Reflections on Being a Park Ranger

I haven't talked much about my actual job on this blog, so I figured I would take some time today to do just that. But where to begin?

Well, as a uniformed interpretive ranger, essentially my job is to be the public face of the National Park Service, your friendly local ranger here to teach you about your natural and cultural resources. Beyond that, I am also a civil servant; this fact really hit home last week when my supervisor read us a thank-you letter from someone who wrote in, thanking us "for serving our country." This isn't to say that as park rangers we serve in the same way as the military, but I felt so humbled to be recognized for serving my country in a way that I'm proud of, and that is not always seen for what it is.

As an interpretive ranger, the majority of my work is in teaching. I am SO grateful for the summer camp counseling experience I have, because otherwise I don't think I would be at all prepared for the challenges I have faced this summer! Most of my week is spent developing either hour-long programs for Tundra Tots (ages 3-5) or 90-minute programs for Junior Rangers (ages 6-12), or Ranger Talks for the general public. In addition, the last couple weeks have also been spent developing 2 1/2 hour programs for a summer camp group of 30+ kids. Ack!

I've gotten pretty good at developing the program outlines, but delivering programs is a whole other challenge in and of itself. We give two Tundra Tots and two Junior Ranger programs each week, one to the public, and one to a local Native day care group. For all of them, one of the hardest parts is dealing with a wide range of academic abilities. The majority of local youth are academically behind lower-48 levels for their ages, so I always have to develop programs that don't involve a lot of reading or writing, even for the older kids, and yet still keep it interesting for the few who are more advanced. This continues to be extremely difficult each week, especially given the wide age range of the junior rangers.

Nonetheless, I'm pretty proud of myself for getting through it so far. I got my first supervisory review back last week and it was quite positive. I just need to work on my technique with the little kids some more. Overall, I've been trying not to worry too much about how well I'm doing, and just do the best I can to improve each week. As I learned last week, kids do NOT like to make timelines (who knew? I liked timelines when I was little!), but habitat dioramas are super fun. :-) Lessons learned.

Even though working with kids takes up the majority of my time, I think my favorite part of my job is interacting with visitors. Ranger talks are hard, but fun; I meet so many interesting folks in the visitor center and working as a roving naturalist; and you really can't beat a good day-long hike on the tundra. I'll be honest, I REALLY enjoy being a park ranger. It can be fast-paced and high-intensity sometimes, as you're expected to live up to a high standard, but that forces you to stay on top of things and continue to push yourself and earn your respect.

So, those are my thoughts on it all, hopefully not too scatterbrained, but enough to give you an idea of what I do 40+ hours a week.

A Whale of a Time

It started with a report on the local radio station: "Whales sighted just offshore, east beach."

"Wanna go look for whales??" My supervisor asked, as she came out of her office, pulling on a jacket and grabbing the car keys. 

"Chyeah!"

Half of Nome turned out to watch

Within minutes the majority of our staff members were packed into the vehicle and I found myself behind the wheel driving towards a huge line of cars pulled over on the side of the road just outside of town. "THERE IT IS!" someone said, and I pulled over behind the line. 

The first sighting

After a few tense moments, I spotted them myself: long, thin dorsal fins dipping up out of the water and then back down again. "Are those...??" We held our breath before they came up a second time, afraid to believe our eyes.

Orcas offshore of Nome

"Oh my god those are orcas!" my coworker confirmed our suspicions as cameras clicked wildly away. Orcas, indeed, and a pod of about 10 of them!

Orca surfacing for air

They were pretty far, but through my 300mm lens, I was able to get some decent photos. I couldn't believe it -- just a year ago, I had never seen a whale in my life, and now here I was watching a species I had only dreamed of ever seeing in the wild. 

Orca spouting

As they moved further and further away, the crowd seemed to gather further down the beach. More whales? Yes! But not orcas. 

Grey whales stuck on a shallow sandbar

As it turned out, a wildlife biologist from UAF, and several others, had seen the real story unfold: The orcas were stalking a grey whale mother and calf. The calf was apparently injured (reportedly it had been attacked by the orcas), and the pair had swum to shore to escape the pod, where they proceeded to beach themselves on the sandbar about 30 feet from shore, and were thrashing about to get back to the deeper waters.

Grey whale fluke

It was an incredible sight to see something that large, so close, and to realize it was part of nature in action, the violent predator-prey relationship between separate cetacean species that few people ever witness. A total National Geographic moment unfolding before our eyes! The orcas circled the sound a couple times, but eventually gave up and moved back out to sea. By the time I left, the grey whales had also managed to move themselves back out into deeper water.

The stories on the street throughout the whole ordeal were pretty interesting. Some people were anticipating the grey whales would die so they could harvest the meat. A lot of miners had come in to watch from shore, reporting the orcas had swum by their dredges and scared them out of the water (I don't blame them!). A ton of videographers were there as well, probably from Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, having heard the news while filming for other shows in the area. Word of the event even made it all the way to Anchorage and was reported on nightly news.

Although orca populations are known to exist in the Bering Sea, from what I can tell, it is extremely rare for them to show up in Norton Sound, especially this far north. And to see them actively hunting was absolutely unreal.

It's one of those days that makes me feel so lucky to be here and alive and experiencing the wonders of the natural world firsthand.

Catching up

So much catching up to do! My failure to keep this blog update is not for lack of trying. In fact, I have tried nearly half a dozen times, gotten entire posts written and pictures uploaded, only to have the internet crash and all my work swept away into the abyss of cyberspace. This time it seems to be working though, so here we go again!

Midnight Sun Parade

Just like last year, Nome held its annual Midnight Sun Folk Fest parade on the summer solstice last month. I was impressed -- perhaps my expectations were just lower, or maybe they did kick it up a notch, but either way the parade seemed bigger and longer than last year.

Subsistence float

I thought the above picture was kind of ironic -- the subsistence float passing under the sketchy fast food restaurants in the background.

David Wax Museum band, playing a muskox mandible

Bank robbers coming into town

The annual bank robbery was reenacted at the Wells Fargo again as well.

Gunfight at the bank robbery

Guided hike at Nugget Divide

A week after the summer solstice I led my first guided day hike. This one was to Nugget Divide, about 30 miles up the road. Surprisingly, 6 people showed up despite the inclement weather of persistent rain, fog, and cold. They were all champs though, and we made it to the first peak, had lunch in the dense fog, and then elected to hike back down since there really wasn't much to see.

The rain, cold, and fog persisted for the next couple weeks, reminding me of last summer. I hope it's not like this for the next 3 months! 

A few hours of sun!

One evening last week the weather cleared, and so we were able to head out to a nice hiking spot down the road to enjoy a couple hours of nighttime sun.

Climbing with the GoPro

At the top of the hill, there were some great bouldering rocks, so I had a good time clambering around and playing with the GoPro.

Great views from the top

Beach bonfire

After another busy week of work, last night my roommates and I went out to the beach for a bonfire, thinking the rain was over. Unfortunately, it was too wet to get much going, and it continued to rain the whole time. 

We made the best of it though, and had some fun with all the driftwood that washed up in the storms, building some sort of weird 30-foot tall structure in the middle of the beach by our bonfire. We're still not sure what it is, but it was fun to make, and will be fun to see how long it stays up.

Yarr! Shiver me timbers!

Just some silly shenanigans, but it was a fun way to wind down after a busy week and get outside despite the incessant rain. Hoping it'll get sunny soon though, so I can get out for some salmon fishing!

Work and Play

First order of business: I'm now officially a park ranger. Uniform arrived yesterday in all its oddly-proportioned glory. Apparently female park rangers are expected to have ginormous butts and 3-inch waists, according to the size trousers I received, but alas, it'll have to work over the summer. Go ahead, have your laughs. :)

Fellow park ranger and I, ready to serve America

On to other news: we've had the strangest (and best!) weather in Nome this week, with temperatures sky rocketing into the upper 80s over the weekend! I took advantage of the sun and spent Sunday birding around the area and taking photos of the fog rolling in off the Bering Sea.

Fog on the harbor

Despite the heat, sea ice blew in from the south and fastened itself to shore for a couple days. It was extremely eerie, and very strange to be hopping around out on the ice wearing short sleeves and sweating in the hot air!

Fog over Nome

Cool ice formations

A coworker caught me birding on the sly

Grey-cheeked thrush

I didn't see any "special" birds but I got a couple good pictures nonetheless. One of my favorite finds for the afternoon was a grey-cheeked thrush, which I had only heard before then. It was fun to finally see what it looked like!

Hoary Redpoll

Yellow Warbler

Spotted Seal

I also got out to explore a new part of the harbor I'd never been to before, and was delighted to find a spotted seal cruising around under the glassy surface! Once it saw us, it disappeared, but I got an adequate snapshot before it hightailed away.

Biking to Glacier Creek

One Monday it was even warmer and sunnier, so two of my roommates and I went out for a bike ride in the early afternoon. I didn't expect it to be more than a couple hours, but we ended up going 24 miles in 6 hours! All I can say is: OOOOWWWW. My legs have never been so sore in my life! Three days later, they still hurt.

Dorky self shot with the GoPro

Despite the difficulty of the ride, it was a blast. Lots of hills, and a lot of the road was washed out, so it made for some fun and challenging mountain biking and I ended up covered in mud and dust.  We took a couple breaks along the way to play in the streams and nap on the tundra.

Underwater in the stream

It's been a busy week, and work and play continue to keep me occupied. I'll try to post more updates soon. 

Bipolar weather and end of training

I've been trying to update this blog for about 3 days now, but the internet is so slow it keeps failing to save or post. So here we go again -- fingers crossed. 

Looks almost like a painting!

First, I wanted to get the pictures up from the snow we had about a week and a half ago. I mentioned in my last post, but in case you missed it, we had a light snow storm last Friday. 

Snow falling on Newton Peak

My coworkers milling around in the frost

Summer tried to come... didn't quite make it.

Just as quickly as the snow came, it melted away again with a few gloriously warm days of sun this past week. I had training off and on -- I was exempt from B3 aviation because apparently my certification I got last summer is good for 3 years, but I still got to do Operational Leadership (risk management), bear safety, and shotgun training.

Shotgun training

Shotgun training was super fun. We practiced with the park's .12 gauge Remington 870s, using slugs and buckshot, the same ones we take into the field for bears. I haven't gone shooting in over a year, but I was pretty proud of my aim! Didn't even really get a bruise from the kick of the shotgun afterwards.

Ginormous mosquito -- summer's back!

Mew gull

Near the end of the week, we had an afternoon of birding with a biologist from AK Fish & Game. Needless to say, I was quite excited about this session. We birded around Nome for about 2 1/2 hours,  and I saw a bunch of new species I probably wouldn't have identified on my own, including Cackling Geese (they look exactly like Canada Geese), parasitic jaegers, and a Pacific golden-plover.

Melanistic parasitic jaeger!

Regular plumage parasitic jaeger

Rock ptarmigan molting into summer plumage

Whale!

During the birding trip, one of my coworkers spotted a whale offshore. We screeched to a halt on the side of the road and watched for a long time as the whale periodically surfaced to spout and roll in the calm surf. We couldn't figure out what kind it is -- possibly a bowhead? Maybe a grey whale? Still haven't figured it out. 

Still haven't identified it...

Bonfire (in the 10pm sunlight!)

That night, in celebration of finishing our two weeks of training, we returned to the beach to have a little bonfire, enjoy the last of our good weather, and the bright midnight sun.

On Tuesday I begin my summer of "real" work as an interpretive ranger. My schedule will be Tuesday-Saturday all summer, with Sunday and Monday as my weekend days. Next week I have a full schedule of assisting with a Tundra Tots program, giving a ranger talk at the visitor center, giving two Junior Ranger programs on Friday, and staffing our table at a craft fair on Saturday.

This week is also the beginning of Nome's Folk Fest, which celebrates the summer solstice, so there will be a lot going on outside of work, including the summer parade, lots of live music, and other events and festivities bringing the town together. Should be a fun week!

Edit: Forgot to mention my Recipe of the Week for week 2 here was dairy-free rice pudding. I had a bunch of rice to use up, so I made it into pudding with almond milk, sugar, and cinnamon. It tasted like rice pudding, but the texture was more like just sticky, creamy rice. Overall, not too bad and a good way to use up rice that's been in the fridge too long.

Springtime in Northwest Alaska

This week has kept me busy with training at work, but on Thursday we got to get out on the road system for a little excursion and to deliver a 55 gallon barrel of aviation fuel to the airstrip at the end. It was cold and foggy in town, but as soon as we crossed over the mountains, it was beautiful and sunny, although the spring landscape remains pretty brown.

Coming down out of the mountains

Golden-crowned sparrow

 Besides some birds and moose and Arctic ground squirrels, we didn't see any other wildlife, but the views were beautiful as always.

Grand Central Valley

NatGeo moose chase shot

Towards the end of the road we stopped on a bridge and one of my coworkers spotted 5 moose standing on the opposite bank. One was chasing the others around, and the moose calves were following, galloping awkwardly around on their long legs.

Moosages

Osprey

Also at this bridge was a relative rarity for the Nome area -- an osprey! Although they have been known to be in this area on occasion, this pair was building a nest on the bridge.

Yellow Warbler taking off

Bird migration is in full swing, and the tundra was alive with the songs of white-crowned and golden-crowned sparrows, plovers, and sandpipers. Also sighted lots of swans and ducks in the ponds along the roadside.

Sea Ice is all but gone

Back in town, the sea ice is still hanging around to the west, but for the most part it's beginning to melt and float away. It looks kind of strange right now because you can still see it frozen into the substrate underwater and chunks of ice float near the shore.

Sea ice underwater (taken with GoPro)

Red-throated Loon

Nothing much else to report for now. Yesterday it snowed again (pictures to come!). I also got to help out with a junior ranger program in preparation for leading my own in a couple weeks. 

Next week I have B3 Aviation training again, Operational Leadership, and Shotgun Training, and hopefully more opportunities to get outside.