Park Experiences
Park Experiences
“Hi! Hey, would you like to see a rattlesnake?” asks the friendly park ranger. My eyes widen in anticipation as I tighten my grip on my hiking poles.
Mary, Kathy, and I have just arrived, sweaty and excited, at the Indian Gardens campsite inside Grand Canyon National Park, one of my favorite wild areas. We’re anxious to remove our packs and set up our tents, but now we’re intrigued.
“Yes, for sure,” we answer almost in unison. We’d been cautious on our hike down to the bottom of the canyon, where we stayed a couple of nights to explore, but we hadn’t seen any rattlers. Before stepping off the trail for our potty breaks, we’d scour the area, ensuring there were no surprises before squatting down. There are five species of rattlers in the park area. It’s considered common to see one, and unlucky if you don’t see one and get bitten.
We stand behind the ranger’s outstretched arm. A man is stomping near the snake, trying to make it raise its head for a photo. Furious but controlled, the park ranger tears into him, reciting facts, including the cost of a medevac out of the park if he gets bitten.
Grand Canyon National Park averages five million visitors a year. Every year, people die in the canyon because of dehydration and other medical problems, falls, drownings, and suicide. The park rangers are there to educate visitors, help keep them safe, and often rescue them, as well as maintain and clean the parks.
Recently, the Trump administration fired a thousand newly hired National Park Service employees, under the guise of a broad-based effort to downsize government. Billionaire Elon Musk and the DOGE team (Department of Government Efficiency) are spearheading the plan to eliminate thousands of federal jobs.
On a different trip to the canyon with three other gals, the temperature soared to 105 degrees, and that wasn’t even at the bottom! We witnessed the rangers assisting and evaluating hikers, one of whom ended up getting an expensive ride out in a helicopter.
On yet another trip down the canyon, this time with my friend Carol, there was a water problem. If I remember correctly, a pipe had burst and there was no water for the hikers. The rangers were busy setting up a large pool-like structure, hand-carrying buckets of untreated water to dump in, and warning us to treat it before drinking.
One of my greatest joys is going to the ranger talks at Bright Angel or the Indian Gardens campsites. People from all over the world listen so intently that even the soft rattle of a nearby snake would be audible.
Brian Gibbs, who worked as a park ranger at Iowa’s Effigy Mounds National Monument, was one of the thousand let go this season. “We were already short-staffed and having to restrict our visitor center hours at times because of that short staffing, and so this cut accentuated that deeply for Effigy Mounds National Monument,” he said. Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, worried that Acadia National Park will “not be able to hire the seasonal employees required to collect entrance fees and perform other essential tasks such as maintaining trails and providing first responder services to visitors.” Colorado’s Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, which has about 70,000 annual visitors, announced on social media they would need to close two days a week due to a “lack of staffing.”
Advocacy groups and lawmakers have criticized these layoffs as unnecessary and a needless threat to the parks and the public’s safety.
Imagine planning your family's yearly trip and arriving on the two days they’re closed. Or worse, getting bitten by a rattlesnake and not having a qualified ranger to administer treatment and orchestrate your evacuation.
As of February 1, the Trump Administration is responding to criticism and restoring jobs for dozens of National Park Service employees, I’ll be rooting for Brain Gibbs to be reinstated and hope to say hello while visiting the Effigy Mounds in Iowa. And you can bet I’ll be researching the parks' websites before visiting to ensure they aren’t closed and have enough employees to handle the crowds safely.
Years ago, when climbing off-trail at Devil’s Lake State Park, I came face to face with a timber rattlesnake. I’d woken it from its sleepy, sunny nap. Later, when I reported my experience to the park ranger, she assured me they were nonpoisonous.
I was thankful for her knowledge, and glad I didn’t get bitten, poisonous or not!
