I’m currently reading, and enjoying The Last Season by Eric Blehm. . It’s about a Park Ranger Randy Morgenson.

The tag line on the cover of the books says simply…

“Randy Morgenson was legendary for finding missing people in the High Sierra…. Then one day he went missing himself.”

Park rangers have a tough time. They earn little money and require levels of dedication unlike other jobs. You need to love the outdoors of course, and introverts would thrive more than an extrovert looking to chat to people every day.

Randy was decades in to his career at this point in the book. I’m just over halfway, so I still don’t know what has happened to him, but there a little passage that I loved so had to write it down.

So as I said, funds are tight, they don’t get paid much, they don’t get much support for their equipment etc, and it was around the late 1980s and early 1990s when business cards were circling around between the rangers when they were doing their training.

The card simply read:

Dear Park Visitor

You’ve just had your pudgy and worthless ass hauled out of deep doo-doo by a bunch of underpaid but darned dedicated public servants employed by the National Park Service. This mission was accomplished using outdated and rickety equipment made to work by a child-like faith in duct tape. But even duct tape costs money and we don’t have much of either. Your sunglasses cost more than we make in a week. How about spreading some of that wealth around and contributing to our Search and Rescue Fund?

Thank you,

Your National Park Service

I love this. I can only imagine how hard it was raise money for their cause. Think about it. They’re out in the wilderness most of the time, clearing up illegal camps, picking up rubbish, fixing things, assisting lost hikers and maintaining the area.

They don’t have time to be out raising money. This was before the internet, so they couldn’t just throw up a website and share their activities with a Go Fund Me link to help them get equipment or whatever they needed.

I think if I was rescued by a park ranger and they gave me this card, I would sit and think about the situation on the journey back to civilisation, and no doubt donate some of my hard earned pounds to help them.

Being injured, lying next to a bush in the middle of nowhere is far from ideal. It would be even worse if I knew there were no park rangers around due to lack of funding.

I live in the UK, so I don’t even get the gist fully of how large these national parks are. Some of them are probably bigger than the entire UK. Fuck lying there hoping someone comes to help my sorry ass which twisted his ankle on a rock in the middle of nowhere.

Get the help.

Receive the card.

Donate the money.