Working for the National Park Service: Week 2

Ahhhhh, another day another dollar. . . or lot's of dollars in this case, hehehe.

Day 1: So my second week began with new employee orientation. I was expecting some sort of hour to two hour little session. You know, "hello, welcome, we are so happy blah, blah, blah." It was that for like the first fifteen minutes, but then it just got to rules and regulations blah, blah, blah for the rest of the morning until lunchtime. . .five hours! After lunch we had a safety lecture then we got trained on how to use fire extinguishers. Boo-yah! Then the day was over.

Day 2: This is where things got interesting, because Tuesday was still orientation. This time, bright and early, we showed up at the "airport" (Five-ten planes, runway built during WWII) for bear safety training. But the ranger assigned to teach the class didn't know that he was assigned to teach the class and was, therefore, still in bed. So we commenced with shotgun training until he got there. When he did finally get there he rambled on for a while on bears, told a few cool bear stories, showed a can of pepper spray and let a couple volunteers fire it off. The end. Back to shotguns. So, I like guns, but it turns out that I've never used a shotgun before. This was my first time. I should also mention that I haven't actually shot guns enough to become Carlos Hathcock or anything, and I am a bit rusty. The last time I went shooting was before I started going back to BYU, four+ years ago. Anyway, so we got trained on the use of a shotgun for about an hour, which really wasn't that hard. Then we went to the range to get qualified. As a precursor I'll mention a few things: I was kind of nervous, a little tense and all (Why? I guess being judged or something), I was new to the shotgun, and, on top of that, after the hours of yakking I had developed the need to empty my bladder. What this all boils down too is that I missed with my first four practice rounds. . . with a shotgun! I missed the whole dad-gum target. Well, I was embarrassed. It turns out that I had become a bit twitchy. The instructor came over, after sending all the other students away, and told me that I had developed a "shooter's flinch," where you anticipate the kick of the rifle. He "cured" me of it by mixing a live round with dummy rounds. The funny thing, I think I still missed every time the round was real. After that, I think maybe he gave up, and so we had to do our qualifying test. The test was basically to fire five shots, four and then one reload, at a target that was maybe 25 yards away, twice, while getting a score of 7 out of 10. While he was gathering the others, I relaxed. Then once we were all lined up, at the sound of "Bear!" we all started shooting. The range sounded like a war zone, as I pumped off all my rounds to the smell of gun smoke in twenty five seconds. Then we did it again, this time, my final shot jammed, so I never got my tenth round off. Then we went to look at our targets. Well, I had a nice tight group of shots clustered on the lower left side of the target (in the heart/lung-ish area on the target to the left), but three were outside the desired area, so I failed. The instructor however was more impressed, "Wow, for somebody who had shooter's flinch, this is a very nice group," but I didn't get my 7 for 10 (in my mind I got 6 of 9, it's not my fault the gun jammed). Luckily, we got two chances to qualify in a day, so I got to go again. This time my very first shot drilled the target dead center (where all the heart valves and stuff are), but then every shot after that got progressively lower, and wouldn't you know that my gun jammed on my final shot, again! This time I fixed the jam in time, but somehow my last round had lost itself in the depths of my hoodie pocket and I couldn't find it. How frustrating. In the end I got the same score again 6/10 (or 6/9). Failure sucks. The rest of the day was easy, because shotgun training took us up until another 1pm lunch. Am I really getting paid for this?

Day 3: This time another trail crew member, who had arrived on Monday, and I went out to a remote trail that meandered along the Gilahina river, we took a few "before" pictures with a GPS camera, and generally scouted the trail. Then we went back and ate lunch. Then the work began, he cut a few logs out of the way, and I ran a self propelled brush cutter (think of a lawn mower that mows small trees), for the 3/4 mile of trail. The day was warm, there weren't any mosquitoes, so overall it was quite pleasant. At one point I had to stop the brush cutter so a fat little baby rabbit could hop off the path. It took us a couple hours to do this, on the way back, I mowed the other side of the trail while my compadre followed and took the "after" pictures. Then we drove home. Final score? 2 hours work, 2 hours semi work/hiking, 4.5 hours travel time, .5 hours loading/unloading truck. What a day, I don't know if I can handle this. (Wink, wink).

Day 4-5: More hanging around shop doing small odd jobs trying to keep busy. Next week the rest of the trail crew arrives and things will get moving right along.

I think I like my job!