Just before 6:00 p.m. a guide and his clients were fishing along the Yetna River when a wall of cumulus clouds approached from the south. First came the winds, followed by the heaviest rains the Alaskan guide had ever observed. This freak storm moved quickly as it proceeded north, up the Yetna drainage toward the saw-toothed peaks of the Alaska Range.
31
THE RANGER’S BURDEN
In November 1998 Chris Fors left the Grand Canyon to attend the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia. He was assigned to an office in Palm Springs, California. Although the bureau dropped plenty of case files on Chris’s desk, his workday passed in slow motion compared to the pace he had maintained as a park ranger. Also the NPS set ranger salaries under a unique pay scale. Chris felt a twinge of pity for his ranger friends each time he deposited one of the plump paychecks he received from the Justice Department. The former ranger both missed and didn’t miss living and working in a big park. For example, on a weekend trip to nearby Joshua Tree, the scenery recharged Chris’s love for the outdoors—until he was chased out of the campground by a deranged man wielding flaming sticks.
Each day, to burn up a few minutes of desk time, Chris sat at his computer and read the “NPS Morning Report.” This agency-wide memorandum announced the previous day’s incidents and other important events involving parks and park rangers. Some of these reports reminded the FBI agent of his former colleagues and the camaraderie they once shared. Other incidents were so over-the-top, Chris laughed out loud at the absurdity. And there were a tragic few that depressed him, like the one he read on the morning of June 20, 2000.
Denali NP (AK)—Search for Missing Plane, NPS Seasonal/VIPs aboard.
A Hudson Air Service Cessna 185 with an NPS ranger, two NPS volunteers, and the pilot on board was reported overdue yesterday evening and is feared down. Staff at a nearby lodge reported that there were four inches of hail on the ground and heavy thunderstorms with severe downdrafts in the area at the time of the pilot’s last radio transmission. The search is continuing, weather permitting. The outlook is for continued poor weather through Thursday. All three NPS employees had portable radios with them. No ELT signal has been reported and no radio contact has been made.
No Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) signal had been reported. No radio contact had been made. A park ranger knew too well what that meant, or at least implied. Chris turned to his partner, another FBI agent sitting at a desk nearby, and said, “I think I know the ranger who was on that plane.”
* * *
That same morning Brittney Ruland arrived at the Grand Canyon Backcountry Reservation Office and handed out permits to backpackers trekking into the Grand Canyon. That summer she had issued a permit to a guy who ended up dying on the trail. This upset her. Although she didn’t do anything wrong, the ranger felt responsible. Maybe, if she could have foreseen the future, if she had refused to give that man a permit, instead of hiking into the canyon when it was 108 degrees, he would have gone to Las Vegas.
At the first lull in her workday, Brittney checked her e-mail. One of the messages in her inbox was the daily “National Park Service Morning Report.” The first entry was not a pleasant one: “Great Smoky Mountains NP—Follow-up on Fatal Bear Mauling” was the title.
Brittney shuddered. It reminded her of the time she and Cale had ventured into the Alaska bush in search of a grizzly. She scrolled down to the second entry. Reading the words, she began to hyperventilate. Then she started crying. Her coworkers did their best to comfort her. “They’ll find him soon,” they said. “He’s going to be fine.” A few hours later, ranger Bryan Wisher stopped by to see her. Eternally optimistic, Bryan loved life. If there were reason to hope, she would see it in the face of this ranger. Brittney searched Bryan’s eyes and immediately knew all those Pollyannas patting her on the back were full of shit. Everything was not going to be okay.
* * *
Sitting in front of a computer in the basement of the Yosemite Jail, Mary Litell Hinson typed her portion of yet another fatality report. “Yesterday afternoon a thirty-four-year-old woman disregarded the warning signs and hiked off-trail until she slid down a granite slab into the Merced River above Vernal Falls. An hour and a half later, park rangers pulled the woman out of the Emerald Pool, initiated CPR, and flew her back down to the valley, where she was pronounced dead at the Yosemite Medical Clinic.”
“Hey,” another ranger interrupted Mary from her paperwork, “did you read the morning report?”
“No,” Mary said. She had been too busy.
“A plane went down in Denali Park. A ranger was on it.”
Mary got a real bad feeling that she knew exactly who was on that airplane, and the first person she wanted to call was her old boss. Andy, she hoped, would tell her this was going to have a happy ending.
Around noon, Kent Delbon was on duty when he drove out to my workplace, the Grand Canyon Airport. I assumed that my fiancé was surprising me with a lunch date, until I recognized the stiff jaw and evasive eye contact. At that moment this ranger wasn’t the love of my life: He was the man in uniform who had come to deliver bad news.
At 4:15 p.m. that afternoon, a Civil Air Patrol plane spotted the wreckage of the Hudson Air Service Cessna 185 near the confluence of the Yetna and the Lacuna Glaciers. An Alaska State Trooper helicopter crew confirmed that there were no survivors. When the news reached the Talkeetna Ranger Station, ranger Kevin Moore insisted that he be the one to recover the bodies. All of them, but especially Cale. Moore felt it was his responsibility, his duty, to fly out there, pull the body of his friend out of the blueberry bushes, and respectfully secure it in a rubber bag.
District Ranger Darryl Miller disagreed. He had recovered the bodies of friends before—many years ago, when he did two tours as a marine in Vietnam. In theory “bringing in your buddy” sounds like the last, most valiant favor one can do for a friend. In reality the experience had given Miller mental images he could never erase. He’d rather remember how his friends looked when they were alive.
The two rangers went back and forth on the issue of who would recover the bodies before the district ranger pulled rank. It was settled; rescuers from another agency would be the ones to do the recovery. At the time, Miller felt his decision had angered the younger ranger.
Four years later, when ranger Kevin Moore was asked how he now felt about the district ranger’s call, he paused long enough that I worried he wasn’t going to answer my question, then he said, “It probably was a good decision.”
* * *
Denali had delivered her indifference with a cold and monstrous hand, but days after the crash the park was a landscape photographer’s mistress. Pink and purple flowers exploded from absurdly green meadows. Snow-dusted ridges pointed to impossibly blue skies. Braids of silver sunlight glittered in milky waters flowing over river-polished stones. Yet these fabulous views provided little comfort to ranger Mark Motsko.
Motsko’s task was a solemn one: Drive out to each ranger station, inform the staff, and bring the flags down to half-mast. Miles of rocky, washboarded road stretched between each ranger station, making for a long day. Then, before he could lower the last and most depressing flag—the one flying over the Wonder Lake Ranger Station—a superior gave Motsko another sad assignment.
Rushing to catch his flight, Motsko packed his dress uniform in a suitcase along with a change of clothes. He grabbed his winter hat because the winter hat, which was made of felt, seemed more formal than the summer hat, which was made of straw. At the airport another Park Service employee, an administrator from the regional office, greeted Motsko. She handed him a plastic bag that looked like a hotel laundry bag. Inside the bag was a gray box that looked like a shoebox. The contents of the box were heavier than Motsko expected. He put the box in his backpack and hefted the weight of the pack to his back. This is weird, Motsko thought, but then he decided
it was exactly what a park ranger would prefer—to be carried home in a backpack.
At the security checkpoint, Motsko placed his green backpack on the conveyer belt. As the pack rolled through the X-ray machine, the security folks became alarmed. “What’s this?” they asked.
“It’s my friend,” Motsko said.
On the flight Motsko had lots of time to think about lots of things. He and his wife were not getting along too well. They had separated a year ago. This summer had been a hard one for Motsko, as the one before had been. Last year, on one of the roughest days, the summer ranger at Wonder Lake had seen the trouble in his supervisor’s face. Cale gave Motsko a warm hug. “It’s going to be okay, Mark,” he said. “You have to trust life.”
Summer storms caused several delays. Flights were canceled and rerouted. At one point, afraid he wouldn’t catch a connecting flight, Motsko trotted through the crowds, the green pack with the heavy shoebox bouncing on his back. By the time he paid for the rental car, Motsko had driven hundreds of miles, flown on three planes, and had been awake for thirty-five hours.
A three-hour drive from the airport brought him to a well-maintained house. Motsko pulled into the driveway and exhaled in preparation. Carol Shaffer came from the green yard behind the house and walked out to the car. She asked where her child was. Motsko guided her to the trunk, lifted the lid, and pointed to the box inside his backpack. The ranger’s mother laid her hand on the cardboard. “Do you mind,” she said, “if I have a few moments alone?”
In Pennsylvania, Cale’s funeral service was standing room only. Green-and-gray uniforms crowded the small church along with the casual clothes worn by lovers of the outdoors and the stoic black worn by the Shaffers’ Amish friends and neighbors. Twenty or so people in ranger uniforms were seated in a position of prominence to the side of the stage. We didn’t recognize any of their faces. We didn’t know any of their names. We doubted any of them had ever met the ranger inside the engraved wooden box sitting on the pedestal in front of the podium. We were told they were high-level people in the agency and that most of them had come from Washington, D.C.
To us they looked soft, sallow, and doughy as they sat above us, tieless and wearing short sleeves. Their uniforms were a sore spot. It was June—the season for the more casual and cool short-sleeved shirts and straw hats—but we felt the occasion called for the formality expressed by our winter uniforms with the long sleeves, ties, and felt hats. Two days earlier there had been “a discussion” between Washington and the supervisory rangers in the field. We had to appear as a unified agency. As such things are typically handled, a memo from the D.C. office settled the debate. All NPS employees attending the funeral would wear their short-sleeved summer uniforms.
We defied them of course. It seemed important at the time. It was certainly symbolic of the state of things. The side stage filled with upper level managers, their pale arms sticking out of their gray shirts. While our sun-stamped faces, forest-green ties, and long sleeves were scattered among the civilians on the benches below.
Years later I realized our grievances were petty and pointless. And it was painful to learn that some of the people who had known the ranger since childhood resented the way the green and gray swooped in and practically took over the whole affair. The NPS had crowded Cale’s memorial with badges, flags, and ranger stories. As if the government owned the ranger. As if the ranger had no life, no experiences, no friends before he joined the National Park Service.
* * *
The day I returned to the Grand Canyon, I received a postcard from the dead. Cale had mailed many cards, gifts, and letters to his friends and family the day before the crash. On the front of the card he chose for me, above a photograph of a sea otter, were the words, “You otter be here!” The postcard brought me to the floor, sobbing. My actions had repercussions far beyond their intent. I had abandoned my friends and colleagues for an easier life, and now one of them was dead. If I had stayed on as a district ranger, I would have hired Cale into that permanent full-time-with-benefits job he wanted at the Grand Canyon. If the Sipapu had not unsettled me, I would have joined him on that fatal flight to Kahiltna Glacier. You otter be there.
I may have been a decent park ranger, but I was never a great one like Cale Shaffer. My courage was always a bit shaky. Although my work ethic seemed boundless, my compassion fatigued. I had a smart mouth; but when it came to office politics, I played the fool. I drank too much tequila and picked too many fights. I lost my patience. I lost my temper. I lost my faith. If there are people who can be park rangers in big parks and come out of it unscathed, I’m not one of them.
32
THE LAST CALL
The Shaffer family brought Cale’s ashes to the Grand Canyon. Bryan Wisher guided them to the hiker bridge spanning the Colorado River, where they tossed half of the ashes into the jade water. Earlier that morning, Cale’s father had thrown a fragile box containing more of Cale’s ashes over the rim at Yaki Point. That afternoon a large group of park employees gathered at the same overlook to witness the ranger’s “last call.”
When we heard the helicopters coming, we turned to face the canyon. The uniformed rangers turned up the volume on their radios, and the patrol cars and fire trucks played the transmission over their loud speakers. “Calling Five-Four-Nine Shaffer” said a steady-voiced dispatcher. Moments later, three rescue helicopters buzzed over our heads and out into the sky in front of us. Immediately, one of them peeled out of the formation and descended straight for the heart of the Grand Canyon as the dispatcher said, “Ranger Five-Four-Nine ... Good luck on your next mission.” We watched the rescue helicopter fly deeper and deeper into the canyon until it disappeared.
As the crowd began to disperse, someone pointed out a dark silhouette in the pale blue sky. The large wingspan made the identification impossible to refute. The bird soaring above this ceremony was a California condor.
A few years earlier, biologists had rescued this species from the brink of extinction by breeding more condors out of only twenty-five remaining birds. Eventually there were enough condors to release some of the birds into the wild. The Colorado Plateau, a desert escarpment hundreds of miles from the Grand Canyon, was one location chosen. Wildlife biologists expected the condors to repopulate the wilder, more remote terrain north of the park. Instead an errant few selected a more populated area for their new home—the cliffs around the bustling South Rim of the Grand Canyon. To the chagrin of biologists and the delight of tourists, this camera-friendly flock continues to make frequent public appearances.
Perhaps some saw the condor’s presence at Cale’s memorial service as an inappropriate or even morbid event. California condors are greasy, homely birds—carrion feeders with supernaturally keen eyesight that scan the landscape for hints of death. Yet this ceremony drew a crowd capable of appreciating the condor’s well-timed arrival. We had fallen in love with these awkward creatures that chose our company in the midst of vast wilderness. And they had come bearing gifts, inspiring us by their improbable existence, showing us that a once-doomed species can catch a lift on thermal air currents rising above a ranger’s ashes.
EPILOGUE
Death is not a merciful conclusion but a border crossing into a new land that could be more beautiful and majestic than the tallest mansion. Faith, courage, and hope are the characteristics that create happiness. They will stand as remembered monuments for all those left around the bed, and they are the qualities I will strive to obtain.
—From the journal of Cale Shaffer, dated September 7, 1992, written when he was eighteen years old
* * *
The day Cale died, Bryan Wisher’s wife, Kim Besom, learned that she was pregnant. The couple named their son for their favorite ranger. I call him “little Cale.” The Wisher family moved to Flagstaff, Arizona, after Bryan retired from the NPS.
To honor their son’s commitment to helping others enjoy the outdoors, Ron and Carol Shaffer donated funds to create the Cale Shaffer Memorial Scholarship for students studying Outdoor Recreation at Lock Haven University.
Although she had seen mountain tragedies during her time on Denali, the death of Cale and the others on that Cessna changed things for Annie Duquette. After the summer of 2000, she “retired” as the base camp manager on Kahiltna Glacier.
In 2004 the Apache County youth counselor, David Line Denali, obtained his PhD. The title of Denali’s thesis dissertation was “The Impact of Medical Training on the Self-Concept of Young Adults.”
Brittney Ruland remained single for several years. Eventually she fell in love with another park ranger and later married him. She left her job with the NPS to raise their two young children.
Keith Lober became Yosemite’s Emergency Services manager. In 2008 he appeared impressively composed in a Discovery Channel documentary entitled “Dangerous Season: Yosemite Search and Rescue.” His colleagues tell me that although Sheriff Lobo has mellowed some over the years, he is still “quite mad.”
Former newbie Mike Archer is all grown up now. In 2008 he became the chief ranger of the Grand Canyon. Archer is a highly respected chief ranger—but he takes his orders from Sjors Horstman, the volunteer at Phantom Ranch.
Ranger Confidential Page 23