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The second half of my position comes in summer, when these two programs converge for four free weeks of summer camp. With summer comes recruiting and training counselors, creating or assisting with lesson plans for the various camps, serving as overnight staff and as emergency support staff on off-site overnight trips, and whatever other role comes along as the weeks roll by. Those additional roles can be anything from being a photographer to discussing behaviors with campers. Along with our mission-based programming with the students from FLOC’s after-school programs, we have a full schedule of fee-based groups that visit during the summer as well.
With these groups on site, my week can range from backpacking with our mission-based campers on Monday, to facilitating a high ropes challenge course program on Wednesday for a fee group, to tagging along to assist with a canoe trip on Saturday. This work is engaging, dynamic, and encom-passing.
It could be argued that those are the main traits this work has in common with my time as a seasonal park ranger. Days at Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area were also engaging, dynamic, and encompassing. They could include any combination of roving in tide pools and interacting with visitors, being the first point of contact in the fee booth, providing information at the Interpretive Center, giving costumed living history tours of the tallest lighthouse on the Oregon coast, or simply walking through the park and having casual conversations about the gray whales or harbor seals lingering offshore while kindly reminding people that no, you cannot fly your drone on federal land, and yes, your dog must be leashed.
Now, hiking along the C&O canal with 12-year-olds may not have the same appeal as getting paid to whale-watch, but the appeal is in the magic of both experiences. In both roles, a sense of wonder is a must-have. It is the thing that generates interest in the job in the first place, draws others in, and
Yaquina Head Lighthouse, Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area