"Listen, boss, I learned one thing at Harvard. There's one thing wrong with always fighting for freedom, and justice, and decency. And so forth."
Burns looks up at the blazing sky. "Only one thing? What's that?"
"You almost always lose."
-Good News by Edward Abbey (p. 222, Sam & Jack Burns)
Today was an interesting day. Or shall I say, today's meeting resulted in an interesting feeling. It furthered the love-hate relationship I have with Headquarters. I like the folks that work there, I like schmoozing with them, I like seeing the ones with whom I am friends; but I often feel this tension. Towards me? It shouldn't be, but I feel some sort of tightness, like I am way too happy for them. I feel like when I walk in I will learn cool, new exciting things, and that I will enjoy the meetings as much as I enjoyed the DOC bureaucratic meetings. And the ones at HQ are okay--the Wilderness portion of today's was particularly good--but I don't feel nearly as much like I am fighting the good fight. I feel like I should walk in, enthused by my contact with the visitor, and perhaps they could be invigorated by that, but alas. They're all nice people, they just.....need to get outside more often. ALL OF THEM!
And back to the Wilderness portion of today's monthly all-staff meeting. It was great to get a thorough refresher of the history of wilderness things. The wild started off scary, a place that challenged the original settlers and a place that needed to be wrestled and harnessed. And then somewhere in there, it became a place of beauty, and then a place that distinguished America from Europe as a vast landscape including this unique, untrammeled country. And then somewhere in there, it because a place to maintain rather than tame, and then eventually a place to preserve and protect in addition to maintaining. And in that same time, Teddy Roosevelt made huge initial strides in protecting the type of places that rejuvenated him, and encouraged others to be rejuvenated by these places as well. How did our land go from a place that challenged us everyday to survive, to a place that challenges to express itself everyday that we live on it, and where we must ask, "is this acre of land special enough to be able to live on its own as it always has?"
And I started to wonder, is the Park Service really where I want to be?
I love the mission, the Organic Act of 1916, and everything that drives all employees in the back of their minds whether they like it or not. I love the community. I love the high density of citizens concerned about the land and concerned about getting other folks to love the landscape even for a brief moment. However, could I make a similar impact working for the Arizona Wilderness Coalition? The Wilderness Society? The Sierra Club? The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance? Heck, a solar or wind power company? Could I have more freedom, more positive political surroundings, and a greater likelihood of fulfilling those dreams that may be more grandiose than those I might propose to NPS? Or is it just as important to be willing to go "into the belly of the beast"? And is it not still a beast to work for something like a Wilderness advocacy group in Arizona or Utah? So why am I so fixated on the Park Service? Especially if, as I lose some of my bright-eyed-bushy-tailed-ness, it's going to start feeling like it does when I walk into Headquarters.
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1 comment:
I think in any company/industry/whatever you will always find people who have spent too much of their lives behind a desk... just don't become one of them!
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