A DIFFERENT KIND OF TRAIL: THE CAMPAIGN

I’m in a room on a narrow bed.
A giant football twists above my head.
A young boy’s jersey hangs from the knob.
It’s all part of my volunteer job.

Dawn is breaking over Missoula. It’s still dark but I am already astir. I have been walking and making phone calls for the candidate who has hired my son to do something my son just loves to do – get out the vote for a candidate he believes in. I don’t normally do these things unless someone else believes enough in the candidate to offer me a place to stay. After all, it’s Montana – not even my voting STATE much less precinct - yet.

Well, I guess it’s better than last year. Last year I flew up to Whitefish, in the Flathead Valley of Montana, for the last four days of the electoral cycle on my own money to help (for free again) my son who was the Field Organizer of a campaign of a very nice and passionate Democrat for Montana State Legislature in an tight race in a swing district. He was able to get ‘volunteer housing’ – a virtually empty old house being completely remodeled. At least the remodeling had progressed far enough that it had a working shower and a working toilet.

I slept on a mattress spread out on the bare subfloor but the fact that my son had me walking and phoning pretty much all day every day made up for my less than luxurious sleeping arrangements. Dan wasn’t too worried about finding fancy digs; when my son is on a role, he would sleep on top of a desk to get the person he believes would make the perfect legislator, mayor, judge, (fill in the blank here) elected.

My son is what is known in polite circles as a ‘political consultant’ or in bigger campaigns a ‘field organizer’. FOs are usually twenty-somethings who migrate from campaign to campaign, usually for low pay, in order to make this democracy work.  Doesn’t matter which party, the job and the pay is about the same. My son happens to work mostly for Democratic candidates, being a Democrat himself, but he’s not opposed to working for someone with another affiliation if he thinks the person is right for the job. But the thing with being a Democratic FO – you get to play the awesome ‘ground game’ that the Democrats have been building for the last 10 years.

The ‘ground game’ is not really a secret. The leading political reporters and pundits have written a lot about it. The rules are simple – get a person elected by knowing your base, working the undecideds and doing this with clean statistics, voter lists and lots and lots of volunteers who make phone calls to every single potential voter on those lists – more than once. That’s how Obama won  - twice; his ground game has been the best the Democrats have ever played.

The key to a good ground game, just like a football game, is to have a really good coach who is your campaign manager and strategist. The campaign manager for local campaigns strategizes about where the voters for his or her political candidate would come from, calls the plays and recruits volunteers by the bucketload.  In larger races, the recruiting is done by Field Organizers. If the candidates are running as a Democrat in a partisan race, the FOs are given the keys to the winning kingdom – a slick electronic voter database called VoteBuilder, nicknamed VAN. VAN is the increasingly specific list of voting behavior of certain voters within specific political districts. And it’s a powerful tool for Democratic organizers.

I used to be fond of saying I agree with Will Rogers who always said he wasn’t a member of an organized party – he was a Democrat. In the past, if you eliminate highly questionable machines like Chicago’s Daley regime,  the Democrats in my humble opinion have been anything but ‘organized’. So I can barely rap my head around the fact 1) the Democrats are amazingly organized and 2) they actually have a slick anything.

But Missoula municipal races are nonpartisan, run according to rules for nonpartisan races. So what is a candidate’s capable (and may I add good-looking and single in Dan’s case) Campaign Manager to do without the VAN, his or her most reliable tool in the toolbox? In my son’s case, he went after (from the County Recorder) the publicly available list of folks who vote in municipal elections.

I think most people know that the elections soliciting the highest number of votes are the National elections – particularly when a President is being elected. US House and Senate races are pretty high profile, too, in the off-year but municipal races have the lowest voter participation of all elections. Do most people REALLY care about who their mayor is? Maybe in big cities with a lot at stake but smaller towns have the benefit of usually knowing the candidates. If Tom and Mary are both good people, regardless that Tom sports a tat and Mary sometimes can get insufferably long-winded, they are not likely to spend much time prior to filling out the ballot to make their decisions.

But Missoula is just big enough that personal familiarity is just as likely as not likely. So for Dan’s candidate, it comes down to the group that may be the most dedicated voter in the world – the ones who consistently vote on school board elections. That’s an elite group of voters. Most of them even actually study the material, if any, that the candidates have put together to sway votes their directions. Particularly in a year in which there are no National or even State elections at stake.

So my son writes the scripts, trains the volunteers through role-playing exercises and then maybe walks with them or phones a few people for them for a bit until he is sure they are not too nervous about questions for which they have no answers. It’s always okay in door knocking or phone calling to say “Gee, I don’t know that but I can certainly have someone get back to you.” (With our society being very hard on people who ‘don’t know’, admitting you have no answers can be quite daunting.) Heck, from a Campaign Manager or FOs point of view, it’s a second chance to talk to the voter. Score!

But, no matter how well-trained and passionate the walker or caller is, school board voters are the well-informed group that says very politely, “He sounds really good and I will definitely look carefully at his website and written material once my ballot (mail-in type only) gets here.” Geez, no pushovers in this crowd. So Dan has to rely on his most capable phone bankers to get the word across. His candidate CARES about being a judge. He WANTS their vote. He wants it so much he has published his phone number on his website and on his printed mailers or door hangers. That really IS impressive to a lot of folks who are used to the increasingly remote relationships they have with their elected officials.

I guess by now you are wondering why a slightly more than middle-aged mother would suffer a twin bed covered with sheets stamped with tiny little footballs on it that a young boy has willingly agreed to give up for his Dad to spend my days walking or phoning for a candidate from whom I may never actually benefit. Yeah, well part of it is I trained my son to be political and I am having to live with the consequences of that. I also taught him to look at ALL the candidates before coloring in the little circle because the right person may not be the most obvious. But I also have a sense that I am watching a unique democratic play from a front-row seat being directed by an increasingly capable director who continues to sharpen his skills and knowledge with every single election.

At some point, I really believe my political son will decide that HE wants to run for office. HE will be looking for some slightly disheveled, smart strategist willing to work for little or nothing just because he or she believes in democracy and the person for whom they are working. I hope some other son or daughter’s mother steps forward to help her child in my child’s race. And I personally pledge to find them some decent ‘volunteer housing’ if they come from somewhere else in order to give my son the chance to make his particular piece of the world a better place. Heck, if (when) my son runs, I may be able to give them my own bedroom because I’ll most likely be sleeping on a cot in his campaign office. The desk, I’m sure, will be already claimed by his campaign manager.

 

OMENS AND INSPIRATIONS

I've been kicked out of Wonderland. I’ve had my summer sojourn and this morning as I pass the open gates of Yellowstone, I feel disoriented and a bit sad. I can honestly understand how people get so used to an environment, especially if it is as special as Yellowstone, and why they go into withdrawal when they leave.

I say goodbye to Merry, my coworker who has been my able wingman on our journeys in and around the Park. I give her a cd by Ludovico Einaudi that we often played at high volume as we drove through the thermal landscapes of the Park and the tall mountain scenery surrounding it. She is a ‘core seasonal’ and is headed to Grand Canyon. Lucky her. She is the hospitality equivalent of the migrant workers who travel from place to place as work presents itself. A lot of Xanterra employees are like this – it’s a whole subculture.

On our drive through the Park under an overcast sky, there were already signs the shutdown was over. I thougt I would be grumpy about sharing the Park but when I see a couple practically skip to the boardwalks at the Terraces, my heart leaps for joy.  Even having experienced this magical place almost all to myself, if it was in my power to keep the wilderness for only me and my like-minded friends, I just couldn’t do it. I love, love, love the looks of awe and inspiration on visitors’ faces when they witness Old Faithful or a stately bull elk or a large herd of bison trudging along in the middle of the road. I love the children leaping out of their cars in excitement to head for the Paintpots or the thundering Yellowstone Falls. I also know that the more people come to see these wonders, the more political power there will be to influence things like shutdowns or drilling in the pristine Arctic.

I stop at the West Entry booth to talk to the Ranger. Merry and I speculated, already spyng a good number of ubiquitous fly fishers on the Madison just inside the West Entrance, that quite possibly a line of vehicles had been waiting at the gate for the Rangers to open the gates. After thanking the Ranger for his untiring work to preserve our sacred places, I ask him. Indeed, not a long line, but the Rangers expect to be swamped tomorrow when the word of Wonderland’s reopening really gets out. We both commiserate on how happy we are to see the end of Shutdown.

Boy, after such a tedious political drama, am I in need of a little inspiration. Caffeine will have to be an adequate substitute. Before I leave West Yellowstone, I will just pop in for a coffee to go at Eagle’s Store, a historic local ice cream and soda fountain right on the corner  of Yellowstone Avenue and Highway 287. The coffee pot is nearly empty and as I wait for a fresh brew, I ask the soda jerk and the only other patron, a local named Lee Lowry, what they thought of the end of Shutdown. I can tell their joy and relief is genuine. West Yellowstone, and its jobs, would not exist without the visitors to Yellowstone National Park.

We begin to talk of other things. Tyler Johnson, the soda jerk, is a cosmic spray-paint artist and he proudly shows Lee and I his work on his notepad. We talk about Tyler’s passion for his art and I tell him his work reminds me of fantasy landscapes. Tyler tells me he has written three fantasy books and is on his fourth. He shows us the first few paragraphs of his latest, all about wizards and wizardlings. This guy is good.

I ask him if he gets his inspiration from Tolkien and he says yes and also from Christopher Paolini, the author of the fantasy series Inheritance Cycle. Tyler tells me he has trouble promoting his works, partially because he lives with Autism Spectrum Disorder (a form previously called Asperger’s Syndrome). He tells me when he paints, the constant shaking in his hand disappears. I share that my own son lives with Tourette Syndrome and that when he reads his tics disappear. We agree that when people with movement disorders find a focus for their passion, engaging in that passion often lessons their symptoms. As writers, we share how we promote our work and both Lee and I encourage him to keep writing and develop some spray-paint art to illustrate his books – or vice versa.

Lee is killing time at Eagle’s Nest while his lady love of 50 years attends a class in West Yellowstone. Retired in 2003 from the nuclear facility near Idaho Falls, Idaho, Lee took up playing the electric organ a few years ago.  Lee had played a tuba but had never even touched a keyboard in his life. After seeing a demonstration of a Lowrey organ at the Idaho State Fair, he was invited to attend a free organ lesson. That lesson turned into a passion that extends way beyond Lee’s living room. He is now on his fourth organ (each progressively more technical and versatile) and has played in front of crowds as large as 200 people. It’s obvious how this retired couple stays young!

What a joy it is to share our passions at a soda fountain in a virtually empty little town waiting for the return of late visitors to Yellowstone! As I listen to Lee and Tyler talk with such excitement about their passions, I slowly realize that writing is mine. It’s easy to encourage people like Tyler and Lee to follow their passions, but I realize I have been remiss about following mine. How inspiring these two men are this morning! Just the remedy I need to get over my malaise at having to leave Wonderland.

An hour later, my truck Yiha and I start the drive up to Missoula via Hebgen Lake and Ennis in the Madison Valley, a journey of stunning scenery where the sun begins peaking out of the clouds, playing hide and seek with the hills and dales, creating sharp photogenic contrasts in the folds. Old wooden barns, the perfect foreground to snow-capped mountains, catch my eye and I stop to take pictures, of course, but mostly store the beauty in my memories as I amble by. I am Missoula bound.

I toy with the idea of stopping at Fairmont Hot Springs near Anaconda to soak my body, weary from packing and preparing for the leaving. I love visiting hot springs, whether they are tiny, rock-walled wilderness holes or giant commercial pools like the famous pools in Glenwood Springs Colorado. I decide I’ll have plenty of time for a soak and still get to Missoula in time for dinner.  I find Fairmont is a thriving commercial resort hotel and conference center with hot and warm pools both inside and out, tucked into the  Pintler Wilderness Area, not too far from historic Anaconda. Pretty plush for a hot spring.

I soak and practice my own version of hot springs yoga for awhile both inside and out then wander back to get my gear and get back on the road. A red-headed toddler, barely able to keep his balance, busily tries to pull the keys out of the pool lockers. A woman I assume to be his Mom stands sentry nearby and we joke that he will either be a locksmith or a safecracker. Turns out the little red-head is a foster child, removed from drug-addicted parents. The woman, recently transplanted from Upper Minnesota to Butte, is in the process of certifying as a foster mom so she can eventually adopt the child if possible. The child is currently under the care of another woman keeping track of their collective broods in the pool, one who is an autistic boy, also a foster child.

Sometimes, when you live in a bubble like Yellowstone, you stop caring about what’s happening in the world, convinced that the ‘news’ is mostly about wars and killings and hunger. What’s important is the local news, the condition of the roads, the weather and anything the government is doing to make it difficult to stay living in the bubble. Leaving the bubble means re-entering this world, once again coping with a world that is not only dangerous (even Yellowstone is definitely dangerous at times) but malicious as well. But today, whatever sadness and discontent I felt as I left the gate at Yellowstone has been erased by the passion of Tyler and Lee and by two nameless women who intend to lovingly raise the unwanted children of accidental parents.

When I went into the coffee shop this morning looking for a bit of inspiration, I had no idea just how much inspiration I would find. Maybe, just maybe, this day is an omen for the next step of my life.

ON THE ROAD.....AGAIN

This morning I leave Wonderland. And in the early morning hours, Obama signed the bill ending the shutdown and making it possible for our sacred places once more to reopen. I hope by the end of today, the gates will be open and visitors will once more stream into the Park. We need more places like Yellowstone and they need to stay open. Evidenced by the millions of visitors each year to our National Parks, the craving for nature is real in all of us and our National Parks are the best balm I know for this obsession.

It is lightly snowing here in Mammoth, perhaps Mother Nature’s last gift to me as I leave this delightful place.  My leaving won’t be magical like Alice’s or Dorothy’s. I haven’t suddenly ‘outgrown’ Wonderland and haven’t been dreaming. I have no ruby-red slippers.  My packed pickup and I will slip out of the Park quietly, through the morning fogs created by rising steam from the thermal features mixing with the cold Yellowstone morning air. I will convoy with a coworker, sliding by snow-dusted pines and through the mist down the west side of the Grand Loop to Madison and then out through the West Entrance. Perhaps the Rangers have reopened the gates but if not we will open the locked gates with the combination necessitated by a bureaucracy that is far away from its results. There, my friend and I will say goodbye to Yellowstone, for now, as we undoubtedly take pictures of ourselves in front of the newly opened entry booths

I am lucky. My department had enough work left to keep me busy right up to quitting time. I’ve been saying goodbye to other coworkers all last week as the need for their services ended. Because face it, for the past three weeks, we have all been employees of a hospitality company with no guests to which to offer our hospitality.

Even though I am very sorry the shutdown occurred, I also realize just how incredibly lucky I have been to experience Yellowstone in the fall with so very few people and so very many relaxed animals. Once everyone leaves, it is truly evident that Yellowstone belongs to the critters. It has been very quiet here except for the lovelorn bugling of the elk (even though most of the cows have already mated by now) and the occasional grunt of the bison. Once in a while a service truck lumbered down the road but traffic has been rare.

Last Sunday it snowed here at Mammoth, sometimes so thickly I could barely distinguish the outlines of the rail fence around the steam vents in the parade lawn outside my window. The ornamental hardwoods around Mammoth were draped with heavy snow, their branches sagging almost down to the ground. The cone-shaped spruces looked like perfect Christmas trees decorated with brilliantly white tinselly crystals.

Another worker and I walked around in the snow, up to the Terraces where we took pictures from the middle of the empty road. Heck, I even took a picture of the empty road standing on the yellow line.  We walked down to the tiny chapel at the end of Officer’s Row, taking pictures of the snow-covered mountains and the locked gate leading down to Roosevelt and Tower along the East Loop. Everywhere quiet beauty surrounded us.

As we walked behind the Chapel, we heard several bulls bugling and we were caught up in the magic of a snow-laden Wonderland. One big bull, on the hills to the west of the old stone chapel, accompanied by another down in the Campground below the hill and a third down near the Ranger residence area, bugled a song of unrequited love. They sounded lonely, plaintive – pulled by instinct to complete their business with their harems and then leave the easy life on the Mammoth lawns to return to the forest to survive another solitary winter.

I’ve learned a lot about Yellowstone and its natural wonders this summer. I have witnessed the transformation of majestic bull elk to sleep-deprived, sex-starved sultans of hesitant harems. I learned about the old bison bulls, leaving the herd to wander alone through the forest until they become food for other critters. I’ve become somewhat comfortable with the idea of grizzlies in my neighborhood. I’ve begun to learn to fly fish, becoming more aware of the movement of the water and the feeding habits of Yellowstone’s trout species. I’ve watched the miracle of cutthroat struggling upstream to spawn in crystal-clear brooks. I’ve observed osprey take care of their young in their nest high above Lamar River. I now know the different types of thermal features here in the Park and why their prismatic run-offs produce different colors. And yet, I feel I still have so much to learn about this particular patch of the Mother’s Nature.

I’ve also learned a lot about myself, becoming more aware of my personal need to hear the beat of the wilderness on a daily basis. I acknowledge I want to live in an environment where everyone always carries a camera in order to memorialize those nearly daily moments of awe. I am more than ever aware that I thrive in an environment where I am an interloper, an observer to a landscape that does not need my help to survive. That kind of environment challenges me, hones my own survival instincts just as it does the critters of the natural Earth. It also releases me from the responsibility of being ‘in charge’ for truly we humans are not. The task for me is to exist in this environment with as little impact as possible on the ones who really belong here.

I’ve learned that I am at my very core a solitary person, one who needs nature’s quiet sounds to think and pray – the slap of the water on the shore, the wind through the trees, the rustle of the bushes as critters pass by. I’ve learned to do without television, decent wifi, even heat and hot water sometimes. And I’ve learned I don’t miss these things when the environment itself fills my soul and keeps me entertained and thoughtful. I’ve always been in closer touch with Spirit in the wilderness but this summer has taught me I am so much more when Spirit is close to me all the time.

Both Alice and Dorothy were given challenges they had to meet in order to return home. They both returned more resourceful, more open, more courageous young women than they were when they began. For that is the hero’s journey – essentially all of our journeys as we travel through our own lives. I came to Yellowstone presented with the challenges of getting over personal grief and figuring out what part of my 60-year-old life was worth keeping and what I need to let go. My life has to change – the lives of the persons most important to me have changed and so must I if I am to remain vital and happy and energized.

As with most successful employees (and there are many who are not ‘successful’ at living in the fishbowl created by close living), I have been getting constant questions from full-timers and Returners (the name given to those seasonals that come back ‘home’ like boomerangers for another round and then another) - am I going to come back next summer? I’ve been thinking about that a lot.

I have the feeling I’m not done with Yellowstone. There are hikes I wanted to take but couldn’t because of the fires and then because of the shutdown. There are ‘honey holes’, as my fishing mentor Master Wiley calls them, I want to fish. There are sunsets to witness and new interesting characters to meet. Time will tell, though. There are also other Wonderlands like Glacier and Denali. And as nuts as it sounds, I really think I want to live the very isolated existence of at least one winter at Old Faithful sometime in the next few years.

I feel a bit like Dorothy must have felt when she first met the Scarecrow. Which way to Oz? she asked him. Scarecrow told her it depended on what she wanted to do on the way. Oz, for me, can be any wilderness filled with miraculous life forms and fantastical creatures. Dorothy chose the most direct path but Alice wandered somewhat aimlessly through Wonderland. Maybe I’ll do the same or maybe, just maybe, I’ll follow the road directly back to this particular Wonderland, my Muse for the summer.

Regardless, today I start on my last leg of the journey I started last May. I will travel up to Missoula to say goodbye to my son, then on down to Utah where I will stay for awhile in much more luxurious surroundings than those in which I have been living all summer. When I get back to Tucson, I may just sit on my back porch for the better part of the first week, greeting Brother Sun as he makes his way over the ridge to the east of my house and chatting with Sister Moon about what’s been happening while I’ve been gone. I will listen for the song of Friend Phainopepla who lives in the wash below my home and watch for signs of the neighborhood bobcat and javelina.

In the end, after an entire summer in the Wilderness, I’m not any closer to knowing what’s next for me but I remain convinced it will be wonderful and exciting. I’ve decided, gentle readers, I would like to invite you along. Earth is a rather spectacular place and I have only seen a very tiny part of it. So shalom, aloha, but not goodbye. Come along with me as I soak up the sights, sounds and scents of this wonderful world.

BISON IN MY BACKYARD

My contract is up in a few days. If the shutdown hadn’t occurred I might have been too busy to notice the passing of time here at Mammoth. But every action has a reaction and the shutdown is no different. The shutdown has resulted in my employer, Xanterra Parks and Resorts, losing revenue that is irreplaceable. The businesses in the surrounding Park towns – Cody, West Yellowstone, Gardiner, Livingston and Jackson – have experienced a loss of jobs and profit as businesses have shut down early. But there are other reactions that are noticeable, as well.

For one thing, the animals seem very aware of the lack of traffic and the decided lack of irresponsible and invasive tourists. The animals are, in many ways less dangerous  - less agitated and nervous when going about their business. But in some ways they are exerting their authority. This is THEIR Park. We humans are the lowest mammals on the food chain in Wonderland. Sometimes it literally feels like they are taking over the streets as they saunter from forage to forage.

As the shutdown continues and the Park empties out, Old Man Winter is becoming a constant presence.  Here, at Mammoth, we have already had our first really good winter snow.  I even had to dig out my truck and brush 9 inches of snow off my truck roof. Yellowstone’s high country still has a lot of snow and is getting even colder. The animals are seeking warmer elevations where food might still be available – or, as in the case of the unnaturally green lawns of Mammoth, abundant. Not only have the elk and bear increased in number here at Mammoth, but I have seen a few white shaggy mountains goats up in the cliffs between Golden Gate and Upper Terraces right outside Mammoth proper.

With the increase in animals here in Mammoth, the need for caution rises. In the past week, the Rangers have warned Mammoth residents that three bears – one a Grizzly that took down a many-pointed bull elk very close to the Gardiner Road – were prowling Mammoth without seeming to be terribly agitated by the constant and practiced hazing of the Rangers. The Rangers, in order to avoid hurting curious and hungry bears, shoot bean bags at them in order to startle but not unduly hurt these creatures as they eat their way into stupors in preparation for their long winter’s sleep.

Bison have also returned to vie for the lush green lawns of Mammoth. The other night, one of the resident many-pointed bull elks came looking for his harem, usually gathered on the lush green lawn opposite the Dining Hall and my dorm.  Instead, he found two bison feeding on that very same lawn. At first the elk confidently pranced toward the bison but in the middle of the road separating the Dining Hall and the lawn, he stopped short, surveying the two lone bison, as though he was too short-sighted to have noticed that two massive bison were grazing where his harem of lady loves usually forage.  He let out some tentative bugles as if to say “Hey what are these two ugly guys doing here and where da heck are all my women?” (I always picture the bull elk during rut as kind of WWF stars – all show and very little brains left.)

My friend Craig in Tucson asked what I would miss about Yellowstone. Surely being able to Facebook on a regular basis “Bull elk going nuts in the front yard” is one of those things. “Huge shaggy bull bison in the back yard.” could be another. I don’t think I have ever lived in a place where looking around you for very large roaming animals as you leave your domicile is de rigueur. I absolutely love that.

Lately, for my work, I have had the opportunity to travel through the virtually empty Park doing inventories at the various locations. My last inventory took place at Grant Village, as far south as Xanterra properties in the Park go. To get there, we stopped at Canyon to drop off payroll, then to Lake to inventory and drop off payroll and then finally to Grant, often your first stop when entering the Park from the south. We had plenty of time and miles to observe how very, very empty of traffic the Park is these days. I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat – this Park is 2.2 MILLION ACRES. That’s a whole lot of wilderness. Wonderland is vast. At its busiest, Wonderland is…well…wonderful.  Can you imagine what it is like to feel that you and your coworkers in the car with you are the only ones on the road that day? Pretty darn amazing.

With growing possibilities of wildlife sightings, whenever I come back to the office, the typical question is “Did you see anything interesting?” “Nah, just the usual elk and bison.” is still the most often the reply. Honestly, after you live in Yellowstone for a few months, your need for unusual critter sightings ratchets up. A wolf or bear sighting is much higher up on the ‘wow’ scale for us residents. But as I begin to leave, I realize just how incredible it is that I have become accustomed to the daily presence of elk, even though when the 7x7 bull chased cows in front of my office window today all three of us sharing that office stopped what we were doing, ran to the windows, took out our phones and started snapping pictures. Accustomed is one thing but unaffected is quite something else.
In less than week now, I will turn my packed pickup toward the Gate and say goodbye to Wonderland. How do I feel about that? Well, I’m glad I planned a vacation in Southern Utah as my ‘transition period’. I’m happy I can spend more than a few hours with my son in Missoula before I head south. I’m thinking of which restaurants in Tucson I will visit first – Mexican of course. Then maybe Thai. I’m already dreaming of sitting on my wonderful back patio right above my lush arroyo sipping really good coffee and watching the noisy birds.

BUT, I notice I am already wondering when I’ll get the opportunity to be in Yellowstone again.  Yellowstone, as I’ve come to know through some of my coworkers, can become an addiction. Elk in your front yard and bison in your back yard kind of spoils you for city life. Or any life that doesn’t throw you in with really huge mammals and sleek sneaky critters like the wolf.

Life is about choices.  Always. So the choice is whether I live my comfortable Persian-rug existence in Tucson or whether I perhaps share a dorm room with a person that does not appreciate my fine qualities as much as I do.  Tough choices. To those of you that are wondering whether I’ll be back – probably, but whether as an employee or visitor is still unknown. Maybe both. Also, there are other Wonderlands out there – like Denali, like Glacier. Who knows? I might want to live in one of those.

For now, I am concentrating on the fact that I am writing this blog entry instead of packing my gear. I really should be packing my gear. But the 7x7 bull is bugling out my window, hoarse from his quest to populate Yellowstone with his particular progeny. The night is that inky blackness you only experience far, far away from the ambient light of the nearest town or city. The air is brisk and very clean.  I can honestly say those things have meaning and power in my life.

I’ve learned a lot about Yellowstone and most importantly about myself from my sojourn here. But I’ve decided my readers really need a separate blog entry for that. In the meantime, I’ll prepare for bed with my window open so I can hear the bull elk bugle through the night, accompanied by the peculiar humphy groan of the bison and maybe even the eerie howl of a lone coyote. You just never know when you live in Wonderland. All kinds of wonderful things might happen. And not just in my dreams.

WONDERLAND WITHOUT THE WONDER: LIVING WITH SHUTDOWN

Lately, I’ve been getting caught up on a lot of tv episodes I’ve been missing. Yellowstone and Southern Montana are so amazing it seems such a waste to spend time indoors. But a few days ago, my government couldn’t agree on whether the government would be given the authority to keep paying its bills.  It’s called shutdown. And it has shut down my Park. As of tomorrow I will officially be working for a hospitality company that has no guests to whom to be hospitable.

Yesterday, at the Park's North Entrance, I witnessed a bus of Asian tourists being turned away. They had just arrived in the US for a tour of the best of the Western Parks. Their first stop was Yellowstone, then Grand Teton, then Zion and lastly Arches. They wandered around the area near the gate, no doubt waiting for their tour guide to consult with his company to decide the next step of their aborted journey. The night before I had met an interesting professional wildlife photographer from San Jose California at the bar who was visiting the Park for the first time, waiting to see if, and when, he would need to leave. All too soon it turns out. Outside of Yellowstone, a group of veterans stormed the barriers at the WWII memorial on the National Mall. It, too, is run by the National Park Service and is shut down.

For those of us left behind to serve the very few remaining guests here at Yellowstone, a feeling of uncertainty but resignation follows us around.  We know there is nothing our employers can do to stop the shutdown; only politicians who have completely other agendas can do that. We constantly speculate the timing of the end of shutdown and whether it will occur the next day or during the next major football Sunday afternoon. With millions tuned in to the games, that just might be a good time for politicians to make announcements that they believe might cause a lack of faith in their party or the process – like we don’t already have a lack of faith in the process.

For us personally, though, living in Wonderland without guests is a two-edged sword.  On one hand, we get to share Wonderland with very few people so opportunities are abundant. No lines of cars driving slowly past the sleeping bison. No completely full parking lots. No lines at the restaurants. The wildlife seem to recognize the difference and are already acting more wild. They seem to be taking back the streets.

Seems almost like a dream.  A whole 2.2 million acres for just a couple hundred people. With the visitors gone as of tomorrow morning, there will only be a few hundred NPS, Xanterra and other concessionaire employees left in this giant wilderness playground.  We will be like carnies with a whole empty carnival to play in.

On the other hand, the Park Service has made it clear that although all current employees in the Park don’t have to leave, we are restricted from enjoying our private adventureland.  We are not to use any of the facilities, like parking lots or trails or even toilets – if we could find a parking lot that didn’t have barriers up at the entrance or a toilet that hasn’t been locked for the shutdown. At Mammoth we can’t even walk over near the historic block and the lawns.  We are restricted to recreating at the employee pub or the employee rec hall. We have even been told we can leave the Park for doctors visits, groceries and so forth but not to recreate. We can’t recreate in or out of the Park. That is our penance for being here during shutdown.

In reality, the Rangers that are left are stretched too thin to provide adequate oversight of and security for this incredible wilderness that is larger than some states.  We might get caught driving over to Lamar Valley to enjoy the abundant wildlife there – if a Ranger just happened to be in the neighborhood. We might lose our privilege of living in the Park. But for some of us, the risk if worth it. We know many of the Rangers are tasked with turning people away at the gates – and checking the credentials of those of us with valid reason to be here when we reenter the Park.

Quite a few of us have only days or weeks left in Wonderland. Some seasonals are scheduled to leave this week, some next and then the last of us leave mid-October. So if we bend the rules, forgive us for it is our love for our Park and our need to fill every moment of time left watching the bison at Lamar; walking around Mammoth to catch the morning light glinting off the Terraces; following the continuing saga of Thunderbolt, the reigning bull elk in his mating quest; or flyfishing the world-class rivers and streams that send us outdoors.

This morning I met a guest walking up from the cabins in back of the hotel. I told him I was sorry he was unable to stay in the Park.  He was European and confused about whether our Congress had been able to sort out its differences so he could bring in his tour group in for their scheduled visit.  I informed him that our leaders hadn’t done that and that I understood his bewilderment and anger. I told him that us employees wanted to work, we wanted the visitors to be here because without the visitors we couldn’t be here. He asked what he should tell his guests who have been planning for so long to see Yellowstone. I told him I did not have that answer and that we could do nothing for him.

 

What I should have said told him is to tell his guests that American democracy can get very, very messy and this shutdown is a fight among several factions of our government for control over our often contradictory values. I should have told him that our fights are often very public and can cause a lot of collateral damage. I could have told him that in the end our democracy works because it has to work; our Constitution gave us guidelines and pathways to compromise but we sometimes forget that we have chosen to be a nation whose leaders are at their best when factions bring their various views to the table for compromise.

 

Our leaders are duking it out and they need to hear what is really important to us. There is so much at stake here. I realize that I want my Park back but others need their jobs back. Perhaps the only thing we can do is to let our leaders know how we feel. I encourage you to email or call your Representative and Senators. Write to Speaker Boehner.  Tell them how shutdown is affecting your life. Democracy works best if all of its citizens participate.

 

In the end, perhaps what I should have told that European tour guide is that our democracy works not in spite of our differences but because of our differences. I could have shared our faith that the heart of our democracy continues to beat all the while petty politicians toss unproductive salvos at the opposing factions. I should have reminded him that our faulty democracy was the first one on this Planet Earth to preserve our legacy in the land and call it a National Park. I could have told him that it was only by action by the people that an act was passed to protect all the natural resources, including the wildlife. I could have reminded him that had it not been for our faulty democracy, the very Park he so much wanted to visit might not have been created.

 

Of course, I didn’t say those things. As experiences of the shutdown arise, my feelings about the shutdown continue to evolve. My conversation with that man was just one of the incidences that caused me to ponder how the shutdown affects me personally.  I just hope I don’t have to have those experiences or my thoughts and feelings about shutdown continue to evolve much longer. I have had a long day and am tired. But sleep will not be easy. Thunderbolt is bugling under my window.

 

 

SHUTDOWN: WONDERLAND WITHOUT VISITORS?

What does Wonderland do without any visitors? Especially a Wonderland with over 2.2 million acres of wilderness punctuated with facilities to house, feed and generally inform millions of visitors every year? Last night at midnight, the United States Congress decided to shut the government down. The Park Service is a government service and Yellowstone National Park is officially shut down until further notice.

Essential personnel – law enforcement Rangers and all NPS employees necessary to keeping the Park protected will remain working. There are still guests in the Park and for at least the next few hours there will be Rangers available to help those visitors leave the Park. Mammoth Hot Springs, after an incredibly busy summer, will feel somewhat like a ghost town.

Yesterday, the Controller of Yellowstone’s Xanterra facilities asked my coworker to gather the General Accounting Office and Computer Center staffs in the expansive lobby of our building in Mammoth. “I know you all have questions about how the government shutdown is going to affect us.” Dead right. We were all wondering.  If the Park is shut down, absolutely no facility of the Park is available to anyone, including concessionaires’ staffs. The staff will be able to remain in any still-open building run by Xanterra, including dorms, but how long will Xanterra need staffers when there are no visitors? Park visitors are our sole economic lifeline here at Yellowstone.

However, coincidentally with the government shutdown is our very own winter shutdown. For the past several weeks, beginning with Roosevelt, its most rustic and highest in elevation facility, Xanterra has been shutting down facilities and preparing them for a long winter’s sleep. Yellowstone needs a rest and quite a few of the facilities are by no means able to house winter visitors.

Xanterra’s shutdown proceeds slowly, with one facility after another closing its doors to visitors.  No visitors, no need for additional personnel. Restaurants close in conjunction with the lodges and inns. No place to eat but no visitors to serve either.  Some of each lodging and restaurant’s staffs begin the “Deep Clean” which takes places at every restaurant facility after closure. As soon as the Deep Clean is done, the front desk people, the housekeepers, the servers, server assistants and cook staff pack up and leave.

A small but important core stay behind after closing to take inventories and winterize the lodging (emptying the water from literally every pipe, shuttering windows susceptible to severe weather, turning off hot water boilers that have been on all summer and so forth). The last facilities to close are the venerable Mammoth Hot Springs and Old Faithful's Snow Lodge, facilities which only close down for a few weeks in order to prepare for the winter visitors.  At all other villages, only a few hardy ‘winterkeepers’ stay at each facility in order to remove the massive amounts of snow from the roofs and take care anything else that comes up until everyone returns the next spring.

Old Faithful and Mammoth stay open until the very last. Here at Mammoth, the Dining Room will close next weekend, leaving only the Terrace Grill, the fast food alternative, open to visitors and any staff that misses their meal at the Employee Dining Room.

I leave in just over two weeks as do all of my seasonal coworkers. The core team of permanent, year-round employees are left to keep paying bills left over from our summer season, to finish inventories and audits and then to handle the needs of our winter season. A small maintenance stays on to affect maintenance plans and repair problems as they arise. But generally Yellowstone, at least for a month, goes into a deep sleep.

So the question for our chief operating manager is whether, and when, to hasten the Xanterra shutdown if the government’s shutdown goes on for a prolonged time.  Do we keep our idle employees on in the hopes the shut down will end soon? What do our employees do when they can’t recreate in the Park? Many of the employees are energetic young men and women.  They can recreate in Xanterra’s two employee facilities, the Employee Pub and the Rec Hall. But the pub is only open after hours. The Rec Hall may become busier than it has been all summer.  But how many of the seasonals will stay on with no certain date for returning to work and a paycheck?

For me and my coworkers in the General Accounting Office, the shut down does not carry the same impact. The accounting and maintenance of the lodging and activity concessionaire goes on even when the facilities are closed.  We will leave according to our contracts. Lucky us. We get Wonderland all to ourselves but we can’t use any of its facilities or walk any of its trails. Well, at least the elk will finally be left alone to do their procreative business.

As of last night at shut down, we were 100% occupied in all facilities until the planned date when the last facility closes its door to visitors. I even have a reservation at Old Faithful Inn, the second oldest lodge in the Park, two nights before the Inn shuts its doors for a long winter sleep. However, this morning, our visitors will be told they have less than 48 hours to leave Wonderland.

It is possible, if the shut down goes on for more than a few days, the Park will prematurely be forced into winter mode.  Perhaps thousands of visitors, many with reservations they have had for many months, will be turned away from the Park. Xanterra will lose millions of dollars in anticipated revenue from those occupancies. There will be some cost savings, of course, as idle employees are released from their contracts but this will be a unplanned and unnecessary blow to Xanterra and its employees.

The closure will also disrupt the economic life of the communities surrounding Yellowstone, causing the early closure of hotels and restaurants and the subsequent unemployment of thousands of persons serving the Park’s visitors from outside the Park. Shut down for Yellowstone is certainly much more than a Ranger padlocking the barrier at the gates.

In the meantime, those of us who remain in a Park with no visitors will continue to leave the light on, hoping for the shut down to end quickly so the Smiths CAN visit for their 50^th Anniversary or the Johnsons CAN make it here for their honeymoon as planned.  I’ve learned that Yellowstone means so much to so very many people. I’ve learned people think of it as their Park. The People’s Park. And now they will be denied entrance. I sincerely hope Congress can reach a compromise which allows business as usual to go on, realizing that the ‘business’ of the Park means so much, much more than dollars and cents to those of us who visit or work here. Congress, you have snatched away our beloved Yellowstone. Congress, we want Wonderland back.