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
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