Dream job

Has anyone ever asked you what you wanted to be when you were young?

I grew up wanting to be a park ranger for the U.S. National Park Service. I was a Jr. Park Ranger at Rocky Mountain National Park for three years, once with my girl scout troop and twice on other trips. My family grew up camping, and I can't wait to take my family on similar trips. Aaron and I have been camping together twice, once as a part of a whitewater rafting trip with his family, where we slept on the river for two or three nights. I had previously been rafting with the company we went with, and my second trip was as memorable as the first. However, my first rafting trip was just a day trip and we spent three days following backpacking through RMNP. I was in sixth grade at the time and carried a pack that was probably 50-60 lbs.- you can't imagine how difficult that was. But I was just as stubborn then as I am now, so I carried that huge bag across the continental divide with pleasure.

The second time Aaron and I went camping together, we went with our friends Mike and Tia. We went to RMNP in October, when the aspens were the colors of wildfire. It was a beautiful experience, and I knew that I could marry AC because he liked the outdoors, even if he hadn't spent much time camping as a kid.

Anyway, being a park ranger...

The national parks have always inspired me. Since I was a little girl picking weeds from the stream side and putting them at our campsite, I found my renewal in these places. Here I can push myself and become a part of something bigger than anyone. My dream job would be to work in or for one of these national treasures. I am passionate about conserving these places for my children's children. I get easily fed up with people who talk about "putting people before nature," meaning they don't think conservation is worthy because it doesn't "give" anything the way raping the land does (for a very limited time. See "petrol"). Very often the harder, more expensive thing to do is the right thing to do. And it often has very little to do with putting nature above people, but putting what is right above what's easy and a quick solution. We are a society made to believe that instant gratification is the best sort of gratification, and exploitation of our very limited resources is fine because that's what the resources are there for. This sickens me. I hate this mentality. I have a hard time being around people who subscribe to it because it is so lazy. And it's gutless. To stop trying to improve the way we live and interact with our environment, to stop searching for solutions that bring us to our renewal, is loathsome. And I believe it is against the restoration of all things Christians confess. I want to be an active participant in this restoration, and I believe that ultimately that is my calling in life.

I have collected essays and articles for years about the parks system and nature in general, and I think over the next few days I'm going to post them. For me it is inspirational to remember that the God of all things lives and breathes in us, and that it is our charge to mirror how we take care of the people, and things, around us in the image of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

So I look forward to sharing some of these things with you that are so important to me.