Ranger Rebecca (Huh?)

 "Zoe is leaving in two weeks. Is there anyway you could fill in?"

I wasn't completely blindsided. I'd suspected this was coming. I was already helping Zoe by working the visitor center occasionally, helping with storytime, writing posts for the refuge Facebook, and had lead an interp walk. She also helped with biology surveys and maintenance projects when we needed it. That's just what you do with a small refuge staff and 20,000 acres to take care of.

The federal government is slow. Zoe was a top-notch AmeriCorps ranger and they wanted her to stay, so they made it an official federal position-- but they hadn't started the hiring process in time. By the time it got certified and the application was out, she'd already applied and been accepted elsewhere because they couldn't promise her the position in time. Girl had bills to pay.

It would be months before they could hire someone new to the system, so they asked me. My term ended mid-February, and my next job didn't start until May. Could I fill in as long as I could? Just hold down the fort?

I'm not a people person or a good public speaker and I give shit directions. But if I couldn't do it, the visitor center and programs they'd worked so hard to improve since 2020 would shut down; storytime and the local wild school program that brought kids in my community close to nature wouldn't happen; the bookstore wouldn't bring in any money to pay for next year's AmeriCorps interns. It would be nice to have a steady paycheck for three more months, and I wasn't in any hurry to move back in with my parents.

And thus I became a Park Ranger for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. (The interpretive kind, not the law enforcement kind.)

No, I didn't get to wear the hat. It was just me and my ACE shirt and cargo pants, like always.

Zoe trained me before she left. We went on long drives together stocking all the trailhead kiosks with maps and putting up flyers she designed to advertise interpretive walks around the little neighboring towns. It was deep midwinter in ski country, and we passed rich tourists from DC and camouflage-clad locals alike on the dirty, snow-piled streets to the post offices, coffee shops, and visitor information centers. We trundled down the icy gravel roads in our little government Jeep, checking off to-do lists as fast as we could before her last day.

I led storytime with the kindergarteners under her watch. I drafted emails and scheduled wild school visits. She made sure I knew where all the supplies were and who to contact about what and what was in all her files left behind on the P-drive. She introduced me to the Environmental Education volunteers (a much less rugged group than the biology volunteers.) One was a retired National Park Service employee who would teach me so much about the field that winter.

And then Zoe was gone, and I stepped into her big ranger boots until May.

I wrangled and corralled volunteers, pulled off a whole wild school program with six school visits and a field trip, researched and wrote a repertoire of new interpretive walks, managed the visitor center every day, kept the website and Facebook up-to-date, and wrote down as much as I could to help the future ranger who wouldn't have Zoe to train them.

And of course, I still made time to help with biology surveys.

For those three months, my family was correct in telling everyone I was a park ranger. (They already had been and would continue to tell people that's what I do.)

Grad School? Grad School.

 "You shouldn't go to grad school just because you don't know what to do next."

Yeah, okay. Sure. I know that, intellectually. It's partially why I took a whole gap year after grad school instead of working as a summer tech and leaping back into school in the fall. I didn't know if working in biology was really what I wanted to do. Could it just be another fleeting daydream? I needed to stick it out and see.

"The world is dying and I hate my body. Maybe I should go to grad school." -- Ben Lapidus

I decided, after my first field season, that I did want to work in biology permanently. I spoke to and observed experts in the field and knew I would need a master's degree to get a permanent job. I'm good at school. I knew I could do it. I just wasn't sure when. It would be fun to do some more seasonal work, travel the country, wait to put down roots.

But several factors pushed me to go ahead and get it done. First, two of the AmeriCorps I was working with decided to do go back for a master's themselves that year. Senate Bill 228 was a new initiative in West Virginia-- if you did so many AmeriCorps service terms in the state, then you could get so many semesters of free tuition at any public university in the state. It would be good to have friends going through the same things I was. Second, I was turning 23, and I knew I'd get booted off my parents' health insurance at 26. Might as well do it now while I don't have to pay for my own health insurance. Third, my grandparents were getting older. They let me live with them for free in undergrad, and I was sure they'd let me do it again for grad school. If I could get into a lab at my alma mater right then, I wouldn't have to worry about paying rent, either.

Fourth-- the embarrassing one-- I'd just had my heart ripped out and thrown on the fucking floor by a little rat man with a receding hairline. I could grieve and be miserable while working more temporary tech jobs, or I could grieve and be miserable while earning a master's degree (which I was told would make me miserable anyway.) It's certainly stupid to start a master's program out of spite for a man... but it wasn't my only reason.

I learned a lot of things about grad school from other biologists, but the main two were:

1) your advisor makes or breaks your grad school experience

and 2) they should be funding you to do research, not making you pay tuition. If a STEM graduate program ever tries to make you pay for your degree out of pocket, you should run like hell. So Senate Bill 228 is a nice thought, but it's for people pursuing an M.A. (classes) rather than an M.S. (research.)

I set up a meeting with my old undergraduate mentor, Pam. She was thrilled at the prospect of having me back in the lab. We met over Teams to go over details. She had funding for me and let me know much I would be making, paperwork and expectations for master's students, and graduate teaching position opportunities. She detailed the master's projects she had available for me to work on.

She had a project using DNA to study plant-pollinator interactions, and that one sparked my interest. When she went more in-depth on that one, I was sold. I got off the call and walked to the conference room, where my boss and one of my AmeriCorps friends were talking about her master's plans. "I'm going to study bees at Marshall!"

Montgomery's Alpine Path

"I, Emily Byrd Starr, do solemnly vow this day that I will climb the Alpine Path and write my name on the scroll of fame." -- L.M. Montgomery

Journal VII: 12.21.22

"If only I could support myself with my writing. If my words were enough to make a living, if I could speak them into a jar and they would condense to little flecks of gold that float gently to the bottom. I could live off-grid and scribble all day. I could make such progress if life's distractions were out of my way. Why do I need a 401K? Health insurance? Car insurance? I will live off the land and write my poems and be poor. I will dress myself in secondhand scarves and handmade dresses and be old and young and beautiful and ugly all at once."

I had submitted several poems to several places that fall and heard nothing from any of them-- until the next calendar year.

2.20.2023

"January 28th, a little after 5, the news came. I had given up jumping each time I heard my email notification and was resigned to the fact that my poetry had been forgotten or rejected. But it came-- a little buzz to my phone as I sat in the bunkhouse living room alone watching 'Outlander.'

'Dear A.K.,

Congratulations! We are excited to publish 'West Virginia' and 'Denial' in the 2023 issue of Backbone Mountain Review. Before February 11, please provide us with a short bio (50 words or less, written in third person) by reply email. Congratulations again! We look forward to receiving your bio.'

I read it over and over, the tears that had been reluctant to come for the past week rushing to see the text for themselves. Oh, how I needed this good news! Such honey to replace my bitter gall! The alpine Path-- it was in sight. Little Rebecca would be ecstatic.

To be published by a small journal is a small matter in the eyes of most, but to me it was the matter of utmost importance for weeks. The shit that I've been scribbling and hiding away-- there is some merit in it. Someone else thinks so. This validation is something I haven't tasted since Dr. Burberry submitted one of my essays for a university award."

An Instagram account called Bible Belt Queers accepted a last-minute piece I submitted for a zine called "Queer in the Time of COVID." I never got a physical copy because so many other things were happening in my life at the same time-- the new ranger job, the summer job at Acadia, the grad school paperwork, planning my solo trip to Maine. I forgot to reply to the email requesting addresses until it was too late.

A third publication through Wingless Dreamer, a website that creates eBooks from the poetry of new writers, accepted one of mine. I didn't make it into the top three best poems, though, so I didn't qualify for a free copy. That's fine. At least someone read and liked it enough to put it in Crystalline Whispers.

"Then whisper, blossom, in thy sleep

How I may upward climb

The Alpine Path, so hard, so steep,

That leads to heights sublime.

How I may reach that far-off goal

Of true and honoured fame

And write upon its shining scroll

A woman’s humble name."

Valley of the Shadow

"Don't you build your life around a man, honey." I can't count the number of times some motherly figure told me that, but it wasn't enough. I still did it. I was faced with two choices the month before graduation.

Journal VI: 9.3.2022

"When my SIP applications all got rejected, I scrambled to find something to do with myself over the summer. Pam pointed me to a job as a field tech in her lab working with the grad student she and the other Dr P share. Mom saw a listing for an invasive species intern at the national wildlife refuge close to home. I applied to both, got accepted to both, and had to choose. I made a detailed list comparing each, and I pondered over it for days."

What tipped the scale was proximity to a certain Boy. True, the pay was better with USFWS, it was a longer job, and it came with a certificate that's supposed to help you get a federal job, but none of that would have swayed me in the end of he had been in Huntington.  I told Pam my choice-- I could tell she was disappointed-- but she agreed it was the smart thing for me to do (not for the Boy, obviously, for the actual practical things.) How benevolent that the universe makes all stupid decisions work out in the end. It worked out, but I suffered plenty.

6.30.2022

"Aurora had already called to me, and I came to her-- to the mountains whom I have promised my bones, to the schoolyard empty of my classmates, to a house too big for my mother to keep up with, to a fat, arthritic dog who should probably be put down, to the church that mocks me with its flashing red sign."

First, I finally caught COVID the week before I was supposed to start. My new boss told me I could come to work after day 5 of testing positive with a mask. I didn't feel up to it, but I went all-in anyway. I didn't want to look weak-- I could tell Dawn was a badass, and her new biotech wasn't about to disappoint her. Fatigue like I've never felt before kicked my ass that first month, and it didn't let up. I dragged myself and my gear up and down mountains day and night. I was already woefully unprepared for the reality of working in land management: long, grueling hours when the weather was good, busy work on floating desks in the grey office when it wasn't. Long COVID, and the fact that I never gave myself time to recover, made everything worse.

The fatigue didn't go away. Every day of manual labor drained me, and it never got easier.

The Boy pretended I didn't exist. I texted first, and he ended it with a dry response. I texted again anyway, and he left me on read. I wasn't worth a one-word reply on a dying app. When I saw him in public, he dove into conversation with someone else or walked the other direction. I knew where he lived, worked, worshipped-- I could have confronted him-- I wanted to-- but I didn't. It was humiliating enough to be ghosted in a town too small to avoid regular run-ins. My sister found him on a dating app, looking for attention from any girl but me, apparently.

So much for the promise of waiting for me to come back home. 

The rejection didn't pair well with physical exhaustion. I did exactly what was asked of me at work, nothing more. I drove home, checked for ticks in the shower, and crawled into bed with some batch meal to watch Little House on the Prairie until I fell asleep. I hated all of the choices I'd made to get there: a trailer with four roommates forty minutes from my hometown, paid for by a manual labor job. All of my childhood friends had moved away, become hateful Trump supporters, or been caught up with a new marriage and house. What was I even doing?

Mix herbicide. Load herbicide. Wear herbicide. Spray herbicide. Clean up after herbicide. Bitch at the undergrad boys I worked with to wash their damn hands after handling herbicide.

It was my most miserable summer yet. I kept careful count of the days until my term ended.

6.30.2022

"I don't know who I am or what I want. Only that I want my own house and garden in Appalachia and at least one cat. All the other cards can fall where they may."

By August, I was ready to switch career fields completely. I Googled library science programs during a staff meeting one week. Maybe I could use my herbarium skills as an archivist, or work as a children's librarian. I have a bachelor's degree and a pulse, so I should be qualified to teach if I have to. Anything but this.

A miracle happened in the fall: I liked my job. It turns out I don't hate field biology. I hate treating invasive species. By September, all the summer interns were gone and everything was much quieter. I got to focus on biology surveys that are actually enjoyable: salamander surveys, woodcock tracking, saw whet owl mist netting, water quality, "checking invasive treatment effectiveness" (hiking.) It was like setting out on a little quest every day with my map, my lunch in my backpack, and my new Salomon boots. (I think 1/3 of my summer misery was due to being near trench foot every time it rained-- my old boots weren't waterproof.)

I spent more time in the living room with my coworkers and discovered they were my friends. "I'm so glad I found out you're funny," said one after six months of living together. We sat in on forest management planning meetings with partner organizations, and I learned so much about biology. The passion was back. I loved my field again.

The refuge had extra money at the end of the year, and my term got extended. I was happy where I was.

Journal VII: 10.3.2022

"My room here is finally beginning to feel like my own... a good thing, indeed, because my term has been extended through February. I will be here, cozy and close to home, through the heart of my favorite season, granted three more months to come up with a plan [for what to do next]."

10.18.2022

"Good things come in threes: the first snow, the fact that we're allowed to foster kittens at the bunkhouse now, and...?"

I'm down on my knees at a crossing

Wondering which way to go

But all roads are dark through the valley

And I'll learn to walk them alone

-- Robinson

Summa Cum Laude, Bitch

 I was too burnt out my last semester and too exhausted at my job after to post my graduation photos. So they get their own spot here. Lauren took them for me on campus and at Ritter. These are all of my favorites.