HUELLA VERDE

from the editor
Rangers have made
OLD HAT
Rangers have
made the
park system
special for
100 years.
Dear Reader,
I have never met a national park ranger I
didn’t like—even though, having found
professional excuses to hang out in
national parks from Alaska to Florida,
I have met a great many rangers.
They’re all impressive to start with.
I’ve met world-class alpinists among the
climbing rangers at Mount Rainier; softspoken,
crack-shot enforcement rangers
in Yosemite; search-and-rescue rangers
who save lives by rappelling out of helicopters;
and history rangers who can tell
you everything about Harriet Tubman.
Every one of them seems helpful and in
love with the work. Up to a point.
Every year, a couple thousand of them
pay their own way to a convention called
the Ranger Rendezvous. I got to attend
one in Grand Teton National Park, where
I went up to rangers and asked, “What’s
the dumbest thing you’ve seen a visitor
do?” Most answers had to do with wildlife
selfies: grinning photographers sidling
within the personal space of buffaloes,
alligators, and other uncuddly animals.
Unsurprisingly, some of your wilder wildlife
resent this practice. But one ranger
from Yellowstone recalled a foreign
visitor who, in a thick European accent,
asked to see the “dangaroos.”
“Kangaroos?” the ranger asked. “We
don’t have them here.”
“No, no, dangaroos.” The man pointed
to a portion of a large wall map in a
remote part of West Yellowstone, where
boiling natural vats underlie the thin soil.
This, the man insisted, was clearly the
habitat of these interesting animals.
The ranger looked closer. And indeed,
while the visitor’s pronunciation was
a bit off, the area was clearly marked
“Dangerous.”
Personally, I would have found it irresistible
to send him there, while pointing
out that the creatures in the vicinity were
short-lived and prone to taking selfies.
But the park ranger steered him away.
Seriously: These people are saints.
Jay Heinrichs
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
@JAYHEINRICHS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KARL GEHRING/GETTY IMAGES
26 southwest july 2016