Early, during my first season at Zion, I came to the exhilarating realization that I had found a respectable way of fulfilling my nomadic childhood fantasies. I could be a wandering hobo experiencing the freedom of the open road for at least part of the year, while also having the opportunity to live – for five-to-eight month periods – in some of the most splendid reaches of the American outback. Being a seasonal would suit my temperament and desired life-style quite well.

In every national park there are two categories of park employee: “permanent” and “seasonal.” The permanent staff includes many exceptional people but is, for the most part, a different population. They tend to be a little older and have different concerns. At the time, they appeared to me to be more in tune with the “realities” of modern American life – at least more in tune than I personally wanted to be. While the seasonals were unattached, most permanents had spouses and children and, therefore, felt the need to be more settled. With stable careers to worry about they had to be more concerned with the opinions and judgments of park superintendents, divisional chiefs and others higher up on the bureaucratic food chain. We seasonals also had to be conscious of such things, but somehow these concerns seemed less weighty knowing that we would be able to drift next season to a new park should the need arise. I suppose some might allege a desire for prolonging adolescence, but at the time I thought that being a seasonal provided me with a unique opportunity to spend a period of my life living a freer life-style, more Thoreauean in its perspective and less tethered to corporate or bureaucratic conformities. I had found a professional place where I wished to reside for a while.

At the end of my first season at Zion, a friend appeared on his way to San Francisco. Tim Darbe was on a circuit selling ski care products at trade shows around the country and his arrival could not have been more timely. I was about to be out of work and was considering what exactly my options were for the coming winter. Tim was traveling with a friend, Lynn Van Dyne, and their suggestion that I joined them seemed like a good idea. The park service seasonal workforce becomes greatly constricted as the “summer parks” lay off a significant portion of their staffs during the fall. There is then a fiercely competitive scramble for the seasonal jobs available in the far fewer “winter parks.” In later years, having put my time in and thereby having increased my score in the civil service system, I was able to acquire winter positions at such locations as Death Valley National Park and Lake Mead National Recreation Area. But with just one season under my belt, I knew my chances for the coming winter were scanty at best.