Maybe it’s hanging out at the homestead that makes me prone to reminiscences. That, and the glow of the scanner as I rescue photos from a shoebox. I realized, aghast, that it’s been 15 years since I spent the summer working in Yellowstone National Park.
I wasn’t a ranger but a room attendant at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge. My cotton-polyester-blend red polo and gray slacks combo (pictured above) wasn’t the most stylish uniform ever, but it camouflaged the dust, dirt, and spilled cleaning solution until the end of the workday, when I’d chuck it in the washing machine.
That uniform made me the target of all kinds of tourists’ questions. What time will the geyser erupt? someone might ask as I wheeled my cart of cleaning supplies from cabin to cabin outside. I had no idea. I’d been scrubbing soap scum off shower walls and emptying trash cans. (My friend Rachel and I, below, stand next to a loaded cleaning cart).
That summer, I had the best of both worlds. I could enjoy the place like a tourist, but I knew it more intimately. I didn’t have to cram all of my Yellowstone experiences into a weekend trip. I saw the reddish bison calves in May become woolly bison teenagers by August.
I was only 20 and, rule-follower that I was, I’d had nary a sip of beer my whole life. I’d never been camping, like in a tent, before. That summer in Yellowstone I relied on the gear and expertise of new friends who had the same days off.
This is not even a generation ago, but it’s a world that’s hard to imagine now. (Note: This paragraph should be read in a quavering old-lady voice.) Our employee dorm had two payphones, one on each floor. My dad wrote me a letter each week and tucked a ten dollar bill in it. I had an email account, but I didn’t check it all summer.
I had hair halfway down my back, and one of the other park employees made a hemp wrap in my hair decorated with glass beads. It turned out that she and her boyfriend were from the same town in West Virginia where I was going to college. She loaned me her Indigo Girls CD, which I played on my roommate’s boombox and mailed back to her that fall. I cut my hair later that year, but I’ve still got that hemp wrap on a shelf in my childhood bedroom, like a relic.
I wrote an essay about that formative summer that appears in Permanent Vacation, an anthology of writing about working in U.S. National Parks (Breaking news: WanderChic toots own horn.) That summer was the start of my romance with the Great Big American West.