Will I Be A Seasonal Employee My Whole Life?

New Mexico – 1977

There’s an excellent art program at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. After all, New Mexico was a home of Georgia O’Keefe, the Taos art community based around Mabel Luhan Dodge, and a canvas for landscape photographers such as Ansel Adams and Eliot Porter.

Missy applied for admission and was accepted. While she went back to college, I hired on again with the Cleveland National Forest as a late season fire fighter. At first I was assigned to the El Cariso Hotshot crew. The crew foreman and I didn’t hit it off well right from the beginning. I was making more money than him. I had a beard and he wanted me to shave it off even though it wasn’t required to be clean shaven.

When the forest supervisor’s office heard I resigned from the hot shot crew, I was immediately rehired and sent to Palomar Mountain with a tanker crew. A forester at the supervisor’s office later told me he was sorry I got hooked up with El Cariso.

“They’ve been in hot water since this spring. Earlier they got into a fight with a tanker crew,” he said. “Then some of the members later slashed tires on the tanker truck. They’ve been given every crappy job all this season.”

I enjoyed my time at Palomar Mountain. We were literally next door to the Palomar Observatory. It was a beautiful location in the pines, on top the mountain, overlooking San Diego. A Class B movie was filmed using our fire station briefly. It was a horrible science fiction horror movie, with Jack Elam was in it, called “Creature From Black Lake”. But they didn’t use any of us as extras.

Early in 1977, I went back to Albuquerque. While Missy was taking art classes, I was submitting queries to magazines in an attempt to sell some of my photos and/or stories. I also was sending off applications trying to get on full time with the Forest Service.

That winter/spring was a restless time for me. I knew I could go back to my seasonal job in the Wheeler Peak Wilderness, as I had a starting date in early April. But here I was with a masters degree going into my ninth year as a seasonal employee. I wanted more. I wanted to feel like I did something that mattered. Being on unemployment insurance, I continually had to seek out and apply for jobs and record all my attempts.

My low point came when I received an “interest form” from the Forest Service in Joseph, Oregon on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. It asked if I wanted to be considered for a GS-04 campground caretaker. Although the job would be for about eight months of the year it was considered a permanent position. It would get me established both with medical and retirement benefits and the ability to apply for future jobs.

Three weeks later, without even an interview, I received a form letter stating they had selected someone else for the job. I felt lower than low. What did I have to do to get on full time?

I met with a personnel officer at the Regional Office of the Forest Service in Albuquerque. He told me I had great experience. But he said that even though I had a masters degree, I needed to go back to college.

“You need to have at least twenty-four semester hours in a forestry major,” he told me. “Without that, we can’t hire you.”

So even though the leading researchers for the Forest Service in the field of wilderness management had their degrees in geography, I was told I could not he hired unless I took the forestry classes. And then the personnel officer said something that I would always remember.

“We could care less about seasonals,” he said.”We use them to do certain jobs, but we have no concern for them.”

Now I truly felt even lower and depressed.

I did partially succeed in getting published. I wrote a short filler for “Mountain Gazette” on desert fever. My article and photos were published in “Four Wheeler” about a four wheel drive trip into Savage Gulf, Tennessee. And I met with the editor of “New Mexico magazine” who published my photos of the Wheeler Peak Wilderness. I also wrote an article about the Sierra Ladrones near Socorro, New Mexico which “Desert Magazine” published along with my black and white photos.

It was the end of March and I was packed, ready to head back to the Quest Ranger Station. I had just returned from downhill skiing at the Sandia Ski area and lay down on the bed for a nap. The phone rang. I was halfway between sleeping and being awake in that uncomfortable zone of trying to function coherently.

All of a sudden my adrenaline kicked in. I was being interviewed for a full-time job as an outdoor recreation planner for the Bureau of Land Management in Riverside, California. I do not remember much of that interview. I do remember asking when a selection would be made. I told the interviewer that all my boxes were packed and I was leaving that coming weekend to return to my seasonal Forest Service job starting Monday.

He promised he would get back to me by Friday before I had to leave.

I remember that after the call ended I probably sounded out of it. I thought back to some of my answers to his questions, thinking now of much better replies. Now, all I could do was wait for his call on Friday.

Friday came and I stayed in the house throughout the entire day. I didn’t want to miss that call. The morning came and went. No call. Lunch came and went. No call. Five o’clock came. No call.

In my doziness during the interview, I not only didn’t remember the name of the interviewer, but I didn’t write down his name or phone number. It was still four o’clock in California, so I called information and got the telephone number for the BLM office in Riverside.

I dialed and got the receptionist. How stupid I felt calling to talk to whomever had interviewed me, yet I didn’t know his name. She read off some of the possible names, but none sounded familiar. She checked a couple of employees, but they were all out of the office. I thanked her and hung up.

I told myself that they probably offered the job to someone else and had given them a few days to decide. It looked like I’d be a full-time seasonal.

That Sunday I loaded my boxes into my Landcruiser, said goodbye to Missy and Smokii, and I headed north to Questa. At least I was going back to a job where I would be outdoors and hiking and with people I liked.

Monday morning I greeted my friends and co-workers from the season before. It was about ten o’clock when my boss, Tom Tarleton, recreation technician, came out to the warehouse. He told me I had a phone call and could take it in his office.

I picked up the phone. John Heywood, district outdoor recreation planner for the BLM Riverside District Office was on the line. He was the one whose name I couldn’t remember. John apologized for not calling on Friday as promised. He unexpectedly had to fly to Sacramento, the BLM State Office, and hadn’t returned until late that evening.

With that out of the way, John asked, “So how soon can you start?”

I was taken totally by surprise. First, I’d been under the impression that someone else had been offered the job. And now I was being offered a full-time position, not as a GS-04 campground caretaker, but a GS-09 outdoor recreation planner in a professional series.

This time I immediately wrote down John’s name and phone number.

“Since I’m already here, could I have at least two weeks?” I asked.

John laughed and said of course I could. I accepted the job.

I walked outside and George Edwards, the district ranger, Robert Runnels, the forester/range conservationist, Tom Tarleton, Lupita, the secretary (before they were labeled administrative assistants), and all the seasonal employees were all standing there smiling. They knew I’d been offered a job.

I gave them the news that I’d be working for the BLM as an outdoor recreation planner. Then Tom, who was a GS-05, asked me what grade I was starting out.

“A GS-09,” I said.

There was dead silence. Then everyone started clapping and cheering and congratulating me. I felt like I’d just won a lottery.

Right after lunch I received another phone call. A National Park Service ranger from a civil war battlefield national monument offered me a job. It would be a full-time permanent position as an interpretive ranger at the GS-05 level. I thanked him but told him I’d just accepted a job with the Bureau of Land Management.

He paused then asked, “What grade are they hiring you at?”

I told him, “A GS-09”.

There was a much longer pause. “Do you know if they’re hiring more people?”

I called Missy and then I called my parents. Once again my life took a turnaround. I was getting ready to start my thirty-two year professional career with the Bureau of Land Management.

At the time I had no idea of the incredible journey I was about to begin. Nor could I foresee all the wonderful directions both my career and life were to take and the changes that would occur. Of course sadness would also play a part.