And he said, “Well, it’s kind of odd because I’m bringing somebody here that lives there (chuckles). Why don’t you go back and talk to her?” And so, they came back and found me and talked to me about starting a nature center. And I didn’t know quite what to… Read More
And so, I drove over to Arizona and I sat on the floor of Bill Woodin’s house on his floor and I said, “What on earth should I do?… Read More
So, some of these techniques you were able to transfer over?… Read More
In the summer of 1970, you traveled 10,000 miles to study nature reserves?… Read More
Right. Well, by that point, I’d been hired by the Living Desert. That in itself was kind of an interesting piece of luck, although I always tell young people, you make your luck to a certain degree. You gotta have some luck, but you can’t stay at home waiting for… Read More
I thought it was everything a zoo could be in terms of interpretation. I mean, it was so far and so different and so far beyond what zoos were in my mind, that it was the catalyst for, there were two catalysts organizations and people that led me to build… Read More
There’s nothing out there. And that what’s ever out there is either gonna poison you by being a rattlesnake or stab you by being a prickly plant. Read More
I mean, other than that, what’s out there?… Read More
So, how could you have a whole monument or how could you have a zoo around a desert when there’s nothing out there?… Read More
And so, just waking people up to the knowledge that there’s a lot of stuff out there and that it’s really highly adapted to be out there, and trying out different things while I was in the park service in terms of interpreting that to people, and just seeing what… Read More
Certainly interpretive things about how to, what people that didn’t understand the environment, how to help them see the environment, and since it was desert environment and that’s what I was interested in. I think I, I certainly learned a lot of hands-on interpretation, which when I started designing Living… Read More
Can you give me a specific or an example of that?… Read More
Well, I mean, for most folks that would come at that point to the Monument, and then ultimately when they started coming to Living Desert they would arrive and they might not even want to go because it’s a desert and what could possibly be out there?… Read More
(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