July 8, 2025 • 50 mins
“National parks are sacred not because of what we build, but because of what we protect.”
Notable Moments
[00:00:20.320] Introduction of Sacred Landscapes
[00:01:23.010] Sam’s unexpected inspiration to write the book
[00:08:14.120] The emotional transformation of spending years on the road
[00:18:03.540] National parks vs. theme parks — how they serve the public differently
[00:31:45.600] Designing places that spark reverence
[00:49:45.430] The legacy Sam hopes Sacred Landscapes will leave
In this episode, author and National Park volunteer Sam Gennawey shares stories from his six-year, 175,000-mile van life journey through U.S. national parks. Known for his writing on theme parks and urban planning, Sam offers a fresh perspective on the intentional design and emotional power of natural spaces. He discusses the origins of his new book Sacred Landscapes, the personal transformation of long-term travel, and the connection between preserving spaces and creating meaningful human experiences.
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Connect with Sam Gennawey
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to the Park Leader show where we are changing the landscape
of leadership and parks and conservation. I'm your host
Jody Mayberry and this episode our
guest is Sam Gennawey. He is a current
and active volunteer with National Parks. He is
also the Author of Sacred Landscapes 1
(00:24):
Van Lifer's 6 Year Old
175,000 Mile National Park Journey.
Fabulous book. Hello, Sam. I'm so glad you're here. Hello.
I am honored and delighted to be here and talk with this audience because
you guys are my heroes. So this is great. Well, I have to tell
you, I was so excited when you came out with this book. I've
(00:45):
read J. Bangs. I've read Universal versus
Disney, thoroughly enjoyed them. Half the work I do,
if not more, is in that area in parks,
those type of parks. My true love is
natural parks though. So to have someone who is such a good
writer, has such an understanding of themed parks go
(01:08):
and write a book about national parks, I was so excited for it. Sam,
I'm glad you put your talents towards parks
like this. Yeah, this is definitely one of those products that. Definitely one of those
books I had to write. It wasn't the initial intention to write a book about
the national parks, but after living in them for so many
years now, being on the road for seven years, my anniversary is coming up. Seven
(01:30):
years of doing this sort of thing. This is one of those. I just, I
had to do it. I really had to do it. I'm very, very pleased with
the book. Yeah, it is, it is really good. There's, there's so
much in it to get into. I don't think we will get to
everything. We'll get to what we can. And I think
Sam's going to have great stories, great insight if you,
I assume you won't mind this, Sam, because it's where the book
(01:53):
begins, where you, you were going through a rough spell,
depressed. A lot of things weren't going right and that's what led you
to national parks. And initially I wasn't going to
talk about that at all. But the more I thought about it, I thought,
you know, that I'm glad Sam talked about that in
his book because that's an area I don't think
(02:16):
gets discussed enough and doesn't get enough credit on.
People come to parks for recreation, but it does so much more.
It does so much more. People find themselves, people get
inspired, people get out of depression. Do you mind starting there
and talking a little bit about the role parks play
for that? Sam? Yeah, no, no, not at all. Nature Does Redeem. It's
(02:38):
one of my little six findings of what the narratives are for
the National Park Service sites. And if we really always think about it, I mean,
look who founded the organization with Steven Ma. Stephen Mather had his
issues as well. And when he was out in nature, he tended to do pretty
well. And when he kind of got not out of nature is when he had
major emotional issues. There's a whole genre of books, first of all,
(02:59):
I'll start with that of guys who are in their prime. You know,
I'm now 65 years old, and I retired when I was 58 years old.
Then you get to a certain point where. Where you need to have that
shakeup in your life. So, you know, you got John Steinbeck, you got William Heat
Moon there, Hunter S. Thompson. I mean, there's just so many other people that are
out there who have gone through the same sort of struggle that I had, which
(03:21):
was life was not satisfactory. I know I needed to make
a big change. What could that change possibly be? In my
particular case, I had recognized I really like traveling. I really
like going out into parks. I had just come back from Japan, worked
a couple of weeks in Japan with the creative team at Universal Studios
Japan. Just before I left, I thought, I'm going to buy myself a van. I'm
(03:43):
just going to drive around the country. Initially, I was going to just drive around
and do the park to Park Highway Trek that was done in 1920, and
did all the mapping and everything and tried to follow the maps really
closely to try to write a book that would be about me,
just what happened over the last hundred years. But things shifted a little
bit. And then it was then the challenge became, I'm going to go to
(04:05):
every National Park Service site that I can drive my van to. And then for
those that I can't drive my van to, let's say like Governor's island or
Perry's or places that are like that. I do have a scale model of my
van, and I put it in my bag so I can sort of act like
I'm taking my van with me. It was also a good way of saying, no,
I'm not going to go to Guam. I'm not going to go to the Virgin
Islands, I'm not going to go to Hawaii. And allowed me to figure out a
(04:27):
way of postponing going to Alaska for at least the time being, because those
are a whole nother journey. But it was the best, really the best
decision I could have made in my life. I just really Quickly took to it.
I started working in the parks that really had a whole nother
level to the experience as well. I do say that
nature does redeem, and I think that for many of
(04:49):
you that are listening, it's probably one of the reasons that you work
in the parks, because you recognize that being in that environment, it
does something to your heart, does something to your soul, does something to your brain
that no other job, no other place on earth can do for you.
And every day I'm just reminded that that's the case, that
there's something very, very special about our National Park Service system. That's why
(05:11):
I ended up calling the book Sacred Landscapes, because they really are our
collective journey as a community of what we believe
as the most important places to project to the future. We what our
past was and to remind us of who we are as we the people.
It's so good to hear. That's why I like bringing people like you on
the show is when we're in it every day,
(05:34):
especially during the summer months, it can be tough to
keep your eye on. The prize of this is why we do what we
do. And to hear your enthusiasm, your excitement, your
recognition of the work just gets me more excited.
Yeah, there's not a lot of jobs that you can have where it doesn't
take long to figure out that in many cases, you're changing people's lives. You
(05:57):
know, there's not a lot of places that give you that kind of freedom or
that kind of luxury to recognize that people will encounter you
with one set of ideas, and then after they're done, they've
gained a different perspective. And that perspective is generally quite positive.
So it's a rewarding gig. It's kind of why I think most of you all
do this without getting paid all that well and horrendous life choices and
(06:19):
expenses and living conditions and stuff like that. But ultimately,
you're willing to set that aside because you. You see what I call the magic.
And the magic's when apprehension turns into on delight.
And you see it with your visitors. When the visitors come and they're looking at
you and they look troubled or worried or concerned. And then after you've
spoken with them a little bit and you understand what their needs are, they walk
(06:41):
away and they're just completely charmed by the place and very, very
interested in the place. It's one of the reasons why I volunteer at the parks,
because quite honestly, you know, I'm like a lot of guys who live in vans.
I'm a big Introvert don't necessarily have to be around a lot of people, but
if I'm going to be around them for a little bit, I want to try
to make something about their lives a little bit better. And the Park Service has
given me that opportunity. You mentioned on delight.
(07:03):
That's the magic. So often when people think about parks,
they think about the beauty, the natural things that are going on in the
park. From your perspective of
seven years now in parks, staying there
as a visitor, volunteering, what role have you seen
that park rangers play in that awe and delight? Well,
(07:26):
they're the kind of the glue that helps to.
Glue is not the right word. What park rangers do is that the
parks themselves are designed as three dimensional storytelling
environments. And because I've written all these books about the design
of theme parks, I recognize what these different DNA
design ideas are that get people to understand that backstory.
(07:48):
But it's the ranger who elevates that to the next level, where people
can genuinely appreciate what they're seeing and doing, and
also to learn or become aware of what they could see or do
within the parks. We are guides, ultimately, we are
guides to people so that they can get the most out of what their visit
is. And I think that that's really, really important because it's not like the
(08:09):
parks are famous for having reams and reams of
signage. In fact, as I understand it, Harpers Ferry has this rule
on the interpretive signs where if there's a photograph, you can't use more than
35 words to describe what the photograph is. And all the
roads are completely designed differently. And we all wear uniforms
or costumes, as I would like to call them, and we. Everything has a backstory.
(08:31):
It's just like a theme park in that regards. And what ultimately happens is
by removing the visual contradictions of the real world, the
messy vitality of the real world, once you're through the
park's front gate, what ends up happening is it's this
architecture of reassurance and people's
lizard brains can relax a little bit. That's both good and bad.
(08:53):
On the good side is that it allows them to absorb
and accept the stories in a much deeper way than they do
in any other environment, any state park or recreational
areas and stuff like that. Within the National Park Service sites, they can do
that. The downside, of course, is that people's perception of danger
and the wilderness is a bit skewed as well. And people tend to take
(09:15):
more risk than they would rightly do if they were in another environment.
But I think it's better to err on the side of the great
masses and charming them with the parks versus threatening them
with the danger of the park parks. There's enough people who are doing that these
days of talking about don't paint the fuzzy cows and pet the fuzzy cows and
stuff like that. So I've seen some, some stupid things when
(09:38):
I've been a volunteer. So yeah, yeah. And all already
in early in the summer of 2025, there's been two
incidents in Yellowstone of people getting gored by doing dumb
stuff in front of bison, posing for selfies, things like that. It's like never
ending. And I always think about our rangers at Yellowstone that have to
deal with that, knowing that every summer we're going to have to deal with this
(10:01):
again. Visitors showing up from the city don't know any better
and they now we're going to have to deal with this. So you're
right, the fuzzy cow problem continues. But it even goes beyond that too.
I was up at Cedar Breaks on my drive. I worked at Petrified Forest as
part of my winter two jobs and I was driving to Los Angeles and I
stopped off at Cedar Breaks and watched a person collapse because they didn't realize
(10:23):
that they're at almost 11,000ft altitude and there's not as much air
up there. And then for anybody, all of you who've worked at the Grand Canyon.
Oh, I don't need to tell you what the idea between the altitude and
then everybody hiking down the Bright Angel Trail, even at Big
Bend, between the heat and people walking down the Window Trail,
there's a lot of parts of those parks or petrified
(10:46):
forests. Watching one day looking up from the Rainbow Forest
Museum through the giant picture windows there, up at the the
big tree up on the hill there, Old Faithful. And then watching a guy off
the trail and then stuffing his shirt with about 50
pounds of petrified wood and you're kind of like, oh dude, really,
seriously, do you. Don't you realize you just leave it there?
(11:07):
We're looking at you, we know you're there. But you know what? That's only
one person out of tens of thousands. And the rest of them start to
pick up on the idea. You mean I'm walking around a forest with 225 million
year old trees? Really, seriously, that's how old the stuff was. You mean this is.
These things are much older than dinosaurs. And then when they get that, that's
when that awe and delight comes and then they just love the park. They go
(11:30):
crazy. Just Thinking, oh, wow, look at. This is so cool. Once they get over
the fact the trees aren't standing up straight talking about. Walt Disney
World, Lee Cockrell, the retired executive vice president,
he said, walt Disney World is a place where fantasy is
real and reality is fantastic. And I think that applies
to what we do in parks, because, yes,
(11:51):
it's authentic. Everything about a park is real, as real
as it can get. But to so many people, it is so
spectacular, it is so otherworldly. It might as well
be fantasy, because it is that far out there for most people.
And I think it's really easy for us to forget that because we're in
it every day. We. We don't realize how it is
(12:14):
almost like fantasy, that for people that come and visit. Well. And
I'm also becoming a bigger and bigger champion of the smaller parks, too,
because one thing I think we're all starting to realize is that the
63 national parks have become this checklist, a
scorecard, with people just trying to get to the 63 parks,
and they're missing the hundreds of other parks that are out there. And the other
(12:35):
parks are not necessarily. I mean, they're authentic because they're in an
authentic place. But let's face it, Ben's old fort was built in what, 1975,
76, as a reproduction, on the original foundations. The same
thing happened at Grand Portage. If we look at the Smoky Mountains,
the Smoky Mountains didn't look like that when it became the Smoky Mountains National
Park. It was really beaten up, and we let the trees grow, and
(12:57):
then we also cut the trees down where we have turnout so people can go
out and see the vistas. Or the constant debate on do the trees that grow
outside the tunnel in Yosemite, do we let the trees grow, or do
we cut them down so people get that spectacular reveal look to it.
There's a lot of fantasy to the national parks that the national
parks doesn't really ever get into, which is something that I
(13:20):
dive really deep into in sacred landscapes, because
these are orchestrated environments
designed to impart a particular story that the
National Park Service has adopted and wants to tell. And I
used to use the word manipulating the environment. And I've been sort of scolded that
that seems like an unfair word. But the fact is, is that, you
(13:42):
know, we don't put a bunch of signs up in the national parks that tell
you don't do this, don't do that. What we do is we throw a few
logs and bushes on what was a social trail so that people
can't recognize them. So they don't keep destroying the environment because we
want people to feel like they're still in a natural environment. Or we
provide them boardwalks which are going to give them the best possible views at the
(14:04):
easiest convenience for the visitor. Or we've laid out roads, what
I call the one good road, which is really predominant in the Pre
World War II parks, where you've got only one road that takes you
through a sequence of environments and events. And when they want
you to churn out, we provide a churn out area so that people
can have that sort of exclusive natural experience. But
(14:26):
there's no medians on the side of the roads and other places so that we
try to keep people moving. And we also do that by having roads that have
far more twists than are necessary, that have far fewer
gradient changes that are necessary and give what I call the Zen
view. So when you're driving to Mount Rainier, you get a little peek of it
and then the thing churns away and your vehicle then comes back and it gives
(14:48):
you another little peek of it. Same thing at Crater Lake. You give people
little teases to so that the environment has just that much more of a
visual punch to it. And that's just through Brilliant, incredible
road design. Within the parks, or as I like to sort of think of them
from the theme park days, you are in a ride vehicle like you are in
any park, like the Haunted Mansion or It's a Small World. The difference
(15:10):
is that you're driving it, it's your vehicle, and it's on the same road and
it's following the other car that's just a few feet in front of you, just
like it's a ride vehicle. So the world of theme parks and natural
parks kind of cross more than national parks, cross a lot more than most people
think. And I think that's all for the good, quite honestly. That's
a fun conversation for me. I like hearing you say that.
(15:32):
I. I had a park manager, the one who hired me into
parks. He would talk about all of the
deliberate work it takes to make a park
park. Like yes, yes. Yeah. So
sign placement, here's a small example. And I know Sam,
you've seen a lot of things like this. So if you want to keep people
(15:53):
from driving onto a trail, perhaps a boulder
is the right choice. But instead of just placing a boulder, you
would dig a divot and place the boulder in the divot because that
looks more park like than just dropping a boulder at
the trailhead entrance. It's just little things like that, that,
yes, it looks natural, it looks like a park,
(16:16):
but to keep it park like it takes a lot of intervention
on our part. Oh, yeah, definitely. And that's what. When that
realization hit me, I was working in Yellowstone, the Bridge
Bay Campground. And I sort of picked up on this because we had a couple
of bison that lived in the campground with us. And it started making me think,
well, why do people want to pet the bison? And in my world,
(16:37):
as a urban plan and urban planner and an historian, I
couldn't just say that people are stupid because there has to be something more than
that. That's what got me diving into this rabbit hole that I've been in the
last few years with this design thing. And it is.
It's. There's a lot more deliberate thought than certainly the average
visitor has. And the National Park Service has
(16:58):
never, and maybe to its credit, never really dived into it. It's like if you
go to Disney, Disney's always talking about how they design things.
Universal is doing that now as well, of how they design things. The National
Park Service is doing this orchestration, but not
necessarily making it completely obvious to the visitor because
it's just. It's almost. Almost touting themselves too much. I don't
(17:20):
think the park rangers want them to know people, to know that they're doing as
much as they do. They really just want people to enjoy the parks and learn
about the parks. So nobody's really taking credit for doing that. But it's
definitely a hallmark of the National Park Service. That's why I believe that one of
the reasons that Disneyland exists, having written the history book of Disneyland,
is that Walt Disney was a big national park fan. He liked going to these
(17:40):
places, and he picked up a lot of lessons from it. I have the feeling
that to him, his dream imagineer was Mary Coulter. That
Mary Coulter was everything he wanted his Imagine his
design team to be because she created these wonderful themed
buildings that were deep in backstory but also look like
they've been in their locations forever and ever and ever. And so, you
(18:02):
know, I'm sure there's a little bit of that. And also, Yasi done had
obviously done a lot of movies about national parks, and even Disneyland
is designed around the concept of a national park. Certainly Frontierland was.
I want to come back to design in a moment, but since you brought up
Walt Disney. Sam, did you know that Walt Disney was an honorary
park ranger? I understand. Yes, I understand that's the case. He deserves it.
(18:24):
He probably, in his particular Case, he probably dug the hat more than anything else.
He was that kind of guy that he gets to dress up as well, too.
And, you know, and he also had this real fetish for Santa Fe Railroad as
well and followed everything that they were doing from childhood.
And that all seeped into his brain. Yeah, he deserves it. I think he deserves
it. Yellowstone Cubs by our Yellowstone bears movie, by the way. Everybody should see.
(18:48):
Just to see what not to do these days. Yeah. The Park
Ranger association of California actually gave me
copies of the letter from them to Walt, Walt's
letter back to them, and the picture that they took with Walt. Oh, I'm
jealous. That's great. That's great. Little piece of history. Yeah.
Yeah. So back to design for a moment. I think another thing
(19:10):
that natural parks have in common
with theme parks is the use of design to influence
behavior. Instead of. You mentioned national parks
is careful about signs that they put up. Well, instead of a sign telling you
what to do, we just kind of design the behavior we want you
to do. We just put it into the design of whatever the
(19:33):
trail or the visitor center. Yeah. And it's even the same thing with,
like, the roads. So, for instance, take the rim trail at Petrified Forest national
park that goes from one pull out over to the Painted Desert Inn.
Now, they could have just made a trail that was a straight trail that was
just slightly below the road to take people through. But instead it
wanders a little bit. It goes up and down, not too much because it
(19:54):
doesn't want to stress people. But every once in a while, it rewards the
walker by letting them go out and get the most spectacular views they're going to
find along the rim of the Painted Desert off of this trail. And so there's
a reward to that. The same thing happened in North Cascades. The
trails that are there, they kind of wind you around and then they get you.
They offer you these tremendous views. The boardwalks that are at
(20:16):
Yellowstone are wonderful because you don't really have to think about looking
down on, am I going to trip on a rock or something. You just have
to make sure that you're in the width of the boardwalk. And then there's lots
of places where if you want to sit, you can sit and just absorb nature.
Or if you want to lean against a railing, that railing is always at
exactly the right place to give you the best possible view.
(20:38):
The interpretive signs, as all of your listeners know,
you place them in the place where you really want people to absorb that piece
of information, that piece of the story. And then it's not just the one
interpretive sign that matters. It's the sequence of interpretive
signs along a particular road or a trail that add up to the
cumulative story. So that when the viewers are done with their
(21:00):
day, they actually understand what was going on, what was the park all about. When
they go back and they get back to their hotel room or their campsite and
they rip out their unigrid and all of a sudden it explains those
other little details that they didn't really know and it brings it all home for
them. That becomes that aha moment. That becomes that magical moment
moment where they're on delight about the park is just increased,
(21:21):
enhanced immensely. Well, your mention of interpretive signs and
it's part of a collective story. I'm really glad you brought that up. Because
even though park rangers are such a big piece
to what happens, not every visitor gets to meet a park
ranger, not every visitor gets to listen to an interpretive talk.
Therefore we have to rely on our signs to tell
(21:44):
the story that we can't tell because we can't meet everybody,
whether it's park signs or park ranger stories.
I want to get your take on interpretation because you are
so well studied in how universal tells stories
and how Disney tells stories. So when you started
studying interpretation within parks, was there
(22:06):
anything that you learned that surprised you? Yeah, I did.
It was the reliance. Not so much about
facts and impressive facts or this mountain is this
big, this hole is that deep. This crater has been here for
this many thousands of years or millions of years. That petrified tree
is 225 million years old. Which of course a lot of people just can't
(22:29):
comprehend what that means. It's this whole idea of provoking people
on an emotional basis that what, you know, our goal is to
preserve the resources. And we have a lot of visitors who may
be unfamiliar with those resources. So we want them to, to understand
and appreciate those resources to the same extent that we
do so that they also want to protect the resources. And then
(22:51):
they become the self correcting measure. So that when they're out on a
boardwalk and they see somebody walking off the boardwalk and there's no ranger
around, that the people that are the visitors are the ones who
will help self correct and get that person back onto a boardwalk because
it's their resource now, they own it, they take ownership to it.
So it's this finding the emotional clue. I'll give you a good example of this.
(23:14):
I worked at Grand Portage National Monument. It was fabulous. Loved it. It was
the one living history museum I've worked at within the National Park Service. I
loved living on the reservation that was there. An amazing staff.
It was kind of fun dressing up. I will confess, I got to dress up.
I didn't want to do the voyager things. I always felt like I was wearing
pajamas. So I said, I'll do the great Hall. So I got to dress up
(23:35):
like a rich Scottish guy and that sort of thing. And I said to
myself, this is pretty easy. Absolutely nobody who's coming to Grand
Portage for the most part, cares about fur trading. That's just not part
of the discussion that we have these days. In fact, I would well say about
a third of the visitors, they thought they were going to go see a big
waterfall in Minnesota, but that was six miles away in the state park.
(23:56):
So how do you get somebody to want to appreciate what's going on at
Grand Portage? Well, we talk about money
and we talk about wealth and the. The ability to
demonstrate wealth and the fact that today you would own a Ferrari, but then
you had a beaver hat on your head. And that gave you a certain level
of status and how people showed themselves with status through
(24:17):
clothing. And then what's the process of that? And then just how much energy
and intensity was expelled just to try to get beaver so
that we can make beaver hats. And people got that. They really ended up getting
it. And we'd have these discussions about how people show off wells to each other
today and what was the ways that they did it back then. And then
people walk away and they understand, why did this all happen? Why did it happen
(24:39):
right here in this particular place? They get a better appreciation of
it. At what point did. After
so many miles in your van visiting parks, at what
point did you decide to. You wanted to volunteer and
do things like what you just described? So the first two summers
when I started, I. I realized I needed to find someplace to take a little
(25:01):
bit of a break. You know, just rest the van. Cause I was driving a
billion miles the first couple of years. I think everybody who does this does
that. And so I took a job at Zantero. I was working as a campground
host, you know, the front desk of the campground. And then I kept talking to
volunteers that were there, and I thought, oh, that's a cooler gig than working for
Zanterra, so I should look into doing that. So a
(25:22):
couple of years later, I thought it's time to sort of settle down a little
bit and sort of spread out my travels. So the first gig
was just a test gig. And it was Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge
near Death Valley for the pup. The devil's old pupfish live. They live actually
within the National Wildlife Refuge. And it was a good
job because it was like four weeks learn about it and explore this.
(25:43):
And then that got me started to work at a bunch of other different parks.
I liked it. I mean, for a Van Life traveler, being a
volunteer, the VIP program has, of course, great benefits.
I'm not driving as much as I would, so that saves me money. I get
to live on the property for free. Utilities with electrical. Sometimes
I get propane. I get a great collection of hats. Oh, I've got a great
(26:06):
collection of hats. Because that's the one thing that you always give as a
gift as you get a hat. Thankfully, we don't have to return them like we
had at Zanterra. Never thought that was a good thing of having to return a
used hat from somebody from last summer. I thought it was kind of gross. But
thankfully the National Park Service spends enough money on us to buy us hats, but
more so I had access to the library and I had access to anything and
(26:26):
any resources that were available to the rangers so I can
learn the job so I can. I can be a better storyteller. And I
just fell in love with that. And it also gives me the chance to visit
other national parks. So if I'm at Petrified Forest like I was this
last late winter, early spring, I could easily get go
one direction and do Hubble Trading Post, which I love, and Canyon Duchell on one
(26:48):
side, drive the other direction. And I've got Wapakita,
Sunset Crater, Montezuma's Castle. Down south,
the Walnut Canyon. So it's easy drives to each of these
different parks. And so I can explore those parks at depth. So it
gives me a place. When I was at North Cascades, it was all the Washington
parks. Even got to go into the B reactor as part of
(27:10):
the Manhattan Project, which was fabulous and spent a lot of time
in Olympic Park. So I, by doing this, it allows me to slow down
but also give me deeper appreciation of those parks that are within
the region that I'm at. So today I end up picking parks to work
at where there are other parks that are nearby that I really want to explore,
or there's a particular story that I really want to learn
(27:33):
more about. I've like, for instance, I've completely fallen
over heads over heel of the whole concept of the Chaco culture and
its impact on North America. And if it weren't for the Road I'd work at
Chaco Canyon, Chaco culture in an instant. But it would destroy my
van. So I'm going to work at Aztec Ruins which I think is great because
it's everything that can Chaco Canyon in as far as the culture. But
(27:55):
I'm not having to drive on a 22 mile really messed up road. So what
are the stories that I'm going to be able to talk about are always very,
very fascinating. You know, the whole petrified forest, taking people back
in time, North Cascades, how man has
manipulated the environment to serve man with the three dams.
But we've been able to preserve these incredible very, very remote
(28:17):
landscapes. So it's the combination of a corridor that's completely
packed with people and surrounded by public
lands where there's absolutely no people. So that kind of a
story I thought was a very fascinating one there. Death Valley is just all
the things of Death Valley when I was there. So there's that
kind of thing. And then Big Bend was for me a chance to live
(28:40):
extraordinarily remotely, which is both very nerve
wracking and very pleasurable at the same time. But ended up
walking away with the idea. I've seen heaven, I've seen the stars.
You've never really seen the solar system until you've
gone to Big Ben because of the night skies are just so
beyond anything and everything that you could possibly imagine. So. So
(29:02):
those are some of the parks that I've worked at. I really, I am
fascinated, thrilled and delighted by. Over the
last few years the dark sky park movement. It
has opened up a new aspect to parks that
probably wasn't considered enough a couple decades ago. And
now the movement towards getting more parks to be dark
(29:24):
sky parks. You experienced what, how
phenomenal that is. Yeah, yeah. And I also had the opportunity to work in the
redwoods as well. And you get kind of the opposite there because there is no
night sky in the redwoods. The trees are,
the trees are too tall. They cover the entire sky. If there's a little space
in the sky, there's a redwood tree that's aiming to grow up and fill that
(29:45):
little hole. And after two and a half months up in the redwoods,
you start to get creeped out about the fact that you're not connected to the
universe above you. Because the architectural aspect of the
redwood trees, when you're walking amongst the groves and the trees
first branches are about 150ft above you and then you realize they have another
couple hundred feet above that, you get kind of the Opposite effect.
(30:07):
I went to one of the state parks that were up there. When I
was up there and I was out on the prairie, Prairie Creek State park
and. Which is part of the national. The Redwoods national park and state parks.
And because I was working for Humboldt Redwood State park at that
time, they hooked it up so I can go ahead and camp there. And they
put me out on the prairie and I. All night I was feeling this weird
(30:29):
tension and I didn't quite understand it. So I woke up the next morning and
realized this is the first time in six weeks that I actually saw what the
night sky look like. So it's kind of reminded me a lot being back in
a city. So it's those sorts of things. It's the encounters with the
animals. You know, having bison living with you and elk living with you at
Yellowstone, having that little squadron of
(30:49):
pavilions that I jokingly acted like I named
with Big Ben, and having them as my friends, learning everything
I could about beavers because I was around so many dead beavers at Grand
Portage, or roadrunners, because roadrunners were both the Death Valley
and Big Bend in abundance. And being able to teach
visitors about how roadrunners operate and the fact that
(31:11):
they're going to come through your campground and get used to it and this is
what you should do when they do. You know, all of that just sort of
adds up. And it just. It's very special. And you're not going to ever find
this. You're certainly not going to find it in a theme park unless the thing's
mechanical and, you know, doing that kind of air jet sort of thing, you know,
the hydraulics kind of thing. Just living amongst these animals. At times
it can feel like living in a zoo. And that's not a negative in any
(31:33):
sort of way. Well, I think you've probably experienced this by
now, Sam. I think some of the best leaders in
the country are found in parks. Some of the best storytellers
are found in parks. Oh, yeah. Some of the most dedicated people are found in
parks. So you've spent all this time in parks. You've been around so
many park rangers. And this is harder, I know, than telling park
(31:56):
stories because you kind of have to pick people and you've met so many good
ones. But when I talk about the dedication and
leadership of park rangers, the storytelling. Are there
some park rangers that come to mind over your several years of
travel? When I bring that up, yeah. I mean,
there's. There's certainly to me a distinction between two groups of park
(32:17):
rangers, there's the seasonals and there's the full timers. So the
full timers have mostly been my supervisors. So they're, they're great,
they're dedicated. They've decided to live this as a full time
lifestyle. They've been fortunate to be able to get into their various positions and almost
to a person. Everyone that I've ever worked for has
recognized that I have a great sense of curiosity about the park
(32:39):
and they do everything they can to encourage that. So they get
me access to books and the experts and the scientific side
of the park so I can learn about them. So I've been always very impressed
with Anna and Sarah, Petrified Forest and Anna up at
North Cascades and stuff like that. They were absolutely terrific. In
Carl over Grand Portage, he's the guy who one day he saw me wearing my
(33:02):
reading glasses when I was in my regalia and he said, no, no,
no, you can't wear your reading glasses. They're just period
inappropriate. Let me do something for you. So he went away and he came back
and he brought me antique spectacles. That happened to be the same kind of
prescription I had so I could dress up, look the park and also be able
to read the stuff that was in front of me. And then he would always
(33:23):
look to make sure I was never wearing a T shirt because you know, you
didn't wear T shirts in the 1790s. So on the leadership
staff of it, every experience I've had has been really, really quite good. And
I think part of that is because I seem to be somewhat energetic to them
and they want to take advantage of that. And I also really understand
that the full time park rangers respect the volunteers.
(33:43):
They recognize that the parks, if there weren't for the volunteers, the
parks would really, really be struggling. We fill in a lot of the gaps there
and so they want to make sure that we feel welcome. So they're great. The
seasonals have been great because all of you seasonal rangers, you really
are just actors, especially in the interpretive side of things. You're all
basically actors on a stage and you have to audition every year for a new
(34:05):
show to be in and everybody brings their A game to the table.
And I find that they're just, their personalities are such. And generally the fact
that they have experiences working at a variety of parks and they bring it to
it is spectacular. And some of them are really funny, some of them are great
storytellers. I've ran into a few duds, but very, very
rarely because if somebody's going to be only making that much money
(34:28):
and they have to buy their hat and everything and pay their residential fees and
all that kind of stuff. You're doing it for a reason that's beyond just. Well,
you're doing it for an emotional arrangement yourself. And so
they're just. The seasonals have been terrific, and I've been in touch with a
lot of them as we go from park to park. And I hope to run
across some of their paths again. So I'm not going to say any
(34:49):
specific names because it's by far. The experience has always
been much more positive than negative. Even when I've been a camp host, which
I've been a couple of times, the fee rangers, you guys are the
fee rangers. You guys are the people. You're the. The rangers
nobody knows about, but you make everybody's trip that much better.
Because that whole process compared to other
(35:12):
consumer processes is actually pretty seamless and easy,
pretty easy to get a campground and how to utilize the campground and stuff like
that. And they have the ultimate patience of anybody. The law
enforcement rangers I learned very quickly to get to know
because especially as when you're working as a camp host, but even as
interpretive, because even the law enforcement guys are the law
(35:33):
enforcement guys and women are really, really pretty cool too, because
they're not just regular policemen. Their. Their attitude is the right attitude for the
parks. I also do like something that I was told once, I think, for
Death Valley, is to remember that we as volunteers were the
fund rangers, not the gun rangers. So no need
to start to scold visitors, actually be pretty
(35:56):
gentle and turn everything into a learning opportunity. And
visitors generally get it. I mean, in general, they do tend to get it
more often than not. A few times not, but more often than not.
So it's another reason why I like working at it. And I'll conclude with this
on this point. I wrote two books about the Walt Disney Company and the
Walt Disney theme parks and recognized really early on then
(36:18):
that most of the employees, especially the frontline employees working in the
Disney theme parks, they're not there to become rich, because they're never going to become
rich working for the Walt Disney Company in a front line. And I think it's
the same thing with us park rangers is that they
recognize this is not a wealth job. This is a wealth, mental
wealth job. And everybody seems to give it their all. And it's a good
(36:39):
group of people to be with. Their competitiveness is just to try to
service the visitor more and better than they possibly could. Before
and each keep challenging each other to do that. Enthusiasm has
carried us through a wide range of topics while we've been talking
and I barely touched on your wonderful book,
Sam Sacred Landscapes. And I really
(37:02):
like how you did it. It moves through parks at a pretty
fast pace. That's right. Also gives you.
There's no park that you don't learn something about. Even though it moves
through a park fast paced, you learn something new about every park. And I really
enjoyed it. And I. I'll tell you one part that stood out
since I want to talk at least part about the book
(37:25):
and that is the inspiration Parks and Frederick
Law Olmstead. Because I think that
that idea and it touches back to what we talked about, the park
design. Because natural beauty. Yeah, we've got
it. We've got wonderful, wonderful park rangers. The staff
at all parks are great. But I feel like the
(37:47):
under story in a visitor's experience
is park design. And Frederick Law Olmsted played such a big part in
that. So I'm glad that you touched on him. Yeah, well, I mean, as an
urban planner beforehand and then of course, writing about these theme
parks and stuff, if you don't understand Frederick Law Olmsted, you don't understand public
space in America because he's the forerunner of all of that and the
(38:10):
fact that he uses his house and studio as the demonstration garden
so that when you're there, you can apply whatever you've learned there and take it
to whether it's the park in Brooklyn or Central park or the other places like
in Riverside, California that he did. You sort of pick up on these
design trends. My favorite parks, really, quite honestly,
I love the sublime visual parks, you know, Yellowstone and Yosemite and all the parks
(38:31):
that everybody of course loves. But I've become a super huge fan, as I said
earlier, about the smaller parks and especially the historic parks, because
there is just so much, much to learn from each of those
experiences. When you go to. You were talking about the structure of
the book. I was inspired by the Freeman Tilden book from the mid-50s
where he grouped the parks together by type as opposed to by state,
(38:54):
which what almost every other book does. So it's like all the parks
that are volcano parks and each of those parks tell a different story about
the concept of volcanoes or if you look at the fossil parks,
each one of them, it's like a curated museum. They don't
necessarily overlap. Each park represents a different
portion of the prehistory of North America.
(39:15):
And when you add it up cumulatively, you get the entire span of North
America. You get the indigenous parks where you learn what
was life like before European conquest.
Then there's the European conquest parks and then there is the
Manifest Destiny parks which then start to describe
what we ended up doing to the indigenous people in North America.
(39:37):
Something that is becoming, I suppose fairly politically incorrect at
this point in time in a history that's trying to get buried. But
I dare anybody to understand the story of
Sand Creek and then stand at Sand Creek and
not shed a tear and not feel real sad and tragic about
what was happening at that time. Or big hole, the same sort of
(40:00):
thing. Or wondering when you're wandering around Pipestone
that you're walking on a space, looking down
at quarries that people have been mining for the last 700
years or more for this very rare kind of stone that
you saw all over North America. And that connection, you can
feel the history just going through your feet, through your souls, up into
(40:22):
your heart and then right up into your head. Those places have
changed my life. Chaco culture was one where all of a sudden
it's like, wow, 850 to 1100 people for over 300 people years.
Even the United States isn't 300 years old. And that was a culture that
went away. Is that telling us something about the future for us
as well? Who knows all of those? What ended up happening was a
(40:45):
revelation. After visiting 390
parks in a six year span, it became a
revelation of what this continent was all about and
everything about it, both from its natural to its people to its structures.
And it just became this compelling story
that I could never have gotten anywhere else. I could have read every book in
(41:07):
the world. And it's, it's not the same thing. I, I
dare. And you all know this because you rangers and leaders and
rangers and stuff. I mean I dare anybody to go to Andersonville and not be
moved. You can read all about Andersonville, but then when you're actually
standing there and you're looking and realizing they shoved 30,000
people inside that little gate with that one little stream, all of a
(41:29):
sudden everything comes back together with you. So it's
just, it's marvelous. The more perfect union parks are what I call
all the social justice parks that are out there, which is quite a few
now tell a wonderful linear story about how
we've tried to meet the test of the Declaration Independence,
the Constitution and Martin Luther King's I have a Dream speech.
(41:51):
I think the three most important documents that are out there,
it's that story that we've been telling ourselves for 250
plus years. And it becomes a real thing when you've actually
visited those places. Well, it is, it is a great book. And I
think we as park leaders are lucky
that Sam fell in love with parks because he. His
(42:14):
background in writing books about theme parks put him in a
position that I feel like no one else could have told this story
in this way. It is a fabulous collection of
what we have as our treasure of parks, our
sacred landscape. So, Sam, I'm so glad that
you wrote this book. I feel like it's a book park ranger should
(42:36):
read. It's a book that perhaps should be in park stores. It gives you
an insight into not only what we have, but just
the van life. Like people who do that, who
spend time traveling from park to park. There's a lot of us.
There are a lot. Well, what's one thing, Sam, that you would want park rangers
to know about van life? Oh, I think that we could be your best
(42:58):
friends because I think we get it. If anybody's going to commit to the van
life, I think we tend to get it. Now, I grant you that there's a
level of self entitlement that exists that's kind of
obnoxious at times. And there's also people who are more about
the surface visuals of, you know, look at me, I'm on top of this
mountain, I'm taking a selfie. But that's only a small number of
(43:20):
the van lifers. Most of us van lifers, it's our homes. I
mean, our homes are where our vans are at. And we more
than anybody else want to protect our homes. We want to protect them from
harm, from misuse, from abuse, because they are our
homes. And we try to leave as small of a footprint as we
possibly can because that's the reason that we live this particular
(43:42):
way. So I think anybody who lives full time on the road tend
to be that sort of. That sort of mindset. And I think that's important. I
think that's one of the reasons a lot of us tend to make good volunteers
because we really appreciate where we're at and the spaces that we're
at and want to learn everything we can about it. Almost everyone
I've met on the road like this is that particular way. And
(44:04):
we love the rangers. As I was joking when there
was the issues, the beginning of the year and everything that was going on,
I had made a comment at one of the parks that I was working at.
I'm saying what we're doing right now is we're basically telling people that
you don't need to love that golden retriever anymore because park
rangers are like golden retrievers. Everybody loves golden
(44:25):
retrievers, and that's why everybody loves park rangers,
because you're like golden retrievers. You represent something that's
very special and delightful and very singular. And
the van lifers, we're the king of the golden retrievers. We like to hang out
with you dogs. Oh, that's good. Well, after seven
years now on this, what's your plan? Are you going to keep living the
(44:48):
van life and keep volunteering at parks? Yeah, I. I love it. I think it's
great. I. I don't know when this is going to get broadcast, but I'm going
to be up at Sequoia this summer working as a campost for a few weeks.
And that was because I worked in the redwoods in the fall, and I figured
if I worked with the largest trees, I want to go with the biggest trees
and I want to be around them. And then Aztec ruins,
(45:08):
as I mentioned earlier, I'm excited about because. Because of the. The whole idea
of being around that particular architecture and that
culture. And then Fort Pulaski is the first Civil War park that I'll
have worked at. But it's mostly about technology because there are only a
few places in the world where you can stand in that spot. And the world
was one thing before and the world was after. So like the Trinity
(45:30):
site in New Mexico was one of those. There was the before it worked
and before the gadget work, then the after the gadget work. Well, Fort
Pulaski is the same thing. It's when warfare completely changed from being
just a. We're going to lob shot puts at you, so we're going to
rifle footballs at you. And all of a sudden that's the beginning
of warfare being very precise. And that's what warfare is completely
(45:52):
nowadays is to try to be very precise. So
that all started with Fort Pulaski. So those kinds of places.
I am looking for a gig for the spring. So if there's anybody that's out
there that's looking for a fine interpretive ranger, I'm free starting
in March, and I will be on the east coast, and I would like to
stay on the east coast for all of 2026 if I can, and then come
(46:13):
back to my homeland here on the west, west of the Mississippi
back in 2027. So I. I put that offer out there for anybody of
any of you fine leaders, if you want a well, dedicated volunteer,
I'm happy to join you. Well, I think that is an offer
east coast parks should jump on. If we have a park leader
that's interested. Sam, how do they get in touch with you? They can get a
(46:36):
hold of me. I will give you all my email address. That's the easiest way
to get a hold of me because I. One of the other things about van
life I've learned is that trying to be on the social networks and media is
very difficult. So just it's G e n N
a w e y gen way my last
name@yahoo.com just write me a letter. Let's write me a note.
If you're looking for somebody who wants to speak about national parks, I
(46:59):
think what I can contribute is the fact that the National Park Service is a
system, it's a curated system of parks, and that people can
understand how that system actually works, whether it's a nature park,
historic park, or one of the recreation parks. And then in which
subcategories within those does this particular park fall?
I'd be delighted to talk to people like that because I would like to see
(47:21):
people start visiting the smaller parks that they normally would bypass because
it's not one of the 63 that they're trying to check off the list. Yeah.
All right, last question. Sam, you studied leadership
so deeply at Universal. At Disney, you've
seen a lot of leaders in parks. So based on what you've
studied, what you've observed, your wonderful career, what
(47:43):
advice do you have for an up and coming park leader who wants to have
an impact? Well, I think that your job is. It's very much
like Walt Disney or Jay Stein from Universal
Studios. Most people don't realize the Universal Studios parks is a guy, one guy
who really got that going. And your rule is to be the
enthusiast is to lead by assisting those who
(48:05):
work for you to try to get them to do the best
possible job they can and to up their game. Walt
Disney was not one for compliments. About the biggest
compliment you would get from him is he would try to get you to do
something and he'll go, that'll work. And anybody who worked for Walt Disney
would been flying on the air when they got that, because that meant that they
(48:26):
were matching what was in his brain. J. Stein from Universal was a little
bit different. He was a movie studio guy and had a tendency to
yell at people. And in his particular case, people would get so
mad that they would ultimately go, I'll show Jay, and they'll do
the best work. They've ever done in their career. I kept hearing that again and
again. But I have found that the best leaders within the National Park Park
(48:48):
Service have been those that do whatever they can to
assist those that are below them to do their best
possible job by getting them the resources if possible, the knowledge if
possible, and certainly the emotional support for the
rangers to go out and do their best job. You've got the advantage of the
fact that everybody that works for you is usually pretty bright and pretty
(49:10):
well educated and knows their stuff. Sometimes they may have
difficulty in communicating to the public. I found that especially with those
that are in the resources side, because that's what you do. Resources. You don't have
to talk to people all the time. So anything you can do to encourage them
and help them to try to find, as I said at the very beginning, that
magic. Everybody you talk to, you're going to be able to see when their
(49:32):
eyes light up and they get it. And that's what you want to do, is
you want to train your staff so that they can get that look. More and
more often, the more often they get that look, the job is really quite rewarding.
Well, Sam, this has been a fabulous talk. And the
next thing you should do is buy sacred landscapes and read it. It
is fantastic. 1 Van Lifer 6
(49:52):
Year 175,000 mile National Park Journey It's.
It's just wonderful. Sam, thank you so much for taking the time to
talk with us today. Oh, it's my pleasure. And really, honestly, when
you invited me and you told me who this audience was going to be, I
was just jumping up and down because it's like, oh, oh. I just. I just
so admire the rangers that this is a chance to give back
(50:15):
to those that have made my life over the last seven years as special
as it has been. Yeah. I should tell you, since Sam said that I sent
him a message and invited him on the show and his response was, yes,
those are my people. That's right. Yeah. I hope to meet
some of you along the way. Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much, Sam. And thank
you for listening to the park Leadership Show.
Welcome to the Park Leader show where we are changing the landscape
of leadership and parks and conservation. I'm your host
Jody Mayberry and this episode our
guest is Sam Gennawey. He is a current
and active volunteer with National Parks. He is
also the Author of Sacred Landscapes 1
(00:24):
Van Lifer's 6 Year Old
175,000 Mile National Park Journey.
Fabulous book. Hello, Sam. I'm so glad you're here. Hello.
I am honored and delighted to be here and talk with this audience because
you guys are my heroes. So this is great. Well, I have to tell
you, I was so excited when you came out with this book. I've
(00:45):
read J. Bangs. I've read Universal versus
Disney, thoroughly enjoyed them. Half the work I do,
if not more, is in that area in parks,
those type of parks. My true love is
natural parks though. So to have someone who is such a good
writer, has such an understanding of themed parks go
(01:08):
and write a book about national parks, I was so excited for it. Sam,
I'm glad you put your talents towards parks
like this. Yeah, this is definitely one of those products that. Definitely one of those
books I had to write. It wasn't the initial intention to write a book about
the national parks, but after living in them for so many
years now, being on the road for seven years, my anniversary is coming up. Seven
(01:30):
years of doing this sort of thing. This is one of those. I just, I
had to do it. I really had to do it. I'm very, very pleased with
the book. Yeah, it is, it is really good. There's, there's so
much in it to get into. I don't think we will get to
everything. We'll get to what we can. And I think
Sam's going to have great stories, great insight if you,
I assume you won't mind this, Sam, because it's where the book
(01:53):
begins, where you, you were going through a rough spell,
depressed. A lot of things weren't going right and that's what led you
to national parks. And initially I wasn't going to
talk about that at all. But the more I thought about it, I thought,
you know, that I'm glad Sam talked about that in
his book because that's an area I don't think
(02:16):
gets discussed enough and doesn't get enough credit on.
People come to parks for recreation, but it does so much more.
It does so much more. People find themselves, people get
inspired, people get out of depression. Do you mind starting there
and talking a little bit about the role parks play
for that? Sam? Yeah, no, no, not at all. Nature Does Redeem. It's
(02:38):
one of my little six findings of what the narratives are for
the National Park Service sites. And if we really always think about it, I mean,
look who founded the organization with Steven Ma. Stephen Mather had his
issues as well. And when he was out in nature, he tended to do pretty
well. And when he kind of got not out of nature is when he had
major emotional issues. There's a whole genre of books, first of all,
(02:59):
I'll start with that of guys who are in their prime. You know,
I'm now 65 years old, and I retired when I was 58 years old.
Then you get to a certain point where. Where you need to have that
shakeup in your life. So, you know, you got John Steinbeck, you got William Heat
Moon there, Hunter S. Thompson. I mean, there's just so many other people that are
out there who have gone through the same sort of struggle that I had, which
(03:21):
was life was not satisfactory. I know I needed to make
a big change. What could that change possibly be? In my
particular case, I had recognized I really like traveling. I really
like going out into parks. I had just come back from Japan, worked
a couple of weeks in Japan with the creative team at Universal Studios
Japan. Just before I left, I thought, I'm going to buy myself a van. I'm
(03:43):
just going to drive around the country. Initially, I was going to just drive around
and do the park to Park Highway Trek that was done in 1920, and
did all the mapping and everything and tried to follow the maps really
closely to try to write a book that would be about me,
just what happened over the last hundred years. But things shifted a little
bit. And then it was then the challenge became, I'm going to go to
(04:05):
every National Park Service site that I can drive my van to. And then for
those that I can't drive my van to, let's say like Governor's island or
Perry's or places that are like that. I do have a scale model of my
van, and I put it in my bag so I can sort of act like
I'm taking my van with me. It was also a good way of saying, no,
I'm not going to go to Guam. I'm not going to go to the Virgin
Islands, I'm not going to go to Hawaii. And allowed me to figure out a
(04:27):
way of postponing going to Alaska for at least the time being, because those
are a whole nother journey. But it was the best, really the best
decision I could have made in my life. I just really Quickly took to it.
I started working in the parks that really had a whole nother
level to the experience as well. I do say that
nature does redeem, and I think that for many of
(04:49):
you that are listening, it's probably one of the reasons that you work
in the parks, because you recognize that being in that environment, it
does something to your heart, does something to your soul, does something to your brain
that no other job, no other place on earth can do for you.
And every day I'm just reminded that that's the case, that
there's something very, very special about our National Park Service system. That's why
(05:11):
I ended up calling the book Sacred Landscapes, because they really are our
collective journey as a community of what we believe
as the most important places to project to the future. We what our
past was and to remind us of who we are as we the people.
It's so good to hear. That's why I like bringing people like you on
the show is when we're in it every day,
(05:34):
especially during the summer months, it can be tough to
keep your eye on. The prize of this is why we do what we
do. And to hear your enthusiasm, your excitement, your
recognition of the work just gets me more excited.
Yeah, there's not a lot of jobs that you can have where it doesn't
take long to figure out that in many cases, you're changing people's lives. You
(05:57):
know, there's not a lot of places that give you that kind of freedom or
that kind of luxury to recognize that people will encounter you
with one set of ideas, and then after they're done, they've
gained a different perspective. And that perspective is generally quite positive.
So it's a rewarding gig. It's kind of why I think most of you all
do this without getting paid all that well and horrendous life choices and
(06:19):
expenses and living conditions and stuff like that. But ultimately,
you're willing to set that aside because you. You see what I call the magic.
And the magic's when apprehension turns into on delight.
And you see it with your visitors. When the visitors come and they're looking at
you and they look troubled or worried or concerned. And then after you've
spoken with them a little bit and you understand what their needs are, they walk
(06:41):
away and they're just completely charmed by the place and very, very
interested in the place. It's one of the reasons why I volunteer at the parks,
because quite honestly, you know, I'm like a lot of guys who live in vans.
I'm a big Introvert don't necessarily have to be around a lot of people, but
if I'm going to be around them for a little bit, I want to try
to make something about their lives a little bit better. And the Park Service has
given me that opportunity. You mentioned on delight.
(07:03):
That's the magic. So often when people think about parks,
they think about the beauty, the natural things that are going on in the
park. From your perspective of
seven years now in parks, staying there
as a visitor, volunteering, what role have you seen
that park rangers play in that awe and delight? Well,
(07:26):
they're the kind of the glue that helps to.
Glue is not the right word. What park rangers do is that the
parks themselves are designed as three dimensional storytelling
environments. And because I've written all these books about the design
of theme parks, I recognize what these different DNA
design ideas are that get people to understand that backstory.
(07:48):
But it's the ranger who elevates that to the next level, where people
can genuinely appreciate what they're seeing and doing, and
also to learn or become aware of what they could see or do
within the parks. We are guides, ultimately, we are
guides to people so that they can get the most out of what their visit
is. And I think that that's really, really important because it's not like the
(08:09):
parks are famous for having reams and reams of
signage. In fact, as I understand it, Harpers Ferry has this rule
on the interpretive signs where if there's a photograph, you can't use more than
35 words to describe what the photograph is. And all the
roads are completely designed differently. And we all wear uniforms
or costumes, as I would like to call them, and we. Everything has a backstory.
(08:31):
It's just like a theme park in that regards. And what ultimately happens is
by removing the visual contradictions of the real world, the
messy vitality of the real world, once you're through the
park's front gate, what ends up happening is it's this
architecture of reassurance and people's
lizard brains can relax a little bit. That's both good and bad.
(08:53):
On the good side is that it allows them to absorb
and accept the stories in a much deeper way than they do
in any other environment, any state park or recreational
areas and stuff like that. Within the National Park Service sites, they can do
that. The downside, of course, is that people's perception of danger
and the wilderness is a bit skewed as well. And people tend to take
(09:15):
more risk than they would rightly do if they were in another environment.
But I think it's better to err on the side of the great
masses and charming them with the parks versus threatening them
with the danger of the park parks. There's enough people who are doing that these
days of talking about don't paint the fuzzy cows and pet the fuzzy cows and
stuff like that. So I've seen some, some stupid things when
(09:38):
I've been a volunteer. So yeah, yeah. And all already
in early in the summer of 2025, there's been two
incidents in Yellowstone of people getting gored by doing dumb
stuff in front of bison, posing for selfies, things like that. It's like never
ending. And I always think about our rangers at Yellowstone that have to
deal with that, knowing that every summer we're going to have to deal with this
(10:01):
again. Visitors showing up from the city don't know any better
and they now we're going to have to deal with this. So you're
right, the fuzzy cow problem continues. But it even goes beyond that too.
I was up at Cedar Breaks on my drive. I worked at Petrified Forest as
part of my winter two jobs and I was driving to Los Angeles and I
stopped off at Cedar Breaks and watched a person collapse because they didn't realize
(10:23):
that they're at almost 11,000ft altitude and there's not as much air
up there. And then for anybody, all of you who've worked at the Grand Canyon.
Oh, I don't need to tell you what the idea between the altitude and
then everybody hiking down the Bright Angel Trail, even at Big
Bend, between the heat and people walking down the Window Trail,
there's a lot of parts of those parks or petrified
(10:46):
forests. Watching one day looking up from the Rainbow Forest
Museum through the giant picture windows there, up at the the
big tree up on the hill there, Old Faithful. And then watching a guy off
the trail and then stuffing his shirt with about 50
pounds of petrified wood and you're kind of like, oh dude, really,
seriously, do you. Don't you realize you just leave it there?
(11:07):
We're looking at you, we know you're there. But you know what? That's only
one person out of tens of thousands. And the rest of them start to
pick up on the idea. You mean I'm walking around a forest with 225 million
year old trees? Really, seriously, that's how old the stuff was. You mean this is.
These things are much older than dinosaurs. And then when they get that, that's
when that awe and delight comes and then they just love the park. They go
(11:30):
crazy. Just Thinking, oh, wow, look at. This is so cool. Once they get over
the fact the trees aren't standing up straight talking about. Walt Disney
World, Lee Cockrell, the retired executive vice president,
he said, walt Disney World is a place where fantasy is
real and reality is fantastic. And I think that applies
to what we do in parks, because, yes,
(11:51):
it's authentic. Everything about a park is real, as real
as it can get. But to so many people, it is so
spectacular, it is so otherworldly. It might as well
be fantasy, because it is that far out there for most people.
And I think it's really easy for us to forget that because we're in
it every day. We. We don't realize how it is
(12:14):
almost like fantasy, that for people that come and visit. Well. And
I'm also becoming a bigger and bigger champion of the smaller parks, too,
because one thing I think we're all starting to realize is that the
63 national parks have become this checklist, a
scorecard, with people just trying to get to the 63 parks,
and they're missing the hundreds of other parks that are out there. And the other
(12:35):
parks are not necessarily. I mean, they're authentic because they're in an
authentic place. But let's face it, Ben's old fort was built in what, 1975,
76, as a reproduction, on the original foundations. The same
thing happened at Grand Portage. If we look at the Smoky Mountains,
the Smoky Mountains didn't look like that when it became the Smoky Mountains National
Park. It was really beaten up, and we let the trees grow, and
(12:57):
then we also cut the trees down where we have turnout so people can go
out and see the vistas. Or the constant debate on do the trees that grow
outside the tunnel in Yosemite, do we let the trees grow, or do
we cut them down so people get that spectacular reveal look to it.
There's a lot of fantasy to the national parks that the national
parks doesn't really ever get into, which is something that I
(13:20):
dive really deep into in sacred landscapes, because
these are orchestrated environments
designed to impart a particular story that the
National Park Service has adopted and wants to tell. And I
used to use the word manipulating the environment. And I've been sort of scolded that
that seems like an unfair word. But the fact is, is that, you
(13:42):
know, we don't put a bunch of signs up in the national parks that tell
you don't do this, don't do that. What we do is we throw a few
logs and bushes on what was a social trail so that people
can't recognize them. So they don't keep destroying the environment because we
want people to feel like they're still in a natural environment. Or we
provide them boardwalks which are going to give them the best possible views at the
(14:04):
easiest convenience for the visitor. Or we've laid out roads, what
I call the one good road, which is really predominant in the Pre
World War II parks, where you've got only one road that takes you
through a sequence of environments and events. And when they want
you to churn out, we provide a churn out area so that people
can have that sort of exclusive natural experience. But
(14:26):
there's no medians on the side of the roads and other places so that we
try to keep people moving. And we also do that by having roads that have
far more twists than are necessary, that have far fewer
gradient changes that are necessary and give what I call the Zen
view. So when you're driving to Mount Rainier, you get a little peek of it
and then the thing churns away and your vehicle then comes back and it gives
(14:48):
you another little peek of it. Same thing at Crater Lake. You give people
little teases to so that the environment has just that much more of a
visual punch to it. And that's just through Brilliant, incredible
road design. Within the parks, or as I like to sort of think of them
from the theme park days, you are in a ride vehicle like you are in
any park, like the Haunted Mansion or It's a Small World. The difference
(15:10):
is that you're driving it, it's your vehicle, and it's on the same road and
it's following the other car that's just a few feet in front of you, just
like it's a ride vehicle. So the world of theme parks and natural
parks kind of cross more than national parks, cross a lot more than most people
think. And I think that's all for the good, quite honestly. That's
a fun conversation for me. I like hearing you say that.
(15:32):
I. I had a park manager, the one who hired me into
parks. He would talk about all of the
deliberate work it takes to make a park
park. Like yes, yes. Yeah. So
sign placement, here's a small example. And I know Sam,
you've seen a lot of things like this. So if you want to keep people
(15:53):
from driving onto a trail, perhaps a boulder
is the right choice. But instead of just placing a boulder, you
would dig a divot and place the boulder in the divot because that
looks more park like than just dropping a boulder at
the trailhead entrance. It's just little things like that, that,
yes, it looks natural, it looks like a park,
(16:16):
but to keep it park like it takes a lot of intervention
on our part. Oh, yeah, definitely. And that's what. When that
realization hit me, I was working in Yellowstone, the Bridge
Bay Campground. And I sort of picked up on this because we had a couple
of bison that lived in the campground with us. And it started making me think,
well, why do people want to pet the bison? And in my world,
(16:37):
as a urban plan and urban planner and an historian, I
couldn't just say that people are stupid because there has to be something more than
that. That's what got me diving into this rabbit hole that I've been in the
last few years with this design thing. And it is.
It's. There's a lot more deliberate thought than certainly the average
visitor has. And the National Park Service has
(16:58):
never, and maybe to its credit, never really dived into it. It's like if you
go to Disney, Disney's always talking about how they design things.
Universal is doing that now as well, of how they design things. The National
Park Service is doing this orchestration, but not
necessarily making it completely obvious to the visitor because
it's just. It's almost. Almost touting themselves too much. I don't
(17:20):
think the park rangers want them to know people, to know that they're doing as
much as they do. They really just want people to enjoy the parks and learn
about the parks. So nobody's really taking credit for doing that. But it's
definitely a hallmark of the National Park Service. That's why I believe that one of
the reasons that Disneyland exists, having written the history book of Disneyland,
is that Walt Disney was a big national park fan. He liked going to these
(17:40):
places, and he picked up a lot of lessons from it. I have the feeling
that to him, his dream imagineer was Mary Coulter. That
Mary Coulter was everything he wanted his Imagine his
design team to be because she created these wonderful themed
buildings that were deep in backstory but also look like
they've been in their locations forever and ever and ever. And so, you
(18:02):
know, I'm sure there's a little bit of that. And also, Yasi done had
obviously done a lot of movies about national parks, and even Disneyland
is designed around the concept of a national park. Certainly Frontierland was.
I want to come back to design in a moment, but since you brought up
Walt Disney. Sam, did you know that Walt Disney was an honorary
park ranger? I understand. Yes, I understand that's the case. He deserves it.
(18:24):
He probably, in his particular Case, he probably dug the hat more than anything else.
He was that kind of guy that he gets to dress up as well, too.
And, you know, and he also had this real fetish for Santa Fe Railroad as
well and followed everything that they were doing from childhood.
And that all seeped into his brain. Yeah, he deserves it. I think he deserves
it. Yellowstone Cubs by our Yellowstone bears movie, by the way. Everybody should see.
(18:48):
Just to see what not to do these days. Yeah. The Park
Ranger association of California actually gave me
copies of the letter from them to Walt, Walt's
letter back to them, and the picture that they took with Walt. Oh, I'm
jealous. That's great. That's great. Little piece of history. Yeah.
Yeah. So back to design for a moment. I think another thing
(19:10):
that natural parks have in common
with theme parks is the use of design to influence
behavior. Instead of. You mentioned national parks
is careful about signs that they put up. Well, instead of a sign telling you
what to do, we just kind of design the behavior we want you
to do. We just put it into the design of whatever the
(19:33):
trail or the visitor center. Yeah. And it's even the same thing with,
like, the roads. So, for instance, take the rim trail at Petrified Forest national
park that goes from one pull out over to the Painted Desert Inn.
Now, they could have just made a trail that was a straight trail that was
just slightly below the road to take people through. But instead it
wanders a little bit. It goes up and down, not too much because it
(19:54):
doesn't want to stress people. But every once in a while, it rewards the
walker by letting them go out and get the most spectacular views they're going to
find along the rim of the Painted Desert off of this trail. And so there's
a reward to that. The same thing happened in North Cascades. The
trails that are there, they kind of wind you around and then they get you.
They offer you these tremendous views. The boardwalks that are at
(20:16):
Yellowstone are wonderful because you don't really have to think about looking
down on, am I going to trip on a rock or something. You just have
to make sure that you're in the width of the boardwalk. And then there's lots
of places where if you want to sit, you can sit and just absorb nature.
Or if you want to lean against a railing, that railing is always at
exactly the right place to give you the best possible view.
(20:38):
The interpretive signs, as all of your listeners know,
you place them in the place where you really want people to absorb that piece
of information, that piece of the story. And then it's not just the one
interpretive sign that matters. It's the sequence of interpretive
signs along a particular road or a trail that add up to the
cumulative story. So that when the viewers are done with their
(21:00):
day, they actually understand what was going on, what was the park all about. When
they go back and they get back to their hotel room or their campsite and
they rip out their unigrid and all of a sudden it explains those
other little details that they didn't really know and it brings it all home for
them. That becomes that aha moment. That becomes that magical moment
moment where they're on delight about the park is just increased,
(21:21):
enhanced immensely. Well, your mention of interpretive signs and
it's part of a collective story. I'm really glad you brought that up. Because
even though park rangers are such a big piece
to what happens, not every visitor gets to meet a park
ranger, not every visitor gets to listen to an interpretive talk.
Therefore we have to rely on our signs to tell
(21:44):
the story that we can't tell because we can't meet everybody,
whether it's park signs or park ranger stories.
I want to get your take on interpretation because you are
so well studied in how universal tells stories
and how Disney tells stories. So when you started
studying interpretation within parks, was there
(22:06):
anything that you learned that surprised you? Yeah, I did.
It was the reliance. Not so much about
facts and impressive facts or this mountain is this
big, this hole is that deep. This crater has been here for
this many thousands of years or millions of years. That petrified tree
is 225 million years old. Which of course a lot of people just can't
(22:29):
comprehend what that means. It's this whole idea of provoking people
on an emotional basis that what, you know, our goal is to
preserve the resources. And we have a lot of visitors who may
be unfamiliar with those resources. So we want them to, to understand
and appreciate those resources to the same extent that we
do so that they also want to protect the resources. And then
(22:51):
they become the self correcting measure. So that when they're out on a
boardwalk and they see somebody walking off the boardwalk and there's no ranger
around, that the people that are the visitors are the ones who
will help self correct and get that person back onto a boardwalk because
it's their resource now, they own it, they take ownership to it.
So it's this finding the emotional clue. I'll give you a good example of this.
(23:14):
I worked at Grand Portage National Monument. It was fabulous. Loved it. It was
the one living history museum I've worked at within the National Park Service. I
loved living on the reservation that was there. An amazing staff.
It was kind of fun dressing up. I will confess, I got to dress up.
I didn't want to do the voyager things. I always felt like I was wearing
pajamas. So I said, I'll do the great Hall. So I got to dress up
(23:35):
like a rich Scottish guy and that sort of thing. And I said to
myself, this is pretty easy. Absolutely nobody who's coming to Grand
Portage for the most part, cares about fur trading. That's just not part
of the discussion that we have these days. In fact, I would well say about
a third of the visitors, they thought they were going to go see a big
waterfall in Minnesota, but that was six miles away in the state park.
(23:56):
So how do you get somebody to want to appreciate what's going on at
Grand Portage? Well, we talk about money
and we talk about wealth and the. The ability to
demonstrate wealth and the fact that today you would own a Ferrari, but then
you had a beaver hat on your head. And that gave you a certain level
of status and how people showed themselves with status through
(24:17):
clothing. And then what's the process of that? And then just how much energy
and intensity was expelled just to try to get beaver so
that we can make beaver hats. And people got that. They really ended up getting
it. And we'd have these discussions about how people show off wells to each other
today and what was the ways that they did it back then. And then
people walk away and they understand, why did this all happen? Why did it happen
(24:39):
right here in this particular place? They get a better appreciation of
it. At what point did. After
so many miles in your van visiting parks, at what
point did you decide to. You wanted to volunteer and
do things like what you just described? So the first two summers
when I started, I. I realized I needed to find someplace to take a little
(25:01):
bit of a break. You know, just rest the van. Cause I was driving a
billion miles the first couple of years. I think everybody who does this does
that. And so I took a job at Zantero. I was working as a campground
host, you know, the front desk of the campground. And then I kept talking to
volunteers that were there, and I thought, oh, that's a cooler gig than working for
Zanterra, so I should look into doing that. So a
(25:22):
couple of years later, I thought it's time to sort of settle down a little
bit and sort of spread out my travels. So the first gig
was just a test gig. And it was Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge
near Death Valley for the pup. The devil's old pupfish live. They live actually
within the National Wildlife Refuge. And it was a good
job because it was like four weeks learn about it and explore this.
(25:43):
And then that got me started to work at a bunch of other different parks.
I liked it. I mean, for a Van Life traveler, being a
volunteer, the VIP program has, of course, great benefits.
I'm not driving as much as I would, so that saves me money. I get
to live on the property for free. Utilities with electrical. Sometimes
I get propane. I get a great collection of hats. Oh, I've got a great
(26:06):
collection of hats. Because that's the one thing that you always give as a
gift as you get a hat. Thankfully, we don't have to return them like we
had at Zanterra. Never thought that was a good thing of having to return a
used hat from somebody from last summer. I thought it was kind of gross. But
thankfully the National Park Service spends enough money on us to buy us hats, but
more so I had access to the library and I had access to anything and
(26:26):
any resources that were available to the rangers so I can
learn the job so I can. I can be a better storyteller. And I
just fell in love with that. And it also gives me the chance to visit
other national parks. So if I'm at Petrified Forest like I was this
last late winter, early spring, I could easily get go
one direction and do Hubble Trading Post, which I love, and Canyon Duchell on one
(26:48):
side, drive the other direction. And I've got Wapakita,
Sunset Crater, Montezuma's Castle. Down south,
the Walnut Canyon. So it's easy drives to each of these
different parks. And so I can explore those parks at depth. So it
gives me a place. When I was at North Cascades, it was all the Washington
parks. Even got to go into the B reactor as part of
(27:10):
the Manhattan Project, which was fabulous and spent a lot of time
in Olympic Park. So I, by doing this, it allows me to slow down
but also give me deeper appreciation of those parks that are within
the region that I'm at. So today I end up picking parks to work
at where there are other parks that are nearby that I really want to explore,
or there's a particular story that I really want to learn
(27:33):
more about. I've like, for instance, I've completely fallen
over heads over heel of the whole concept of the Chaco culture and
its impact on North America. And if it weren't for the Road I'd work at
Chaco Canyon, Chaco culture in an instant. But it would destroy my
van. So I'm going to work at Aztec Ruins which I think is great because
it's everything that can Chaco Canyon in as far as the culture. But
(27:55):
I'm not having to drive on a 22 mile really messed up road. So what
are the stories that I'm going to be able to talk about are always very,
very fascinating. You know, the whole petrified forest, taking people back
in time, North Cascades, how man has
manipulated the environment to serve man with the three dams.
But we've been able to preserve these incredible very, very remote
(28:17):
landscapes. So it's the combination of a corridor that's completely
packed with people and surrounded by public
lands where there's absolutely no people. So that kind of a
story I thought was a very fascinating one there. Death Valley is just all
the things of Death Valley when I was there. So there's that
kind of thing. And then Big Bend was for me a chance to live
(28:40):
extraordinarily remotely, which is both very nerve
wracking and very pleasurable at the same time. But ended up
walking away with the idea. I've seen heaven, I've seen the stars.
You've never really seen the solar system until you've
gone to Big Ben because of the night skies are just so
beyond anything and everything that you could possibly imagine. So. So
(29:02):
those are some of the parks that I've worked at. I really, I am
fascinated, thrilled and delighted by. Over the
last few years the dark sky park movement. It
has opened up a new aspect to parks that
probably wasn't considered enough a couple decades ago. And
now the movement towards getting more parks to be dark
(29:24):
sky parks. You experienced what, how
phenomenal that is. Yeah, yeah. And I also had the opportunity to work in the
redwoods as well. And you get kind of the opposite there because there is no
night sky in the redwoods. The trees are,
the trees are too tall. They cover the entire sky. If there's a little space
in the sky, there's a redwood tree that's aiming to grow up and fill that
(29:45):
little hole. And after two and a half months up in the redwoods,
you start to get creeped out about the fact that you're not connected to the
universe above you. Because the architectural aspect of the
redwood trees, when you're walking amongst the groves and the trees
first branches are about 150ft above you and then you realize they have another
couple hundred feet above that, you get kind of the Opposite effect.
(30:07):
I went to one of the state parks that were up there. When I
was up there and I was out on the prairie, Prairie Creek State park
and. Which is part of the national. The Redwoods national park and state parks.
And because I was working for Humboldt Redwood State park at that
time, they hooked it up so I can go ahead and camp there. And they
put me out on the prairie and I. All night I was feeling this weird
(30:29):
tension and I didn't quite understand it. So I woke up the next morning and
realized this is the first time in six weeks that I actually saw what the
night sky look like. So it's kind of reminded me a lot being back in
a city. So it's those sorts of things. It's the encounters with the
animals. You know, having bison living with you and elk living with you at
Yellowstone, having that little squadron of
(30:49):
pavilions that I jokingly acted like I named
with Big Ben, and having them as my friends, learning everything
I could about beavers because I was around so many dead beavers at Grand
Portage, or roadrunners, because roadrunners were both the Death Valley
and Big Bend in abundance. And being able to teach
visitors about how roadrunners operate and the fact that
(31:11):
they're going to come through your campground and get used to it and this is
what you should do when they do. You know, all of that just sort of
adds up. And it just. It's very special. And you're not going to ever find
this. You're certainly not going to find it in a theme park unless the thing's
mechanical and, you know, doing that kind of air jet sort of thing, you know,
the hydraulics kind of thing. Just living amongst these animals. At times
it can feel like living in a zoo. And that's not a negative in any
(31:33):
sort of way. Well, I think you've probably experienced this by
now, Sam. I think some of the best leaders in
the country are found in parks. Some of the best storytellers
are found in parks. Oh, yeah. Some of the most dedicated people are found in
parks. So you've spent all this time in parks. You've been around so
many park rangers. And this is harder, I know, than telling park
(31:56):
stories because you kind of have to pick people and you've met so many good
ones. But when I talk about the dedication and
leadership of park rangers, the storytelling. Are there
some park rangers that come to mind over your several years of
travel? When I bring that up, yeah. I mean,
there's. There's certainly to me a distinction between two groups of park
(32:17):
rangers, there's the seasonals and there's the full timers. So the
full timers have mostly been my supervisors. So they're, they're great,
they're dedicated. They've decided to live this as a full time
lifestyle. They've been fortunate to be able to get into their various positions and almost
to a person. Everyone that I've ever worked for has
recognized that I have a great sense of curiosity about the park
(32:39):
and they do everything they can to encourage that. So they get
me access to books and the experts and the scientific side
of the park so I can learn about them. So I've been always very impressed
with Anna and Sarah, Petrified Forest and Anna up at
North Cascades and stuff like that. They were absolutely terrific. In
Carl over Grand Portage, he's the guy who one day he saw me wearing my
(33:02):
reading glasses when I was in my regalia and he said, no, no,
no, you can't wear your reading glasses. They're just period
inappropriate. Let me do something for you. So he went away and he came back
and he brought me antique spectacles. That happened to be the same kind of
prescription I had so I could dress up, look the park and also be able
to read the stuff that was in front of me. And then he would always
(33:23):
look to make sure I was never wearing a T shirt because you know, you
didn't wear T shirts in the 1790s. So on the leadership
staff of it, every experience I've had has been really, really quite good. And
I think part of that is because I seem to be somewhat energetic to them
and they want to take advantage of that. And I also really understand
that the full time park rangers respect the volunteers.
(33:43):
They recognize that the parks, if there weren't for the volunteers, the
parks would really, really be struggling. We fill in a lot of the gaps there
and so they want to make sure that we feel welcome. So they're great. The
seasonals have been great because all of you seasonal rangers, you really
are just actors, especially in the interpretive side of things. You're all
basically actors on a stage and you have to audition every year for a new
(34:05):
show to be in and everybody brings their A game to the table.
And I find that they're just, their personalities are such. And generally the fact
that they have experiences working at a variety of parks and they bring it to
it is spectacular. And some of them are really funny, some of them are great
storytellers. I've ran into a few duds, but very, very
rarely because if somebody's going to be only making that much money
(34:28):
and they have to buy their hat and everything and pay their residential fees and
all that kind of stuff. You're doing it for a reason that's beyond just. Well,
you're doing it for an emotional arrangement yourself. And so
they're just. The seasonals have been terrific, and I've been in touch with a
lot of them as we go from park to park. And I hope to run
across some of their paths again. So I'm not going to say any
(34:49):
specific names because it's by far. The experience has always
been much more positive than negative. Even when I've been a camp host, which
I've been a couple of times, the fee rangers, you guys are the
fee rangers. You guys are the people. You're the. The rangers
nobody knows about, but you make everybody's trip that much better.
Because that whole process compared to other
(35:12):
consumer processes is actually pretty seamless and easy,
pretty easy to get a campground and how to utilize the campground and stuff like
that. And they have the ultimate patience of anybody. The law
enforcement rangers I learned very quickly to get to know
because especially as when you're working as a camp host, but even as
interpretive, because even the law enforcement guys are the law
(35:33):
enforcement guys and women are really, really pretty cool too, because
they're not just regular policemen. Their. Their attitude is the right attitude for the
parks. I also do like something that I was told once, I think, for
Death Valley, is to remember that we as volunteers were the
fund rangers, not the gun rangers. So no need
to start to scold visitors, actually be pretty
(35:56):
gentle and turn everything into a learning opportunity. And
visitors generally get it. I mean, in general, they do tend to get it
more often than not. A few times not, but more often than not.
So it's another reason why I like working at it. And I'll conclude with this
on this point. I wrote two books about the Walt Disney Company and the
Walt Disney theme parks and recognized really early on then
(36:18):
that most of the employees, especially the frontline employees working in the
Disney theme parks, they're not there to become rich, because they're never going to become
rich working for the Walt Disney Company in a front line. And I think it's
the same thing with us park rangers is that they
recognize this is not a wealth job. This is a wealth, mental
wealth job. And everybody seems to give it their all. And it's a good
(36:39):
group of people to be with. Their competitiveness is just to try to
service the visitor more and better than they possibly could. Before
and each keep challenging each other to do that. Enthusiasm has
carried us through a wide range of topics while we've been talking
and I barely touched on your wonderful book,
Sam Sacred Landscapes. And I really
(37:02):
like how you did it. It moves through parks at a pretty
fast pace. That's right. Also gives you.
There's no park that you don't learn something about. Even though it moves
through a park fast paced, you learn something new about every park. And I really
enjoyed it. And I. I'll tell you one part that stood out
since I want to talk at least part about the book
(37:25):
and that is the inspiration Parks and Frederick
Law Olmstead. Because I think that
that idea and it touches back to what we talked about, the park
design. Because natural beauty. Yeah, we've got
it. We've got wonderful, wonderful park rangers. The staff
at all parks are great. But I feel like the
(37:47):
under story in a visitor's experience
is park design. And Frederick Law Olmsted played such a big part in
that. So I'm glad that you touched on him. Yeah, well, I mean, as an
urban planner beforehand and then of course, writing about these theme
parks and stuff, if you don't understand Frederick Law Olmsted, you don't understand public
space in America because he's the forerunner of all of that and the
(38:10):
fact that he uses his house and studio as the demonstration garden
so that when you're there, you can apply whatever you've learned there and take it
to whether it's the park in Brooklyn or Central park or the other places like
in Riverside, California that he did. You sort of pick up on these
design trends. My favorite parks, really, quite honestly,
I love the sublime visual parks, you know, Yellowstone and Yosemite and all the parks
(38:31):
that everybody of course loves. But I've become a super huge fan, as I said
earlier, about the smaller parks and especially the historic parks, because
there is just so much, much to learn from each of those
experiences. When you go to. You were talking about the structure of
the book. I was inspired by the Freeman Tilden book from the mid-50s
where he grouped the parks together by type as opposed to by state,
(38:54):
which what almost every other book does. So it's like all the parks
that are volcano parks and each of those parks tell a different story about
the concept of volcanoes or if you look at the fossil parks,
each one of them, it's like a curated museum. They don't
necessarily overlap. Each park represents a different
portion of the prehistory of North America.
(39:15):
And when you add it up cumulatively, you get the entire span of North
America. You get the indigenous parks where you learn what
was life like before European conquest.
Then there's the European conquest parks and then there is the
Manifest Destiny parks which then start to describe
what we ended up doing to the indigenous people in North America.
(39:37):
Something that is becoming, I suppose fairly politically incorrect at
this point in time in a history that's trying to get buried. But
I dare anybody to understand the story of
Sand Creek and then stand at Sand Creek and
not shed a tear and not feel real sad and tragic about
what was happening at that time. Or big hole, the same sort of
(40:00):
thing. Or wondering when you're wandering around Pipestone
that you're walking on a space, looking down
at quarries that people have been mining for the last 700
years or more for this very rare kind of stone that
you saw all over North America. And that connection, you can
feel the history just going through your feet, through your souls, up into
(40:22):
your heart and then right up into your head. Those places have
changed my life. Chaco culture was one where all of a sudden
it's like, wow, 850 to 1100 people for over 300 people years.
Even the United States isn't 300 years old. And that was a culture that
went away. Is that telling us something about the future for us
as well? Who knows all of those? What ended up happening was a
(40:45):
revelation. After visiting 390
parks in a six year span, it became a
revelation of what this continent was all about and
everything about it, both from its natural to its people to its structures.
And it just became this compelling story
that I could never have gotten anywhere else. I could have read every book in
(41:07):
the world. And it's, it's not the same thing. I, I
dare. And you all know this because you rangers and leaders and
rangers and stuff. I mean I dare anybody to go to Andersonville and not be
moved. You can read all about Andersonville, but then when you're actually
standing there and you're looking and realizing they shoved 30,000
people inside that little gate with that one little stream, all of a
(41:29):
sudden everything comes back together with you. So it's
just, it's marvelous. The more perfect union parks are what I call
all the social justice parks that are out there, which is quite a few
now tell a wonderful linear story about how
we've tried to meet the test of the Declaration Independence,
the Constitution and Martin Luther King's I have a Dream speech.
(41:51):
I think the three most important documents that are out there,
it's that story that we've been telling ourselves for 250
plus years. And it becomes a real thing when you've actually
visited those places. Well, it is, it is a great book. And I
think we as park leaders are lucky
that Sam fell in love with parks because he. His
(42:14):
background in writing books about theme parks put him in a
position that I feel like no one else could have told this story
in this way. It is a fabulous collection of
what we have as our treasure of parks, our
sacred landscape. So, Sam, I'm so glad that
you wrote this book. I feel like it's a book park ranger should
(42:36):
read. It's a book that perhaps should be in park stores. It gives you
an insight into not only what we have, but just
the van life. Like people who do that, who
spend time traveling from park to park. There's a lot of us.
There are a lot. Well, what's one thing, Sam, that you would want park rangers
to know about van life? Oh, I think that we could be your best
(42:58):
friends because I think we get it. If anybody's going to commit to the van
life, I think we tend to get it. Now, I grant you that there's a
level of self entitlement that exists that's kind of
obnoxious at times. And there's also people who are more about
the surface visuals of, you know, look at me, I'm on top of this
mountain, I'm taking a selfie. But that's only a small number of
(43:20):
the van lifers. Most of us van lifers, it's our homes. I
mean, our homes are where our vans are at. And we more
than anybody else want to protect our homes. We want to protect them from
harm, from misuse, from abuse, because they are our
homes. And we try to leave as small of a footprint as we
possibly can because that's the reason that we live this particular
(43:42):
way. So I think anybody who lives full time on the road tend
to be that sort of. That sort of mindset. And I think that's important. I
think that's one of the reasons a lot of us tend to make good volunteers
because we really appreciate where we're at and the spaces that we're
at and want to learn everything we can about it. Almost everyone
I've met on the road like this is that particular way. And
(44:04):
we love the rangers. As I was joking when there
was the issues, the beginning of the year and everything that was going on,
I had made a comment at one of the parks that I was working at.
I'm saying what we're doing right now is we're basically telling people that
you don't need to love that golden retriever anymore because park
rangers are like golden retrievers. Everybody loves golden
(44:25):
retrievers, and that's why everybody loves park rangers,
because you're like golden retrievers. You represent something that's
very special and delightful and very singular. And
the van lifers, we're the king of the golden retrievers. We like to hang out
with you dogs. Oh, that's good. Well, after seven
years now on this, what's your plan? Are you going to keep living the
(44:48):
van life and keep volunteering at parks? Yeah, I. I love it. I think it's
great. I. I don't know when this is going to get broadcast, but I'm going
to be up at Sequoia this summer working as a campost for a few weeks.
And that was because I worked in the redwoods in the fall, and I figured
if I worked with the largest trees, I want to go with the biggest trees
and I want to be around them. And then Aztec ruins,
(45:08):
as I mentioned earlier, I'm excited about because. Because of the. The whole idea
of being around that particular architecture and that
culture. And then Fort Pulaski is the first Civil War park that I'll
have worked at. But it's mostly about technology because there are only a
few places in the world where you can stand in that spot. And the world
was one thing before and the world was after. So like the Trinity
(45:30):
site in New Mexico was one of those. There was the before it worked
and before the gadget work, then the after the gadget work. Well, Fort
Pulaski is the same thing. It's when warfare completely changed from being
just a. We're going to lob shot puts at you, so we're going to
rifle footballs at you. And all of a sudden that's the beginning
of warfare being very precise. And that's what warfare is completely
(45:52):
nowadays is to try to be very precise. So
that all started with Fort Pulaski. So those kinds of places.
I am looking for a gig for the spring. So if there's anybody that's out
there that's looking for a fine interpretive ranger, I'm free starting
in March, and I will be on the east coast, and I would like to
stay on the east coast for all of 2026 if I can, and then come
(46:13):
back to my homeland here on the west, west of the Mississippi
back in 2027. So I. I put that offer out there for anybody of
any of you fine leaders, if you want a well, dedicated volunteer,
I'm happy to join you. Well, I think that is an offer
east coast parks should jump on. If we have a park leader
that's interested. Sam, how do they get in touch with you? They can get a
(46:36):
hold of me. I will give you all my email address. That's the easiest way
to get a hold of me because I. One of the other things about van
life I've learned is that trying to be on the social networks and media is
very difficult. So just it's G e n N
a w e y gen way my last
name@yahoo.com just write me a letter. Let's write me a note.
If you're looking for somebody who wants to speak about national parks, I
(46:59):
think what I can contribute is the fact that the National Park Service is a
system, it's a curated system of parks, and that people can
understand how that system actually works, whether it's a nature park,
historic park, or one of the recreation parks. And then in which
subcategories within those does this particular park fall?
I'd be delighted to talk to people like that because I would like to see
(47:21):
people start visiting the smaller parks that they normally would bypass because
it's not one of the 63 that they're trying to check off the list. Yeah.
All right, last question. Sam, you studied leadership
so deeply at Universal. At Disney, you've
seen a lot of leaders in parks. So based on what you've
studied, what you've observed, your wonderful career, what
(47:43):
advice do you have for an up and coming park leader who wants to have
an impact? Well, I think that your job is. It's very much
like Walt Disney or Jay Stein from Universal
Studios. Most people don't realize the Universal Studios parks is a guy, one guy
who really got that going. And your rule is to be the
enthusiast is to lead by assisting those who
(48:05):
work for you to try to get them to do the best
possible job they can and to up their game. Walt
Disney was not one for compliments. About the biggest
compliment you would get from him is he would try to get you to do
something and he'll go, that'll work. And anybody who worked for Walt Disney
would been flying on the air when they got that, because that meant that they
(48:26):
were matching what was in his brain. J. Stein from Universal was a little
bit different. He was a movie studio guy and had a tendency to
yell at people. And in his particular case, people would get so
mad that they would ultimately go, I'll show Jay, and they'll do
the best work. They've ever done in their career. I kept hearing that again and
again. But I have found that the best leaders within the National Park Park
(48:48):
Service have been those that do whatever they can to
assist those that are below them to do their best
possible job by getting them the resources if possible, the knowledge if
possible, and certainly the emotional support for the
rangers to go out and do their best job. You've got the advantage of the
fact that everybody that works for you is usually pretty bright and pretty
(49:10):
well educated and knows their stuff. Sometimes they may have
difficulty in communicating to the public. I found that especially with those
that are in the resources side, because that's what you do. Resources. You don't have
to talk to people all the time. So anything you can do to encourage them
and help them to try to find, as I said at the very beginning, that
magic. Everybody you talk to, you're going to be able to see when their
(49:32):
eyes light up and they get it. And that's what you want to do, is
you want to train your staff so that they can get that look. More and
more often, the more often they get that look, the job is really quite rewarding.
Well, Sam, this has been a fabulous talk. And the
next thing you should do is buy sacred landscapes and read it. It
is fantastic. 1 Van Lifer 6
(49:52):
Year 175,000 mile National Park Journey It's.
It's just wonderful. Sam, thank you so much for taking the time to
talk with us today. Oh, it's my pleasure. And really, honestly, when
you invited me and you told me who this audience was going to be, I
was just jumping up and down because it's like, oh, oh. I just. I just
so admire the rangers that this is a chance to give back
(50:15):
to those that have made my life over the last seven years as special
as it has been. Yeah. I should tell you, since Sam said that I sent
him a message and invited him on the show and his response was, yes,
those are my people. That's right. Yeah. I hope to meet
some of you along the way. Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much, Sam. And thank
you for listening to the park Leadership Show.
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