Was it an easy transition to go from ranger to naturalist?
No, I don’t think it was really easy. The reason I was selected stemmed from the fact that the regional naturalist, or chief of interpretation, I’m not sure how he was designated at that time, John Doerr visited Glacier Bay and spent several days with me.
The former chief park naturalist at Crater Lake.
He was now the head interpreter at the region and one of the many VIP’s who visited us in Alaska.
Barbara: They like the idea of going out in a boat and seeing the glaciers.
I couldn’t help but be very interested in natural history. The Glacier Bay experience gave me a chance to develop the first checklist of birds there and make records of everything we saw. I realize now that the records were not nearly as complete as they might have been. Doerr, however, was apparently impressed somewhat with my potential, so I was offered a choice between going to Death Valley or Joshua Tree as a park naturalist. We chose Joshua Tree and lived in 29 Palms. So, our first year, I remember, at 29 Palms it rained a quarter of an inch.
Barbara: After 86 inches of rain in Sitka, it was quite a change! It was kind of neat, though, with three little kids, you know, you don’t need boots and raincoats and stuff; they’d just run out there on the desert.
So, to answer your question, it wasn’t easy to go from a ranger job into a naturalist job.
