EDGE Project: Journal
Weekly Journal of My Summer
Week 1 – May 16 to May 20
The first week of my internship consisted of training. Since I am
working with the staff of interpretation, we started to talk about what
interpretation is all about. In the middle of the week we got to know
all the partners in the park, such as the Zion National Park Human
Association, who produces all the clothing and gift items for the book
store.
A part of the internship will be that each intern (and all the other
rangers) have to do a program, which will be presented on the back
patio of the Zion Human History Museum. To get a feeling for this we
had an opportunity to just follow another ranger to the program, and
shadow him.
On the first Friday we had time to explore the park and do some hikes
that we haven’t done yet. This is helpful to answer the visitor’s
question in the best way.
Week 2 – May 23 to May 27
During this week we got a lot of time to prepare our patio talk. I thought I will have to present this patio talk once at the end of my internship. However, I found out that I will be giving my patio talk in my second week of actual work.
On Tuesday of this week, we got to know all the different departments of the park, including sustainability, the fire department, etc. With the fire department we could even light up a little fire and put it out with a fire extinguisher.
Week 3 – May 29 to June 2
My week started at Sunday since my days off are going to be Friday and Saturday each week. My very first shift started with opening up the Visitor Center and then be there for two hours. During the whole first week my days consisted of either being on the visitor center desk, rove around outside, or prep myself for the patio talk and read more information about the park. By the end of the week my voice was so sore that my boyfriend didn’t even recognized me when I was talking to him on the phone. This should get better over time – hopefully.
Week 4 – June 5 to June 9
This week I started off with some more visitor center shifts. And then in the middle of the week I had my first patio talk, which I was doing on backpacking. It didn’t went too bad, but I guess what I try next time is to look a little less on my cards. I had round about 30 people listening, including a group of three guys who were really into the topic, which was nice because they were engaged when I asked questions. After my talk I had to sign some junior ranger books and I helped them to fill out a few parts, which was really neat.
During this week I also had the first museum shifts. The museum I a lot less busy than the visitor center is, but a lot more kids come in to get sworn in for their Junior Ranger Badge. I love to swear kids in because they are always so happy when they receive their badge, but I also try to be strict and not just give the badges out when they didn’t complete what they were supposed to do. Here in Zion we want the kids to work for their badge. Another phenomena that happens during the museum shifts is that people are complaining about the parking. Since there is a very limited amount of parking there, and usually all those people came from the east side of the park, they’re getting angry. However, we have a lot more parking down at the visitor center and then also in the town of Springdale, and everything is connect super good with our shuttle service.
Another cool thing that happened to me was that two people wanted their picture taken with me on the same day. I guess it is quite epic for people from Europe and Asia to see a Ranger, and it is fascinating that you can put your hat on and people are just storming you with questions.
Week 5 – June 12th to June 16th
This week I was basically all week in the visitor center and I wished I could go back to the museum. It’s starting to get busier and busier each day and more people from Europe start to visit. Having all those visitor center shifts can be really hard on your voice and they are extremely tiring. I still can’t believe what kind of questions people sometimes come up with. If often feels like they shut off their brain completely when they are on vacation.
Week 6 – June 19th to June 23rd
This week I had my first drop in program. A drop in program can be done at any point in the park. I decided to just do it in front of the visitor center to give the people who are waiting in line something to do. In the back of the visitor center we keep a box with a mountain lion fur, food prints, and pictures. So I took this box and just sat in front of the shuttle bus stop. Many kids and also their parents were really excited to touch a mountain lion fur. Quite a few kids asked me if I killed the mountain lion myself, which made me smile. During this week I also hiked Angel’s landing and counted how many people are going on this hike for our statistic department. Just on my way down, between 10 – 11 a.m. I counter 328 people.
Week 7 – June 26th to June 30th
I got a lot of PREP time this week, which came in extremely handy. I decided to create a poster and attended the IIC poster symposium. I decided to do a crafty poster with a newspaper border and a lot of hand written signs. In my opinion it turned out quite beautiful and I am excited to present it at the end of the year gathering of the IIC.
Week 8 – July 3rd to July 7th
The first thing in this week was giving a patio talk and at the end of the week I had two days in a row with the same shift where I had to give the afternoon patio talk. I took that chance to prepare my second patio talk about lizards. I though since I could do it two time in a row I could make an improvement right away. When I did it the first time on Wednesday it went surprisingly well and I had a great audience. Since it went so well, I didn’t have to change a lot except of a few props.
Week 9 – July 10th to July 14th
My supervisor asked me if I would like to shadow another department of the park and I was hoping to shadow fees for a day because I thought it might be interesting to see how many people come through the gates each day. So I was really excited to see that I can shadow fees on the Monday of that week. However, it turned out to be really bad. I had to shadow the tunnel. At the tunnel you basically just stop the cars if an RV wants to drive through because then it needs to be one-way traffic. So all I could do was sitting in the hot sun and look at the other person turning the stop sign and talking to the people with an RV. Fortunately it was just one morning and I was glad to get back to my normal job. I had two patio talks this week also and quite a few visitor center shifts.
Week 12 – July 31st to August 4th
This week was the first week after a long time where I had just one patio talk. I decided to do this talk on lizards, which is more kids friendly then the backpacking one. In the middle of the week I had a day where I had just one victor center shift at the end of my work day, so I decided to rove observation trail, which is my absolute favorite trail in the park. This week we also had a lot of upset visitors because we had to tell them that it isn’t suggested to go into the narrows since flashfloods were expected.
Week 13 – August 7th to August 11th
I started off with two patio talks. I did my backpacking one for the last time since I had to give back the big backpack that I used as a prop. At the end of the week we had the IIC poster symposium. I had to drive up to the SUU Mountain Center. I was quite nervous when I had to present my poster in front of a jury of six people. After the presentation I wasn’t able to stay for the gathering, where they displayed all the posters and announced the winner because I had to go back to work. Apparently the jury and the people really liked my poster, however, I didn’t win the scholarship. When I was coming back from the symposium I got into the biggest storm I have every experienced. I got stock in Springdale because the streets were flooded . The river rose to 1800 cubic feet per second. And we had to send all people out of the park. This was a pretty exciting day even though I was almost late to work since I got stuck in Springdale.
Week 14 – August 14th to August 18th
My last week was pretty uneventful. I had anther two patio talks and on Wednesday we had a little goodbye gathering. I enjoyed my time I was here, but I also have to admit that I look forward to a little quieter days back in school. It can be very exhausting if you have to talk to people all day especially if they hardly speak English, and also if they don’t want to accept the fact when you tell them not to do a certain thing. However, my positive experiences far exceeded my negative experience. Thanks Zion, IIC, and SUU for making me do an EDGE project :-).
Week 10 – July 17th to July 21st
During this week I gave three patio talks again. It basically was just like two weeks ago. First thing I did Sunday morning was a patio talk, and the last thing I did Thursday was also a patio talk. Except of that it was a pretty uneventful week.
Week 11 – July 24th to July 28th
I started my new work week off with a patio talk about
lizards. My talk was supposed to start at 11.25 a.m. and by 11.23 I had 8 people showing up. However, throughout my talk more and more people started to show up and I ended up having over 30 people. The next day I had another patio talk, so I decided to do this one on backpacking. The rest of the week consisted of working at the desk in the visitor center and roving. Unfortunately, this week it was everyday 110 degrees, which made roving the trails quite hard.