Did project time carry with it the expectation that people would pursue publication?
No. It depended upon the level of the person, whether the person was first year or not. Their project time was primarily spent to learn more about the park. In fact during that first year you weren’t required to do more than perfect one evening program. The idea during the first year was to master the geology walks and talks and then really polish the evening programs. Perhaps by the end of that first year you’d begin to work on a second talk. If you were a second year seasonal, you were promoted to a GS-5. By the second season, it was expected that you would have two or three evening programs at your disposal.
So the evening program topics varied pretty widely?
Evening programs would be at the lodge, at the Community House that serviced the Rim Village Campground, and at Mazama Campground where there’d be an outdoor amphitheater.
You had three different ones to choose from?
Yes, three different ones to chose from every night and they would be on three different topics. I cannot recall if the titles to the talks were advertised. With the exception of the lodge, the way we got people to the campfire programs was by roving the campgrounds prior to the talk. Since there was two of us, one would take one side of the campground and one the other side. We would meet each person at the campsites and would say, “An hour from now we will have a campfire program and it would be really neat if you would show up.” That really worked. We would fill the place up and often there would be standing room only. At the campfire program it would be the master of ceremonies job to advertise the next day’s activities. That would guarantee that you would have 30 or 40 people for an Annie Creek walk.
Did all the evening programs have slides?
No! I forget about Lost Creek. There were also programs at that campground. Lost Creek was a primitive program, an old fashioned one. We’d show up there with props, stuffed animals and rocks. We’d talk about the history of Crater Lake and do things in a much more informal setting. That was the easiest program for me to give because it was so informal. I thought it was the best because of the natural setting. You just had the fire, and stars, and close contact with people.
