People of Yellowstone: Living the Dream of Working in a National Park
For those who have dreamed of living and working in a place that’s still wild with mountains, lush forests and animals living in their natural habitat – here are some tantalizing ideas. Yellowstone National Park is a national treasure recognized throughout the world. It is also our oldest park, dating back to the efforts of Ulysses S. Grant in 1872. Most people think of forest rangers when they contemplate who actually works in the park today, but, in fact, there are more than one hundred different jobs both paid and voluntary – including many types of rangers.
In our new book, People of Yellowstone, photographer Steve Horan and I captured the stories of eighty-seven people – in words and full-page photographs – who work, live and play in the Yellowstone region. As I conducted interviews of the people Steve had photographed, I heard accounts of how challenging it is to set up a camp kitchen with a wood stove next to a stream for running water in the middle of wild back country, as well as the technical difficulties of measuring continuous seismic activity, and trying to prevent people from falling into boiling hot pools. When five feet of snow accumulates on the roof of the Old Faithful Inn, it’s time to call in one of the “winter keepers” who harvest the snow in blocks like giant styrofoam cubes.
These are just a sample of the fascinating activities that involve people in the park throughout its 3,468 square miles. You’ll meet Suzanne Lewis, the first woman to become superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, and Jett Hitt who composes symphonies when he’s back from leading trail rides in the […]
Truth Be Told
“Do you swear to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” We’ve heard this intimidating oath on every television show with a courtroom scene. Fortunately, writers of memoir and personal essay don’t have to make this declaration – at least under oath. Or, if they did, it would be with the caveat that, “This is my truth. This is the way it was for me, so help me Goddess of Imagination.”
It turns out that “truth” has many levels of being, depending on what one is writing about. For most of us, our truth is what we think we remember. Other people might recall the same event differently, but if what you are writing is a memoir about your life, then even other witnesses, like your brother or sister, might remember details differently than your recollection. This is an important concept to keep in mind when writing your story because, if you are swayed to consider some other rendition, based on what someone else claims is the almighty truth, you may not get to the essence of what you are after.
Intention matters. As Sondra Perl and Mimi Schwartz describe in Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction, “If our intent is to capture the messy, real world we live in, we fulfill the first obligation of creative nonfiction. Intent helps us resist the urge to change facts, just to make a better story. It stops us from telling deliberate lies, even as we let our imagination fill in details we only vaguely remember.”
In my memoir, Those Who Remain: Remembrance and Reunion After War, describing my experience of […]
