(laughs) Well, I mean, that’s where I had wanted to work initially. I thought, I’ll be a park ranger. And so, I applied there and at that point in time, the various parks and monuments had their full-time staff, but during their busy seasons, they were allowed to hire locals… Read More
And they had a trailer just a little long, 25 foot long, eight foot wide old travel trailer that I lived in during the weekends at the southern entrance of Joshua Tree. They had two, three residences out there, stick-built residences for the permanent staff, and two rangers and a… Read More
And so, I looked at that as a possibility of a career. So, I certainly enjoyed being out in nature. And I enjoyed showing people the flowers and the snakes and the lizards and all those kinds of things. Read More
Were you learning things that would stand you in good stead later on in your career?… Read More
It didn’t seem to be particularly hard, and I’m not particularly the world’s greatest person when it comes to kids and this and that. It’s not that I, I just wanted a chance to get out and see all these things and to share it with the kids. But it… Read More
How did you get that kind of a job?… Read More
What did you do?… Read More
We were fossil hunting. So, we were going to all the big fossil sites and at that point, I mean you could go out and dig around. I mean, a lot of these sites weren’t even protected and we’d go to various museums and we were camping the whole time. Read More
while you were doing this about kids and maybe connecting them with nature?… Read More
That kids, if you got them out, after the first couple of days of sort of complaining that they didn’t have, of course the kids didn’t have then what we have now for kids anyway. I mean, mostly they would miss their TVs or goin’ to the movies because there… Read More
You’re learning anything about keeping the attention span of a very young active group of students?… Read More
Well, I was, yeah, I was teaching junior high mathematics in Palm Springs and on summer, one of the other teachers and I decided to put together this field trip to take the kids out fossil hunting. And I mean, when I look back at it and I think about… Read More
of activities you were doing there?… Read More
I love the whole thing.” So, it made sense to me as soon as I graduated, I could finally get out of Chicago and the winter and the snow and the rain and go to California where it doesn’t snow and rain much. And so, I started planning for that… Read More
So, I knew I could do that. I knew I could program computers and I knew I could teach. So I thought, now I can go get my degree in what I’m interested in. Even if I’ll never maybe be able to work in a field like that. So. So… Read More
And naturalists traveling with junior high students for a month. Tell me about the junior high students. Read More
How did that kinda start?… Read More
So, I basically enrolled in Loyola in what was a biology major, but I got really lucky and had a major professor that was a young herpetologist and we clicked really quickly. So, we created, I think I was the only person majoring in what I was majoring in in… Read More
How did you decide on California?… Read More
I had an aunt and uncle that had retired out to Southern California. And when I was in my, between my junior and my sophomore junior year of college, sort of, they gave me the money and flew me to California. If I couldn’t drive there, I had never been. Read More