Three weeks later, the park celebrated its annual Visitors Day. Rangers, volunteers, and local officials gathered near the entrance as I walked toward them, carrying a certification card along with a letter from the state parks department’s own safety office, one I’d requested after calling them, curious whether “a more professional image” was actually compatible with how the park’s visitor safety program was supposed to be staffed.
It wasn’t, not fully. State parks with backcountry trail systems like ours are required, under the department’s own safety standards, to maintain a minimum number of wilderness first-responder certified staff on-site during operating hours, specifically because lost or injured hikers need someone qualified nearby, not just someone friendly at a welcome desk. My certification, renewed every two years for over two decades, had been one of exactly two the park currently had on file. Removing me dropped the park below its required minimum.
The safety office’s letter was plain enough to hand to the new director at the entrance.
“Parks with designated backcountry trail systems must maintain a minimum of two wilderness first-responder certified staff members on duty during all operating hours. Failure to maintain this minimum may result in restricted trail access designations pending compliance.”
Twenty-two summers of pointing families toward the safest trails and helping lost children find their parents hadn’t just been friendly customer service. It had been the specific qualification keeping certain trails open to the public at all, a fact the new director hadn’t thought to check before deciding my “professional image” wasn’t a good fit for wherever he imagined the park was headed.
He read the letter at Visitors Day, in front of the rangers and local officials who’d gathered for what was supposed to be a celebratory morning, and understood, fairly quickly, that closing off half the trail system to comply with a staffing shortfall was not the visitor experience anyone wanted to explain to the families arriving that day.
He asked me, right there, whether I’d be willing to come back, and I told him I would, on the condition that we actually talk about what “professional” means at a park like this one — competent, certified, and capable of handling an actual emergency, not just a certain look at the front desk.
I still hand out maps most mornings, vest and all, same trails, same wind through the pine trees. Twenty-two years taught me that helping a scared, lost eight-year-old find her parents doesn’t always look impressive on a brochure. Turns out it’s also the exact kind of qualification a park literally cannot legally operate its trails without.