In the late springtime of 1986, I was an earnest college student in Iowa City, dreading another sweaty summer of restaurant work. But I didn’t have a Plan B … until my friend Jennifer handed me a pamphlet advertising summer work in the National Park System and said, “Let’s do this!” Her enthusiasm bolstered mine, and on a study break, we filled out the paper applications, ranking our choices, none of which I could imagine: The Smokies? Acadia? Glacier? They sounded straight out of Tolkien. But when we both opened our acceptance envelopes with “yeses” for Acadia National Park in Maine, we shouted in delight.
I had done enough research to know this wasn’t just an alternative to restaurant work, it was likely going to be one of those “life before” and “life after” experiences. I was right. Our National Parks hold that transformative potential. I’ll bet you’ve got a story about that, too.
You may know the history of the National Park system, launched in 1872 with the establishment of Yellowstone. By 1916, President Wilson signed off on the National Park Service, a new federal bureau designed to protect the 35 national parks and monuments at the time, and for those still to be established. Given that Progressive Era foundation, it’s no surprise that in response to Elon Musk’s “chainsawing” of Park system employees last month, “off-duty park rangers led demonstrations in more than 100 locations,” Many signs from the “Hands Off” rallies on April 5 were variations on: “Protect our Parks.” So many of us know that once wild spaces disappear, they are usually gone forever.
My Acadia adventure began in mid-May, in the midst of black fly season, and before the tourists descended. Jennifer and I were among the first of the summer staff to settle into the spartan two-story dormitory. Our living space was communal – bunk beds and a shared bathroom for all the women. But just out the windows was the shimmering sapphire of Jordan Pond, framed on the far side by the low hills called “The Bubbles,” and nearby was the well-tended lawn where tourists enjoy popovers and strawberry jam every afternoon.
The rest of the summer crew arrived: A couple retirees wanting to pad their income; Ivy Leaguers seeking a summer escape (the first time I’d met actual “trust fund” kids); a few veterans who’d had a rough go and were using the Park Service to regain their footing. There was a French college student who taught us to juggle, and an eccentric seasonal cook, who fed the dozens of staff on long plank tables, and offered feminist insights, waving her spatula and opining: “Girls! Stop shaving your legs so you can feel the wind whiffle through your leg hairs!”
My work that summer wasn’t glamorous. I staffed the Jordan Pond store, selling wind chimes, refolding fisherman sweaters, and stocking blueberry everything — candy, candles, and bubblegum. I also cleaned the restrooms, among the essential work that has been compromised by the recent DOGE slashes to Park System staff.
That summer, I navigated the many social classes and assumptions of people around me (some of us had never “summered” as a verb, for example). I tried out relationships, failed at some and survived, wiser for the experience. With a toilet plunger still in my hand from cleaning, I got to tell park visitor Caspar Weinberger exactly what I thought of the Iran-Contra scandal as he grimly stared me down. With youthful hubris, I also stopped John Updike in the parking lot to tell him his writing was sexist, earning only bemused arched eyebrows. Still, our National Parks are places where this plumber’s daughter could learn to speak truth to power.
In free time, we staffers hiked the wide carriage paths winding through the breeze-stirred balsam forest on land donated by the Rockefellers. I climbed Cadillac Mountain, the first place in the U.S. to see the sunrise. I wasn’t that enterprising, but I luxuriated in afternoons on that peak, reading Virginia Woolf novels among the wild blueberry bushes, looking out to the pine-dotted Cranberry Islands. My copies of those novels still have berries pressed between their pages, a reminder of the summer when I began to understand why diversity — in our environment and in our populace — can fuel a lifetime of curiosity and learning.
What are your National Park stories? I hope you use them to speak truth to power. (Toilet plunger in hand is totally optional.)
Music: "This Land is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie
