SEEKERS AND SUVIVORS

I’m a little sad tonight. I drove one of my new friends at Yellowstone off to the Bozeman airport today. Ali was an Inspector for Housekeeping.  An Inspector makes sure the army of mostly young Room Attendants properly fluff the pillows, clean the bathrooms, remove the trash, and shine the sink faucets in the manner expected by the Mammoth guests.  Ali suffered a common and sometimes inevitable ailment common to a person in her position when she was training one of her young charges how to do things the Ali way. She is returning to her family in order to recover.

Ali, a long-time immigrant to the US, is bright, funny and Indonesian. Like me, she is a bit of a rebel but always looking for the sunny side of life. We hit it off right away. I don’t know if she will be able to return but as we passed through the verdant valleys north of Mammoth, we talked about the incredible beauty of the place and how she had so little time to explore it. I will miss her. 

That got me to thinking once again about the reasons we all come to the Park to work. Is there a common thread?  If so, what is it? There are over 3,000 Xanterra employees in the Park and I’m sure there are as many stories as employees.  I have been reluctant to share the stories of my fellow workers because some of them would be instantly recognizable to others. In order to be fair to those who told me their stories in confidence, I have changed the names of all and the circumstances of some in order to honor their confidences. 

Full-time jobs here are at a premium. A Manager I have come to know fairly well came here many years ago to work a season as a Server and fell in love with the place. She is a veteran traveler, a seeker of new places and new faces. After her season, she took up residence in Gardiner, a place she calls Paradise, running a small successful business until the recession closed it down. Then she did what any Gardinerite without an income but with a will to stay in Gardiner would do – applied to work in the Park. She was seasonal for a few years after which she landed a full-time job in the department she now supervises. She can’t think of living anywhere else.  Many of the long-time employees feel the same way. Maybe it’s something in the water. 

Some employees are Returners, a name Xanterra calls those people who come every summer to the same or different jobs from all over the place just in order to be in this place for the summer. Summer is a special time in which thousands of extra jobs need filling at the same time the elk and bison are calving, the valleys are greening, and the rivers are running high. Kim and Syd, husband and wife, have been returning for a short five years. Kim, retired from social work, and Syd, retired from the Justice system, initially came their first year on the advice of a friend in order to supplement their social security. But frankly, these two are life-long adventurers, so a Yellowstone job was a better fit than Cinderella’s glass slipper. Kim is a two-time cancer survivor and insists the long-term consequences of chemo and radiation will NOT keep her from doing what she wants to do. I got to know Kim and Syd on a white-water raft trip.  They used to be white-water guides and wanted to experience the thrill of white-water again. The Gallatin River gave all of us the best it had to offer. By the way, I’m not sure Kim and Syd remember they are retired. 

Two other Returners are so recognizable I have asked them for their permission to write about them.  I will still change their names but they are so unique other employees will know immediately who they are.  The Sisters, as they are called, are not only siblings but best friends.  They spend their winters in the home they own together in a Florida retirement village; they travel the world together; they hit the casino together and take smoke breaks together. Being close to my sisters, I of course feel they are very lucky to have a sister with whom to do all these things. 

These smart, savvy sisters are in their late seventies.  They both clawed their way to responsible positions in the 60s when it was difficult for women to claw her way past the kitchen. They both have families but got divorced at a time it was unusual to do so in order to pursue their careers and individual interests. They were feminists before that word became popular. Lori, the sister I know best, is extremely competent, a quality I appreciate. Without a college degree, she was promoted to an Audit position in the 60s at Arthur Anderson. She worked in far-flung places like Germany and Point Barrow. Wherever she worked, she used her work as an opportunity to travel as much as possible. Betty, her sister, took a similar path. These two have a brother who married an Ecuadorian and moved there so I’m thinking this wandering might be genetic. Lori and Betty say this is their last year because they want to travel more and work less. 

A lot of the new employees are young people between their third and last year of college. Tom, who now works in one of the social programs in the Park, came for his first time several years ago and now, armed with a degree, he is back trying to live his life as fully as he can while he makes plans for the future. Yellowstone is a good place to live life fully while you are thinking through things. Yellowstone can highjack those same plans, though, because no other place offers the sheer diversity of beauty of Yellowstone.

 

Xanterra does not just hire Americans. In the spirit of the Park service for years and years, young people from all over the world are attracted to the mystery of Yellowstone. It is their BIG OE (overseas experience), a chance to live and work in America. I have met a young man from Ecuador (who I promptly introduced to The Sisters) and another from Serbia. Surely these young people are seekers of the highest order to travel so far from their families alone to work in an unknown and particularly wild environment. 

There are others, like me, here for the first time. We all have our different reasons for coming to the Park.  Many are retired and looking for something interesting to do. For me, it provides a sabbatical from my ‘real’ life in order for me to consider how I want to spend the rest of my life. For my friend Sally, newly retired from teaching and a recent survivor of a serous tumor, it is a time to find out what adventure feels like and how she might live a more adventurous life. 

Of course, these short stories of my new friends just cut the surface of the complex, adventurous seekers who choose to come to the Park.  All of us have deeper reasons we have been drawn to this place. Some of us have felt such trauma that we can only heal in the clean wilderness that is Yellowstone. Others seek that perfect place for our souls to flourish. Most of us are experienced survivors as travelers often are. Those of us who seem to be the happiest here are usually the ones who will be happy anywhere. It’s just that Yellowstone makes us even happier.

 

As seekers, we all share the will to keep that wonder of small children alive. We need Yellowstone for that daily dose of breathless awe. We are all addicted to that moment of amazement as the sun crests the mountains and shines on the Terraces or we witness the birth of an elk or see an eagle soaring in the sunlight.  I suspect all of us who are happy here at Yellowstone have just a wee bit of Peter Pan in us. And Yellowstone is our Neverland.