By Steve Scarano
Vista, Calif.

Dear National Park People,

May I salute you? I know that this is a particularly challenging season of service for you, and while mine is certainly not the only voice crying in the wilderness to acknowledge that and may even ring a bit hollow in the short view, the option of silence is just not viable to me. So here we are.

I’m a card-carrying property owner and cherish our parks, monuments, historic sites and recreation areas. Thank you for making them available to us. In fact, for decades it has been my practice to express my gratitude when I’ve either coincidentally met or deliberately sought you in our visits—all of you: law enforcement and interpretive rangers, maintenance and administrative personnel, volunteers and entry gate staff.

Yes, I am indeed one of those geeky tourons that stare with dislocated jaws at The Canyon, geysers, hoodoos, mountain tops, caverns and battlefield cannons, but I swear I have never, ever, asked you where the nearest bathroom was. When I see the looks on the faces of the kids to who you are leading in the Junior Ranger pledge, I cheer for you at least as much as I do for them. And, while I have been known to ask The Question you’ve known was coming during one of your excellent campfire talks, I assure you that I have never asked you a question that you knew I already knew the answer to. By the way, how is it that you are always able to act like I’m the first person who ever asked those things?

All that said, I do hope you remember the two things I’ve told you, even though I sort of joked about quizzing you on your memory if we were to meet again. First, THANK YOU. However poor a supplement to your “sunset pay” it is, please do remember my gratitude. Second, I really do feel like I am in fact a property owner and with that credential demand that you continue your worthy, noble, and often courageous work for the sake of our grandkids. We are counting on you. Will you do that, please?

I’ve been gifted by the friendship of several of your deceased, active duty, and retired fellow National Park Service employees and volunteers. Through them I’ve learned that you protect the parks from the people, the people from the parks, and the people from each other. When I have had this conversation with your people over the years the collective response by several hundred of you looked like this: “Nobody has ever said that to me before. Tears well up (theirs and mine). I needed to hear that today. Well, this is what we do. It’s all about your grandkids. I love this place.”

Well, Ranger, these days I’m particularly reminded of the restorative power inherent in our wonderful national properties and you folks who serve us in them, and I believe confidently that we need them, need you, desperately perhaps. We need knowing that they are there on the map, whether or not we have immediate plans or ability to get to them in the flesh.

I confess to violating the rule about taking only photographs and leaving only footprints. The fact is, the memories, sights, sounds (or lack of them) and smells have gone home with me and have become part of the geography of my life. If walking off with those treasures is a crime, I suppose that you Park people are abettors. May I salute you for being partners in it?

Remember those two things I told you. OK?

Editor’s note: An Eagle Scout and former Marine Corps officer, after retiring from a 30-year career as a police officer, Steve Scarano is starting his 19th season as a Trail Angel on the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail and is in his 20th year as a volunteer Trail Patroller and Dust Devil with a large San Diego area regional park.