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Show THREE WOMEN RANGERS Part One. Janey McDoviell Chapter One. The Training of a Ranger. Janey McDoviell's back yard is more than two million acres of the most spectacular scenery in the world. It's a land of geysers, hot pools, and mud volcanoes. Of pelicans, grizzlies and moose; tall lodgepole pines and tiny algae. Janey is a ranger in Yellowstone National Park. Growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas, Mary Jane McDowell played with paper dolls and played the flute in the school band, never dreaming that she would one day exchange her band uniform for the uniform of a park ranger. She wore her thick, dark hair in a ponytail, had braces on her teeth, and grew to be the tallest girl in her class. The McDoviell family had fun together, but they were not outdoor people. They didn't go camping or fishing, preferring to spend vacations visiting relatives or lounging on a beacho Janey's first experience with the out-of-doors came after her sophomore year at Memphis State University in Tennessee. To earn money for tuition, Janey accepted a summer job as a Girl Scout camp counselor, and a whole new world opened up to her. Hiking with the girls under the hot Tennessee sky, teaching songs and games beneath sheltering trees, Janey felt a sense of spaciousness, of closeness to nature that she'd never known before. How satisfying it would be, she thought, if she could find a career that would let her work in the open, let her live with trees and stars and sky. |