Thanks to them I got an in depth tour of the park, focusing on all of the specific concerns that come with a park that has so many historic structures and archaeological artifacts. Proper management and care of these sites is a tricky process, and it’s made more challenging by the risk of looters.

Going downtown into Liberty Square, a common ferry take-off point for visitors, we discussed the unique issues of jurisdiction in a park that traverses an ocean and borders a busy downtown. For example, while both the point of departure and arrival of the Ferry are NPS jurisdiction, the Ferry itself is not. Since this LE unit is still developing, there are some grey areas with jurisdiction that require communication with local law enforcement, coast guard, and the state DNR. So far I see that creating a new LE unit takes lots of planning, supply-ordering, attention to the unique needs of the park, and taking fellow unit’s considerations to mind. I’m excited to watch it all unfold.



While this is a small park, we still managed to have an interesting contact the second day I arrived. A visitor reported a man passed out face down in the brambles outside Fort Moultrie. Sure enough, a man had stumbled up from the nearby beach, likely overheated and having abused substances, and passed out. Ranger Erin called EMS, ensured the scene was safe, and proceeded to contact the man. While he was reluctant to receive any help from law enforcement specifically, and adamantly declared his name was “Good Citizen”, he was taken by EMS for treatment without a problem. This was a great opportunity for me to see how the local EMS responds, specifically on the challenging terrain near the beach, and to meet a couple of law enforcement officers from the local Charleston Police.

Later we made it out onto the Ferry and took a tour of Fort Sumter. It’s a powerful, beautiful fort, and it’s clear why it’s such an attraction. I had a chance to peek into the archives and artifacts in storage at the park at the Charles Pinckney House, which were outfitted with plastic hurricane protection and housed in a building lined with sandbags.

My week ended with specialized ARPA training given by Cavin Clark. The staff stayed after hours (with the help of a potluck) to learn about ARPA and view a film regarding the Effigy Mounds Site, followed by a discussion on how we can take these lessons and apply them to our specific case.

See you Monday

This week, my last week, I was lucky enough to grab lunches with Ranger Town and Chief Schonzeit. They gave me great female perspectives and the story of their careers certainly motivate me further.

On Tuesday I watched the wonderful dispatch ladies at work, and I’m still in awe at the number of programs they simultaneously operate.  A new dispatcher had just finished their background check, so I joined in on their orientation.

From Wednesday on I was back with VRP. A new initiative to more deeply ID everyone we contact was introduced. At a minimum, we ID people by name, but management has asked that we run everyone and have dispatch check NCIC for warrants, repeat offenders, and to make sure people are who they say they are. The obvious con of this would be the inefficiency in calling dispatch constantly, but the pros that motivated the initiative are identifying repeat-offenders of PCS, dog off leash, etc. It also increases our chances of finding hard-crime offenders, like in the past case of Mark Apples.

The homeless population of INDE is exactly what you would expect of a city, and Washington Square is a very common place for people to ‘camp out’- lay out cardboard or blankets, using bags as pillows, anything that turns a bench into sleeping or living quarters. While we have resources that we offer consistency, there's been a greater push to get resources to people in need since winter is approaching.  For example, I spent some time calling different shelters and providers in hopes that we could find assistance for well-known family that frequents Washington Square.

If you live in Philly, you may have seen this incident in the news. A bright orange cat got “stuck” in a tree in the rose garden of our park. Since he had been seen moving to different heights of the tree, we aren’t really sure if he was stuck or just hanging out. A high-reach would have been too difficult to bring into the rose garden, and the ladders we had and that were offered to us by others didn’t quite cut it. The cat was too apprehensive of the crowds below to come down during the day, and we have no idea if he came down at night. By day 3 or 4, the public was extremely concerned. Public officials and fox news members were reaching out to the park service, demanding this cat be brought down. Thankfully, what I’ll call for all intents and purposes a “professional tree climber”, managed to get the cat down and animal control promptly caught him. The public named him “Ben” after Ben Franklin.

On my last day, alongside prolonged good-byes, I witnessed both a small socialist protest against I.C.E.  at the Bell and a public intoxication incident at Christ Church.  The protest went peacefully, and the intoxication incident came terribly close to including public urination, but the rangers got the situation under control.

By the time Saturday came, I could not have said enough “thank-yous”, and still can’t. I’ve learned so much from all the rangers and staff willing to let me into their world, and I will without a doubt carry it with me into my career. Even though my 10 weeks are up, I found myself wishing I’d be back on Monday.

Not quite painting the town red...

Except for some excessive heat, INDE’s been blessed with tons of sun this summer. This week made up for all of that. 

Working around dozens of visitors at any given site makes maintenance hard enough, but rain is just problematic. In case it isn't obvious, painting in the rain is useless. 

               The painters are another friendly and dedicated maintenance team just as gardening had been a few weeks back. The week was a game with the weather. We’d start the day painting bollards at Independence Hall, feel a drizzle, and rush back inside to paint some benches or gloss arrowheads. One eye trained on the window the entire time, waiting for the sun to come back out. 45 minutes later the rain would stop, we would power-walk back out to the bollards, and paint for 30 minutes before the rain began again. Of course, we had to do extra coats and touch ups on everything because of the rain damage, but everything turned out good if I do say so myself.

              

Later in the week we touched up the base of the high-rise  with some glossy orange paint. Photo credit goes to Ulises who, with his master photography skills, refused to let me take this photo without some sort of posing.  

Storytellers

I spent this week with the crafty storytellers of the park. Interp rangers and guides have a RIGID schedule, down to 5-minute travel blocks. They may spend an entire day at the visitors center, but they often have 20 minute to one hour stints at multiple locations throughout the day. Minus the stress of needing to travel quickly, most rangers like the variance, it keeps the day from being monotonous.

All the rangers and guides were beyond friendly, and didn’t hesitate to tell me their stories. They each have a unique background and there's no one way that someone becomes an interp ranger- some are veterans, some became rangers well into their 40s after careers as teachers, and some joined right after college.

       

 One of my favorite places to spend time was in the West Wing, which houses important versions of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. Here rangers could have regular, in-depth conversations with visitors. And before anyone asks, our Declaration is actually older that the one in Washington.

Interp is challenged with both a ‘lightening’ of their job and angry visitors. While I haven’t seen it at our park, rangers are hyper aware that others have contracted out interpreters and expect rangers to have a lighter hand in interpretation. On the visitor side, rangers are the first to deal with people who are unhappy with the interpretation being done. Rangers expertly handle visitor’s issues with topics as small as the way INDE describes Hamilton versus the musical, to something as big as hate for the new LGBTQ exhibit.   Visitors also tend to rush to highlights of the park- the bell, the hall, etc.- without stopping to talk to interpreters or hear a deeper story.

Interp at INDE also takes care of  another of my favorite sites, the Edgar Allen Poe National Historic Site. It's only open Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and since it's all the way up on Spring Garden Street, rangers are scheduled ahead of time to spend the entire day there. It houses a great self-guided tour, a fun video, and a few Poe-style decor. 

Highlights

Witnessing the ringing of the Centennial Bell. 

"Standing Trial"

Bad Apples

This week was the 4^th of July!!

On the 3rd, I shadowed Ranger Clark and was supposed to observe the Pops Concert, but thunderstorms prevented that from happening.

The 4th on the other hand was a busy, exciting day.  The highlight was the parade, where I got to practice my crowd-scanning skills and enjoy the show a little. Despite the low attendance from the ridiculous heat, the parade was a fun mix of music, Philadelphia cultures, patriotism, and unicyclists (my personal favorite).  As per usual, we had a ton of heat exhaustion calls.

On the 5^th I was debriefed on the craziness that happened during the night shift on the 4^th. There were a few wild fights and light posts down but nothing that isn’t expected on one of the country’s drunkest days of the year.  Rangers are responsible for supervising any set-up and break-down of stages around INDE, especially if it involves any traffic interference.  So while observing the break-down in front of the Hall, Ranger Keiffer was called to help one of the workmen ‘break’ into his car.

Around the time of the Philly I.C.E. protests, Philly PD asked for mild ranger backup. If you’ve seen the videos, you’ve seen the crowd control Philly PD has done. For my sake, the Rangers showed me videos of that day, and videos of past crowd control, and talked about their experience there, doing the usual after-action report of what went well and what could have gone better.

This week was also a huge arrest of a man we’ll call “Mark Apples”, for the sake of anonymity. INDE has a large homeless population, and rangers often talk to them and get to know the regulars around the area. It helps foster a more positive and safer environment.  Apples was known to hang around a particular bench and fist-bump people passing by. No malicious intent, no harassing, just overly-friendly fist-bumps and “hellos”. But sometimes, Apples would drink, get loud, and start grabbing people if they didn’t pay attention to him. That’s when rangers get called in to calm the situation down.  

In the morning we got a call that Apples was being the more aggressive version of himself. So we went out to investigate and talk with him. Rangers had never gotten a positive ID on him before, so they decided to chat and try to get some information. Apples wasn’t angry or aggressive, but he was very uncooperative in giving any information. He would give a few different names, claim he couldn’t remember his birthday, and interrupt any questions with exclamations on music he listened to recently or things he found interesting, all the while walking back and forth from the rangers, not entirely part of the conversation.

His 'names' weren’t found in any system, which the rangers expected. A few hours later we get a call that Apples was now belligerently drunk and had offered alcohol to minors on park property. After interviewing the minors, we found Apples and decide to follow him at a safe distance while waiting for backup. Based on his heavy stumbling and his adventures through the middle of the street, he was clearly drunk. Once backup came they contacted Apples, got a consensual search of his bag (which did indeed have a bottle of alcohol in it ), and tried once again to ID him. He became increasingly belligerent and angry with the rangers.  Since you can't cite someone you can't identify, and knowing that it was unlikely PPD would hold him for identification, rangers agreed to confiscate the alcohol and leave the contact for a later time while they try to identify him- there was no doubt he would back at his bench tomorrow. 

Apples had claimed he was a veteran, so Ranger Cooper and I drove over to the local VA to see if they were familiar with Mark Apples. They weren’t sure they knew him, and as we were leaving we get a text from a supervisor stating, “Oh! That’s Mark Apples”. He had been dealt with by the supervisor about 5 years back, and hadn’t been seen around since. Come to find out, this friendly fist-bumper has multiple warrants and failed to register himself as a sex offender.

30 minutes before the end of shift, as the rangers are planning his arrest for the following day, we get a call that Mark Apples was harassing people at the Liberty Bell line and was headed into the Visitor Center. An hour later Mark Apples was in custody, undergoing a full search by a ranger, and headed to the hospital because of his extreme drunkenness. Ranger Cooper led the case, so she was responsible for staying with Mark Apples until she could transfer custody over to the Philadelphia Sheriffs, even if it meant hanging out in the hospital for 3 hours after her shift had ended.  

Michael Scott was absent, but the Office was still a good time.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Administration.

My first two days inside the Merchants Exchange Building (MEB), the lovely building housing INDE’s offices, were spent in new employee orientation. We covered proper fire safety, building safety, union rights, etc.  Ranger Cooper debuted her first, and super successful, official active shooter training. The best part was getting to know the returning seasonals coming back for their 4^th, 5^th, or 20^th year.

Afterward I spent some time helping organize TONS of paperwork from a previous employee. Surprisingly, paperwork can teach you a lot about the Park Service, and when organizing it requires over 20 different categories, you realize just how many different jobs a single Admin employee has.

I took a break from Admin Thursday to staff the EMS tent at Wawa’s “Hoagie Day” event. The basic idea of the EMS tent was to have a place for people to go if the heat becomes too much or if they get injured and have to wait for Paramedics.  Realistically, EMS tents are water stations, missing persons rendezvous points, FAQ desks,  and “I’ve had this cut for about 3 weeks and it seems infected could you take a look?” stations.

Oh, and Ken is officially my favorite member of the Park Service. 

Back to VRP!

Back to VRP!

I sat in on Wawa’s Hoagie Day planning meeting this week. Despite the event only taking up a block or two, a TON of thought and security goes into process due to the sheer number of people we expect.

This week few different park employees allowed me to interview them in order to gain a better perspective on the park. What’s interesting is that no matter the employee, and no matter if they’ve worked at 1 or 10 parks, everyone agrees this park is just different. It’s hard to put a finger on, but it might be the urban setting, the millions of both domestic and international visitors, the large amount of employees, or our World Heritage Site Designation.

On shift, I witnessed a visitor pass out from heat exhaustion for the first time this summer. And then another, and another, and another...  Especially during this heatwave, it seems like every hour a kid has thrown up in line or someone’s gotten dizzy outside Independence Hall.

After shift one day, the entire team had a division meeting. It was the first time I got to see almost every ranger in one room. The supervisors and Chief shared their updates and concerns, and field rangers did the same. I also got to meet our FBI liaison and learn more about when and how our federal agencies interact.

Our resident bird, officially named "Bahawk Obama" by Twitter, can be seen flying around the Liberty Bell and Second Bank

Flowers, Dogs, and Fertilizer

I spent this week with maintenance. The morning of my first day, management took me around the offices and explained the entire operation.

Different departments handle specific jobs around the park, such as gardening, painting, wood work, etc. Some of the jobs can be very nuanced, for example wood work often involves creating items that imitate 18^th century style.

I spent my week with gardening, a group of fun and hardworking guys. They gave me some great “on-the-ground” perspectives on the park, and many have been there for a number of seasons. They didn’t hesitate to bring me into the group, and shared tons of stories.

They taught me all the safety aspects of city gardening I wouldn’t have considered normally. They wear thick gloves and never reach under anything to avoid running into needles, they are wary of poison ivy because “city” doesn’t equal lack of poisonous plants, and they watch their step when walking through shrubbery because they’ve each had their fair share missteps into dog, and sometimes human, ‘presents’. Even though they’re underfunded and understaffed, many of them hold a ton of pride in their work, as gardening is a huge part of the face of the park and Old City.

 

I ended the week with a Bark Ranger Activity, where the dogs of Old City were invited to the Pemberton House for a refresher on Dog-Park etiquette and doggie-CPR. Each owner and dog lifted their right hand/paw and took an oath on behavior in the park, receiving a cute “bark ranger” badge in return.

 

Independence Culture

This week I hung out with the friendly crew in Cultural Resource Management (CRM).  My first day was spent having some great conversations about how the prime historians, archaeologists, and archivists ended up working for INDE. They each explained their part in running the department, and showed me around the many storage rooms filled with thousands of historic files, NPS records, old photographs, maps, flat files, and books.

CRM handles all the archeological, historical, and environmental regulations that federal agencies must comply with. Something as small as cutting down a tree falls under these regulations, and has to be properly approved and recorded. For bigger projects, the NPS reports it online and gets the public opinion. I spent some time with their administrative director looking over PEPC, a database where the public can comment on anything the parks are doing and CRM can look over it and decide if changes should be made.

The next day, I hung out with a volunteer who was working on archiving very old photos of Philadelphia. We made sure that all of the existing labels matched what was going on in the photo, and when they didn’t, we used magnifying glasses to find details in the photo that might reveal where it took place or who was involved.

Later that day, a group of park managers from South Korea visited to listen to the head of CRM talk about how INDE manages its resources and ask questions. The Superintendent joined in about halfway through, and through the interpreter they had a great discussion about how parks work with outside organizations to complete projects and serve the public. It ended with the group gifting a beautiful piece of art to the department as a thank-you.

I received a great one-on-one tour of the Bishop White house, and the next day I got to do an inventory of the entire building. I’m big into books, so I was allowed to take some time to handle a few old books like a Bible from 1800 and magazines from the 1700s.

On Wednesday I worked with museum item managers Gloria and Nicole inside the Second Bank. We unrolled and re-packaged a ton of old textiles including American Flags from the 1800s and hand-embroidered tablecloths from the 1750s. We checked for any type of damage and found evidence of bugs inside one textile, which we quarantined and reported to out resident pest-control.

On my last day Gloria and I finished up textiles and tackled an inventory of the Todd House. Inventory involves checking to make sure that every single item in a historic house is accounted for, which can be extremely tedious, but flew by thanks to Gloria.

                                                                                                                              

What a View

Here we have the gorgeous Philadelphia view from my housing!

Meaning my apartment...because I'm not living in park housing.

Still not a bad view though!

INDE- Patrolling the Park...at Night

Day 1 was a great introduction to my park. I met more rangers than names I could remember and toured more buildings than I could locate again if you asked me. I was originally worried that night shift would be a bust. That in the worst-case scenario, the 5pm to 3am hours would be exhausting, that everyone would be miserable about missing out on normal daylight hours or going home to their families in the afternoon, that the entire park would be dead and everyone would have to be disgustingly caffeinated just to function.  Other than the extremely high caffeine consumption, I was completely wrong. Extra pay and a way to stay out of the hot summer day shift is a pretty good deal.

Visitor’s Center

On the first night, I met what felt like a large part of the NPS staff. I got a solid tour of the park from my supervisor Ranger Cooper as we patrolled on foot and by car throughout Old City. It was interesting to watch the usually busy park slowly empty out and grow dark. Towards the very end of our shift, a fight broke out outside a local club. Two rangers had been walking down a street right outside our jurisdiction when two men came barreling out into the street, landing right in front of them. Since it wasn’t technically our jurisdiction, the rangers controlled the situation and waited for Philadelphia Police (PPD) to arrive. For about a half hour I got to witness rangers work alongside PPD, something that happens often, to calm the situation and send both parties on their way.

The next day, we spent two minutes in the office before responding to a “Bomb Threat” on the Liberty Bell. It was nothing serious, just someone with a terrible sense of humor, but law enforcement reacted as if it was a true threat regardless to ensure everyone’s safety. I met Ken the Bomb Dog and witnessed him sweep the Liberty Bell Center. Afterward, I sat among all the rangers as they went through their after-action report. where they covered what happened, what went well, and what could go better next time.  Later I spent a good chunk of time with Dispatch, which is way more involved than I ever imagined it would be. I was shown how dispatchers record all of the radio communications, monitor park cameras, record submitted ranger information, track ranger shifts, record what building and areas are checked most often, and how they run ranger contacts in search of warrants, past criminal histories, and any other information they may need. 

I had a lot of great Q&A sessions with Ranger Cooper over topics like the 4^th amendment, searching subjects under probable cause, reasonable suspicion, and understanding when to respect people’s rights to not be searched.

On my last day on night shift, I witnessed my most extensive event of the week while patrolling the park on foot with Ranger Clarke. He discovered a subject about to inject heroin next to a park building. This was a process of controlling the situation, removing the threats of needles or possible hidden objects, both calming the subject and getting him to comply, calling other rangers on scene to conduct a willing search of the subject, and then writing a number of citations and a mandatory court appearance. The subject had a pretty substantial amount of drugs, which I got to observe Ranger Clarke officially test for identification and then submit into evidence. 

Playing with Kids, Snakes, and Engineers All Day.

I’ve had to exercise patience this year, as I won’t enjoy an internship like the rest of my cohort members until next summer. But I’ve kept busy.

I spent the first month of my summer volunteering/interning at my local Conservation District. The district is divided into a technical section which occupies the first floor, and the education section (primarily elementary) which occupies the second.

In the morning I would work on my arts and crafts. (This is serious stuff I promise). I was in charge of re-furbishing the cast of our puppet-show, the old puppets had seen some rough times. Educational events and “bog-walks” were also regularly scheduled and I would shadow and assist our educators with whatever programming was going on that day, whether it be a visit to a school or an in-building program for homeschooled kids. The “Bog-walk” is a short and slippery hike along trails and floating docks through the local Cranberry Bog of Tannersville. A Bog is kind of a mixture of a marsh and a swamp (it contains both grasses as a marsh does, and trees and shrubs as a swamp does) and is an extremely important and ecologically diverse ecosystem. Not to mention it has this eerie beauty that can only be understood by visiting. At the edge of the bog lies the Cranberry Creek where locals can go on special kayak tours and otters like to hang out. Multiple times a month, especially during the school year, educators give special tours to teach the community about this place and show them why it needs protection. By the end of my time there I was even able to take over parts of the bog walk and teach what I had learned. 

Funny enough, the Tannersville Cranberry Bog is a National Landmark recognized by the National Park service. (Photo courtesy of NPS)

Working with kids was a fun exercise in understanding what captures an 8-year olds attention, and no one did it better than the Conservation District. I helped facilitate games, spent a good amount of time helping kids locate the queen bee in our transparent bee hive, and wrapping the resident corn snake Leo (who I would kidnap in a heartbeat) around my neck and arms to show the students.

In the afternoon I was taken in by engineers and specialists. I was whisked away to development sites that needed problems of erosion solved, swales checked-in on, and sites that we needed to make sure were actually following regulations on preventing run-off, erosion, contamination, etc. (and saw a good amount of wildlife if the process) I’m not lying when I say I find this stuff exciting. The engineers were worried about keeping me interested, but I hope after a few site visits and going over a few development plans that they saw it’s what I came there for.  I also spent some time with a hydraulic engineer navigating their work in geographic information systems (GIS). I had to learn some skills way above my current education in GIS and I’m thankful for it.

During my time there I got to meet a past master of the Audubon society who can not only identify any bird species by song but can actually sing back, a bright and extremely intelligent young educator with impressive kayaking and red eft location skills (look it up), Leo the snake and his friendly caretaker, and the team’s fearless leader in education programming.  Downstairs I spent time with a few charismatic head engineers troubleshooting GIS, visiting sites, and learning proper form-stamping procedures, was escorted and toured around by a specialist with impeccable audio-book recommendations and a sharp brain, a scarily-smart and humble woman who helped shape what areas of Monroe county look like today, and the ‘Gazelle’ who kindly answered my endless questions. There was not one person I met at the Conservation District who hesitated to offer me either knowledge or at the very least a great conversation. I want to thank The District Manager, a clearly passionate leader, for allowing me this great opportunity.

Most importantly I want to thank the hero that shall remain nameless due to her abhorrence towards  Facebook and all other forms of social media, and who owns a phone even older than Josh’s.  Without her persistence I would never have had this opportunity, and without her faith in me I would never have come as far as I did. 

July 26th 2017, Lauren Butler

Here We Go

Hello everyone, my name is Lauren Butler, and I’m a proud member of cohort 6. I’m a sophomore Environmental Studies major and German minor here at Temple. I’ve spent my whole life growing up around forests, rivers, and taking every advantage I can to be outside. When it came time to leave High School and choose a career path, I was completely lost. I had too many interests, and felt too pressured to choose certain careers. I wanted a physical job, an intellectual job, a job outside, and so on. I needed a school that offered a wide selection of majors and career paths as to not limit myself, and despite my inclination to be in nature, I knew that a city education could offer me opportunities I wouldn’t find elsewhere, so I landed myself at Temple.

I was right about those opportunities.

My choice of major and my application to the ProRanger program coincided perfectly. I noticed that back home in the Poconos, the beautiful landscape I grew up in was being mistreated, over developed, and unappreciated. Learning about what it takes to manage land and preserve it inspired me to become an Environmental Studies major. I have a real passion for the protection of wilderness. I came across the “advertisement” for Temple's ProRanger Program many times in the Temple Honors emails, and before I had found my passion, I dismissed it as a career where you’re forced to wear funny hats. By the third or fourth time I had seen the ad, and had delved into the Ranger website to actually learn about the career, I was extremely intrigued. The ProRanger program embodies the protection of everything I hold passion for. The National Parks have always been places I hold in high esteem, large areas appreciated for their vast resources both natural and historical. To be a Ranger is to dedicate yourself to the protection, maintenance, and enjoyment of others in these magnificent parks. I of course applied, and the moment that I left Preview Day I felt a strong sense that what I was involved in was right for me, something that I wasn’t akin to feeling after so many years of trying to figure out what it is I want to do with my life. The community formed by the ProRanger Program is led by people that I cannot wait to learn from, and is filled with students that nourish the camaraderie, discipline, and excitement that comes with being an NPS Ranger. I am ready to start my journey as a law enforcement officer for the National Park Service.

2017 Park Assignments!

The ProRanger Program is pleased to announce student assignments for Summer 2017!

Boston National Historical Park - Josh Leahy

Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park - John Hardie

Christiansted National Historic Site - Brennan McAuley
Colonial National Historical Park - Sam Vecchione
Gettysburg National Military Park - Kyle Maurer
Hot Springs National Park - Nick Gosik
Mammoth Cave National Park - Angelo Algeri
San Juan National Historic Site - Brennan McAuley
Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area - Stephanie Hudson
Yosemite National Park - Justen Willliams

ProRangers Lauren Butler and Kayla McComsey will be postponing their first summer internship until Summer 2018.