Heather Whitman’s column doesn’t apppear this quarter to allow space for the themed articles in Ranger magazine on Administration.

Interpretation

After my last seasonals have hit the autumn trail I think back to how I trained them. Did I train my interpreters well this year? A good portion of their work was a result of my tutelage. Didmy training sessions result in good work from the interpreters?

For those of you who went throughsomeone else’s interpretive training, do you think it prepared you for the field work youaccomplished this past summer? What could be added? And then I had an idea to try next year.

It started with a realization. I had just finished training my new summer seasonal staff, but afterward I thought up a new challenge to prepare my interpreters for field work. I noticed that interpretation has a curious similarity to law enforcement. The only difference is interpretive rangers wield the power of intellectual and emotional connections rather than the law. We have the power to change visitors’ lives.

Protection rangers go through their day making arrests, solving crimes, protecting people from harm. This requires skill, fortitude and a personal belief in self because they often work alone. I believe that same mentality exists in interpretation. Interpretation is a solitary pursuit most of the time, the interpreter alone with his or her audience. The only difference is what is meant when I say that we have to prevent “the one who got away.” Every interpretive moment missed by an unobservant interpreter had potential but was thrown away.

We are all familiar with the image of the doughnut-munching cop who lets crimes slip through his fingers. Along those same lines, lazy or unskilled interpreters let interpretive moments get away too. Rangers, either interpretive or protection, should never let things slide by. The public has faith in us that we won’t.

Some interpreters are more experienced at handling interpretive opportunities than others, especially challenging moments. Skill comes from personal initiative and experience. Law enforcement rangers fight their own fear when faced with a bad guy who is hiding in a house with a shotgun and a hostage. Interpretive rangers need to be ready to put aside their personal feelings and thoughts when faced with a challenging visitor who is not going to connect with the resource in the way in which the interpreter is ready.

The best interpreters can handle almost any situation because they know one key thing — our job is to connect all visitors to park resources regardless of the interpreter’s point of view. The interpretive moment is about the visitor, not the interpreter. This might mean that a dyed-in-the-wool geologist needs to be able to explain the Grand Canyon to a creationist in a way that makes that place special to them. It might mean a Native American interpreter at Nez Perce and a visitor of Jewish faith come to understand the differences and similarities in the suffering that their people have faced.

What is your worst interpretive nightmare? Have you faced it? I remember working at Carlsbad Caverns and my supervisor asked me what I’d do on my program about the last ice age if a creationist was in attendance. I love the last ice age and the fact that the cave was millions of years old. I wanted to tell everyone about it. However, this was in my early days with the NPS. I hadn’t come to respect other points of views as much as I’d care to admit. My plan was to run and hide behind the skirt of our mandate to interpret the theories of scientists. All the while, I knew I had more growing to do. I needed to connect everyone with that park, not just people likely to see it the same way I do.

While a creationist’s point of view bothers me, it also bothered me that I was not willing to connect them to the cave on their terms. My big growing opportunity came when a tour group arrived made up entirely of members from a Christian creationist church. They didn’t want to hear anything about the cave being older than 6,000 years. How was I going to connect these people to one of my favorite parks? I did it, but that experience taught me I had more to learn about my role as a ranger and interpreter.

To be a truly great interpreter with all the intellectual and emotional tools that we wield takes training and practice. Law enforcement rangers go to the range to make sure they are a crack shot. We should be practicing, too, by throwing interpretive challenges at each other to see how good our aim is.

If you are a supervisor, think up interpretive scenarios that your people might face in the field. Give them 15 seconds to meet the needs of a particular audience. How effective are they?

Interpreters have only seconds to think up a response to an interpretive challenge in the field, so why not recreate it in the classroom? We all are constantly challenged by the public. No sense giving your interpreters a few minutes to think of a response. They won’t get more than a few seconds to think up a response with the public.

If you do this exercise, do it in a group of interpreters, not individually. With others watching, the interpreter on the hot seat will feel the same pressure that they will feel in the field. Afterward, discuss it. It will show supervisors where an interpreter’s knowledge is lacking or if the interpreter hasn’t yet separated their personal bias or agenda from their job as an interpreter.

Don’t wait for visitors to throw your staff challenges. We are here to help America and the world connect to the stories in our national parks. With practice and a bit of healthy competition we should be able to handle anyone’s point of view and still help visitors make that connection.

Protection

High-Angle Rescue Training in the NPS: Keeping It Real and Keeping It Alive — “You have two patients, one male, one female, both in their early 30s. One is seated on a ledge about halfway down the cliff, the other is at the bottom lying supine atop a scree slope. Both are wearing helmets and are conscious at this time, but they’re pretty busted up with multiple fractures and nausea. One is complaining of tingling in her legs, the other reports shortness of breath. All the equipment in front of you is available, as are these personnel. The time is now 1600 and an electrical storm is building to the south. Now, talk to me. What are your questions?”

So goes the final scenario briefing during the last day of the annual Eastern NPS Basic High-Angle Rescue Course, held last May at Big South Fork. Similar scenarios are presented to students in the western course, which has been held for more than a decade every April in Canyonlands. Had students been met with such a briefing on their first day, or even their second, the inevitable result would have resembled something to the effect of utter carnage and mayhem.

But not this day. On this final scenario day, the students are ready. They’re fired up and anxious to put their newly acquired skills to the final test. They’re ready to prove to their demanding cadre that, given some rope and a whole mess of hardware, they can make good things happen in the vertical environment.

And prove it they do. After a few forward-thinking questions, the students quickly organize into two teams, establish ICS roles, identify priorities of work, and assign tasks. Leaders emerge and take charge.

What follows over the next several hours is a systematic, smoothly flowing and professional high-angle rescue operation. Not a flawless one: obstacles arise and unforeseen problems rear their ugly heads. But the students work the problems, think them through and make the systems work. In the end, two bandaged, fully immobilized patients are raised to the top and speeded to waiting medevacs, all personnel are accounted for and a thorough after-actions review is conducted.

Just like it would be in “real life.”

That right there is half the point of this training — keeping it real. It drives me nuts when I’m a student in some course and I hear instructors say repeatedly, “Well, in real life we’d do it this way.” That’s nonsense. What’s the point of talking about the “real-life” way of doing things, but when it comes time to actually execute during training, we do so in a halfhearted facsimile of “real life?”

Such is not the case in NPS high-angle rescue courses. The vast majority of student hours is spent “on the cliff,” either conducting evolution after evolution of a particular technique at various skill stations or helping cadre rig for other skill stations. In some cases students role play the part of the patient in order to experience a rescue from the singular perspective of the one who’s not in control. How’s that for instilling faith in your teammates?

When “what-if?” questions do arise, rather than debating how we might approach them in real life, we remind ourselves that we are living real life right now, and whenever possible, we do it, we make it happen. Time constraints are a reality, and we must deal with them in the training environment. We can’t act out every possible scenario. But we can cover the full spectrum of situations most likely to occur in our parks, and then cater the training to address the basic principles of each, thereby equipping students with a wide-enough skill set to allow them to adapt to the unique demands of any situation.

I’ve been involved with both the western and eastern courses, and it seems that a recurring theme of both is they keep getting better every year. This is partly due to the tireless commitment of highly skilled instructors, partly due to a perennial spring of eager students thirsty for real world, hands-on training that challenges them physically and mentally. It’s also due to continuing support, both financially and administratively, by participant supervisors, host park superintendents, and regional and WASO offices.

As long as these three ingredients continue to merge, we’ll succeed in keeping the servicewide NPS high-angle rescue training program not only alive, but improving as some of the best training of its type in the world.

This is one challenge in which failure is not an option. We have to keep it alive. Talk about real life — we have a real-world need for outstanding, skilled rescuers in the NPS. Just read the Morning Report on any given day, or read Butch Farabee’s book, which overflows with real-life rescues.

We’ll always need skilled rescue technicians. We owe that much to our visitors. These courses are the means to that end. By keeping the training alive, we will continue to keep our patients alive.

~ Kevin Moses, Big South Fork

Resource Management

After a year of considerable discussion about a redraft of NPS Management Policies, the latest version was released in late June. The same day that I downloaded a copy of the revised draft from the Park Service’s website, the usual “question of the day” polled employees on whether they expected to read the new document. I was frankly shocked to see that, as of the hour at which I answered the query at least, less than half the respondents indicated that they intended to read them.

Regardless of your opinion on whether a redraft was warranted only five years after the last major review, I believe it’s the responsibility of all NPS staff to know our Management Policies, not just now, when they are the topic of renewed public and internal debate.

Considerable effort was spent by many employees and outside citizens to comment on this latest work—resulting in some strong, clear opening statements. On an inside cover page, for emphasis, is this statement (not so highlighted in the 2001 edition): “when there is a conflict between conserving resources unimpaired for future generations, and their use, conservation will be predominant.” Much has been perennially written about the NPS’ alleged “dual mandate,” the continual conflict or balance that must be made between preservation and use. Yet Management Policies, like the writings of Joseph Sax and other scholars over recent decades, strongly debunks the notion that impairment is ever acceptable, and says that courts have agreed with the primacy of conservation in NPS legislation.

The new draft outlines key guiding principles, including these objectives:

• • Preventing impairment of resources and values
• • Resources should be passed on to future generations in better condition
• • A commitment to appropriate uses and public enjoyment of parks
• • Practicing cooperative conservation, civic engagement, and consultation with local, state, tribal, and federal entities
• • Demonstrating environmental leadership in all aspects of NPS activities, including planning, operations, land protection,natural and cultural resource and wilderness management, interpretation and education, facility design, construction and management, and commercial visitor services
• • Pursuing best contemporary business practices, and
• • Encouraging consistency across one National Park System

The new policy document states in the introduction that it’s meant to be read in its entirety. Read it; discuss it with your fellow employees, ANPR members and potential members, and — whenever there are future opportunities to participate in reconsideration, don’t ignore the opportunity, the responsibility to do so.

As individuals, we have many different job titles and duties, but we all have the same mission. I don’t think we can effectively power our individual contributions without having solid understanding of our policy foundation. I am sure I am not alone in being relieved to see that protection of park resources was clearly reaffirmed in this 2006 document. NPS staff should lead the way in ensuring that our actions follow such clearly stated intent.

~ Sue Consolo Murphy, Grand Teton