On The Forest

Life at your local Forest Service ranger district

Back in the north country, the driveway to the ranger station forked so that the public went one way and we went the other. There was a chain-link fence around the employee lot and warehouse behind the station, with a locked swinging gate I never arrived early enough to open first. I’d feel proud if there were only one or two cars there when I got in. Jesse, the long-haired fire crew boss, always got there early to use the shower, and his stoic boss Dave showed up earlier still. Most days my boss would beat me into the office too—most being all but his vacation. By ten to 7, the lot regained its equilibrium: numbered white agency pickup trucks on one end, gray and black and blue personal pickups on the other. Plus my Subaru.

Inside, through the back door of the big green building, the hallway led past our little trails office into the big open room of desks and dividers where the perms worked. A nice space—big windows, vaulted ceiling, white walls and wood trim. Big poster maps covered the walls and cubicle sides, maps of old fires, maps of new timber sales, maps of the spread of our local invasive pests. And many photos of the Forest, new, old, antique. It was one of the better ranger stations I know of, personally, a post suggesting a government that wanted its employees and the public to feel proud of their country, proud of its agency’s history and critical mission. A good place to work.

Each morning I’d walk through the main room into another little hallway, past the District Ranger’s office and the conference room by the copier, and turn into the kitchen to start some coffee. There I’d usually run into Joe, one of our old timers. He ran the wildlife program but seemed to have done everyone else’s job at some point too. Thick Boston accent, many jokes. Had a cabin he built out near the edge of the federal land with his pay from a younger fire season. (His coworker: “but did he tell you how long he lived on peanut butter and jelly while he built it?”)

But Joe was a morning person, so I’d offer a nod and groggily take my coffee back to the quiet of the trails office. While I regained consciousness, the rest of the district folks would pass by our door on their way to their desks. Jan, the cheerful, gray-haired silviculturist; Dan, Greg, and Peter, the three tall guys on the timber crew; their grizzled boss, Mark, and the calm developed recreation manager, Zach; our District Ranger Paul, the head of the district, who always stopped at our door to say hello. My trail crew—Julio, himself—arrived sooner or later, plus our comrades on the wilderness ranger crew, and we’d take our respective halves of our shared office and chat with the chairs in a circle. Yesterday’s dried boots sat in the middle. At 7 sharp our boss would walk over from his desk in the big room, take the last seat, and line us out for work.

On Mondays we’d have an all-hands meeting at 7:30, and everyone would pack into the conference room. At the head of the long table, Paul would check in with each department—trails, wilderness, developed rec, timber, silviculture, NEPA, special uses, admin, wildlife, fire, fisheries, visitor info services, law enforcement, and other specialists depending on the week—and we’d hear the news from each corner of the district. If fire conditions were ramping up, trails and wilderness took note. If the civil engineer was still permitting a bridge, timber or rec could adjust their plans. Occasionally someone would shout out some quiet seasonal’s hard work, a promotion, a retirement (Joe: “Might be time for me to think about it…”), or other good news. Often one department’s updates meant little to anyone else’s, but it at least made for small talk around the office, or shit talk in the field. It was all pretty interesting to a green seasonal like me. It all added up to something.

After the meeting, or on the days without it, the shuffle into the office quickly reversed. The hallway to the back door echoed again with boots and voices and backpacks bumping the walls. Out in the parking lot, crews dispersed to their respective vehicles. Some pulled up with us behind the warehouse as we loaded our trail tools for the day, chatting while they struggled with their own heaps of gear in the cramped storage lockers. Then we all pulled back out through the gate in our rigs, big white pickups with the agency emblem in amber brown on the front doors, off to work. Out onto the forest.

While I was at the agency, I worked at the district level. That’s below the Forest—as in, Green Mountain National Forest—which in turn is below the regional level and the national level. I liked it that way. Not that I could have even gotten a higher-level job. But if you close your eyes and imagine the Forest Service, the images you see are likely of the work that happens at the district level. People in khaki shirts and green pants, the pickle suit. People with boots and backpacks. Don’t get me wrong—the work done at the higher levels of the bureaucracy is important, keeping forests and their districts afloat. But ask yourself: who do you want in charge of a third of America’s public land, the National Forests? People with graduate degrees? Or people with graduate degrees who have also spent some years patrolling the trails, fighting the fires, or educating the campers of your favorite National Forest district?

Visitors will talk about their travels on public land in a familiar way, hiking in this or that National Park, camping in this or that National Forest. But in the Forest Service, you say it like this: “on the Forest.” The first time I heard it, I struggled to not dumbly ask the guy doing my chainsaw cert for clarification. But after a little while, it just comes out that way. I worked on the Shoshone, on the White Mountain, on the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie. You work on a district, not in it, not for it. Who knows why, but it fits. It describes not so much where we work as what we do. Clearing trails. Fighting fires. Heading out from the warehouse every day to do our work, out there, on the forest.