The training

The Training

We arrived in West Yellowstone to stay at our favorite campground Bakers Hole until we could move into our new summer residence in the complex at Madison Junction.  Our training began on a Monday, May 7 and will conclude on Monday, May 21.  We were part of a group of about 30 very bright and young people who had been selected from more than 800 applicants to be seasonal interpretive rangers.

On our first commute, we saw this handsome animal about a quarter- mile from home.

We later realized that it was not a grizzly as we first thought, although any commute that begins with a bear is all right with me.

We were taken around in government cars in a caravan to see some of the major attractions since some of the trainees were new to Yellowstone.  We learned that all NPS vehicles must be backed in when feasible, by the way, and that rangers must always wear their Smokey Bear hats when outdoors.  They must also have a “condom” for the straw hats in case of rain.  No kidding!

Here is part of the group at West Thumb looking out over Yellowstone Lake.

We listened to biologists and other scientists on the NPS staff about so many topics that our heads were spinning.  We now know that of the 10 wolf packs today, the real bitches are the Mollies, led by an alpha female whose pack is very aggressive about attacking and killing other pack wolves.  Wolf/wolf kills are the leading cause of wolf mortality. We now know that 50% of the elk calves are killed by bears and that it takes 4 wolves to bring down an elk. Most bear attacks are defensive rather than aggressive, and bear spray is 92% effective.  Think about that for a moment.  We both carry bear spray when we are away from civilization.

This grizzly was about a mile from where we trained at Lake.

The botanist said it has been a tough million years for the plants.  She showed a slide of an insect-eating plant that thrives in the wet areas but declined to give its location.  The fire expert said that the old growth forests which escaped the 1988 and subsequent fires burn more often than the younger trees but do not burn as long or as vigorously.

There were 3.5 million visitors to YNP last year, most of them in family groups and most of them well-educated.  Thirty-eight thousand children became Junior Rangers last year.  Our assignment is at a very busy location for that activity.  And the stories!  When one ranger took a call from a lady asking if there were bars along a certain trail, he told her that the closest bar would be in Gardiner.  She meant handrails.  An arguing couple came into one visitor center demanding that the ranger tell them whether they had just seen an emu or a moose. After tactful questioning, it was determined that the animal was probably an elk.

I have shared a tiny fragment of what our brains absorbed these last two weeks.  The younger set would race out of there ready to hike.  We could hardly wait to drive to the motorhome for an hour and a half and have a serious cocktail.  Most mornings we set the alarm for 5:30.  A few of those mornings it was 20 degrees!

The next entry will be about our community and about how the job works.  We get one day of shadowing and are then thrown into the fire by working for the Memorial Day weekend.

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Have you ever heard of a bear spray kozee?  Neither had we.  This keeps the spray from exploding in a hot car.