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Show 54 We are still faced with problems in defining this occupation, or even finding a space for it in our busy lives. A few years ago, the National Park Service employed what were called Ranger Naturalists. Unfortunately, the term naturalist implied more than the Park Service felt was appropriate; it implied that the trees, rocks, flowers, birds, and mammals were only rocks, flowers, or worse, that the ecological system constituted the significance of the Parks. But these rangers were trained as specialists, usually by utilitarian State Universities, before there were many graduates who had majored in such esoteric and interdisciplinary fields as ecology. And they were hired on the basis of their degrees, as specialists who could speak in their area of expertise, as it was put. In other words, one might lead the Geology Hike, and another the Bird Walk, etc., that is when they were lucky enough to get out of the Visitor Center. Now these government employees are described as Park Interpreters, and the change in terminology indicates that they are responsible not toward Nature, but toward the humans who visit the Park, particularly in the "Year of the Visitor," 1980. No matter that most of these people came to the National Park because they were interested in a closer association with the ecology of the area; they are hired to deal with the human needs of visitors. But Muir, I was going to say, was not ready to be an interpreter, precisely because he was still satisfactorily engaged as a student. Though he did work as a guide, and as a sawyer for Hutchings, he spent most of his time |
