We made a brief mention off tape about how you time at Crater Lake catapulted your rather quickly.
My training at Crater Lake was first noted during my five months at Zion. At Zion it was clear that even without a lot of experience working there I was among the best of the naturalist staff. In fact, I can recall visitors going by the superintendent’s office and saying how remarkably different my programs were from the rest of the programs they had attended at other parks. All I was doing was delivering the same quality of programs I had been taught to do at Crater Lake with a little more maturity and self confidence. Taking the Crater Lake ethic with me, I was promoted at Yosemite to being the year round seasonal supervisor which was a GS-6 position at the time.
How much larger was the naturalist program at Yosemite in terms of staff and visitors compared to Crater Lake?
I was year round, but each district had its own staff. There was the Wawona District with its naturalist, the Tuolomne District with its naturalist, and Yosemite Valley. Actually, the valley program was not much larger than the Crater Lake program.
You didn’t have the interesting situation of having to supervise Carl Sharsmith?
Oh, no! He was my professor. We had no one in the valley of Carl’s stature. In fact, there was nobody that could supervise Carl. He was his own entity. It became a topic of discussion for the permanent staff as to how do one actually supervise Carl Sharsmith. We would have park wide training programs in Yosemite and Carl would be part of those training programs. They used him as a resource person to train all of the younger naturalists. He was one of the few who could name all of the High Sierra peaks. His knowledge of geology, botany, ecology and folklore was astounding.
