Catching Up: Things I Already Wrote About or Should Have

By Roland H. Wauer

Catching Up provides the reader with an amazing number and variety of the author's personal adventures in the outdoors. These include such experiences as encountering mountain lions in the wild, being treed by a moose in the Grand Tetons, encountering a fierce javelina boar in Big Bend, studying ferruginous pygmy-owls on the King Ranch, restorin

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gotham Books
• Release date: Nov 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887753843

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CATCHING UP

Things I Already Wrote About or Should Have

By Roland H. Wauer

Dedication to Betty Wauer

Gotham Books

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© 2023 Roland Wauer. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by Gotham Books (November 21, 2023)

ISBN: 979-8-88775-385-0 (H)

ISBN: 979-8-88775-383-6 (P)

ISBN: 979-8-88775-384-3 (E)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Coincidences or Oddities

Name in a tent: During the six years I worked at Big Bend National Park as Chief Park Naturalist, I hired two or three seasonal naturalists each season. Their job was to tend the information desk at the Panther Junction Visitor Center, give evening programs and occasional nature walks, and assist with building and maintaining the park’s collections.

Visitor Center, Big Bend NP, by Betty Wauer

In those years (1966-72), housing for seasonal employees was pretty-well limited to one or two houses for families and a large tent for singles. Although I no longer can remember his name (I will call him John), I placed John, a first-time seasonal, in the tent located in the Panther Junction residential area. That tent contained two bunk beds, a large table in the center, chairs, a refrigerator, and a sink. A modern restroom with shower facilities was located just outside.

The day John reported for duty, after signing him up, I took him to the tent where he was to live during the season. After showing him the tent, both outside and in, he crawled up onto an upper bunk and laid down. Suddenly, while I was still present, he loudly proclaimed, What! This is the same tent I lived in during my deployment in Korea! Here is my name! And sure enough, he showed me his name that he had written on that tent, just above where he was now laying on the upper bunk a few years earlier.

San Jose State Judo Team; Author 2nd from left

Coincidences also have played a significant role in my life. An early happening occurred upon graduating from San Jose State. My expected plan to join the military was put on hold due to an injury. During a judo tournament in Los Angeles, General Curtis LeMay, who at that time was head of the Strategic Air Command of the U.S. Air Force, talked to the 17 judokas, remaining on the third day, about our plans after graduation. He told us he was establishing a judo program in the Air Force and if I was going into the military I should consider the Air Force. He told me that he would see to it that, after basic training, I would be channeled into his new judo program where I would teach judo during the remainder of my assignment. I included additional details in My Wild Life, A Memoir of Adventures within America’s National Parks:

The Korean War was in full swing at the time, and I expected to be drafted right after graduation. So LeMay’s offer was an exceptional opportunity for me, a way to continue doing what I was most interested in at the time and also a way to fulfill my military obligations…My life (plans) changed course (however) when a freak accident kept me out of the military. One day during judo practice at San Jose, discs in my lower back were damaged when one of our trainees accidentally threw another of the trainees against me. After consultation with physicians, I decided not to undergo an operation, but I was told that it would require me to remain in good shape throughout my life or I could have serious back problems. In today’s world, with the expertise now available on these kinds of problems, I probably would have selected surgery. But in 1957 there were too many horror stories about similar operations.

That accident now limited my options. Because I had decided to go into the military upon graduation, I had not acquired an appropriate job as all my other classmates had. A few went into the California Division of Parks and Wildlife, and a few others acquired jobs in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Those kinds of jobs were much easier to obtain in the late 1950s than they are today.

And so, I was sitting in my advisor’s (Dr. William Graff) office bemoaning the fact that I was the only one of his 1957 graduates without a job, when the phone rang. It was Crater Lake’s Chief Ranger Jack Broadbent. Someone had initially taken the Crater Lake job but had backed out at the last minute, and Broadbent called to ask if there was anyone graduating from San Jose State who might be interested in that job. Dr. Graff handed me the phone, saying Here’s a job. That coincidence led me to a thirty-two-year career in the National Park Service.

Crater Lake, with Clark’s Nutcracker

At Crater Lake, I was assigned to the Rim area that contained a large parking area, a campground, store, and lodge. My job was to answer questions and daily drive the Rim Drive. One day a vehicle with an Idaho license plate (with 8B designating Bonneville County) drove into the parking lot. I walked over to the vehicle and said, Hi folks, welcome to Crater Lake. How’s everything in Idaho Falls? The driver immediately asked me how I knew where they were from. I told them that I too was from Idaho Falls and that I recognized the license plate. An elderly lady, sitting in the back seat, looked at me very carefully and asked me my name. When I told her, she looked surprised and said, Well, hello, Roland. I used to take care of you when you were a baby. A small word!

Before the Crater Lake job ended at the end of the summer, I began asking about another seasonal job with the National Park Service. Superintendent Tom Williams told me that he would ask around to see what he could find for me. I guess I really didn’t expect his help, but within another couple days he told me he had talked with Death Valley’s Superintendent Fred Binnewies about me and that there was a seasonal naturalist job at Death Valley available if I was interested. I very soon contacted Superintendent Binnewies and made arrangements for the Death Valley job at the end of my Crater Lake employment.

Death Valley from Dante’s View

I had never been to Death Valley before nor spent much time in deserts. But I took to that arid environment almost immediately. And it wasn’t long before I discovered several unexpected happenings. For instance, on one of my early visits to Badwater, considered the lowest and hottest place in North America, I discovered a naked man walking down the road holding his cloths over his head. When I asked him where he was going, he appeared disoriented and would not get into my vehicle. I called the rangers who came out and took him to the visitor center to talk.

On another occasion, I found a young lady preparing to camp at the Sand Dunes, where camping was not allowed. When I told her she was not allowed to camp there, she explained that she was told to meet her friends there; further conversation revealed that her friends were aliens who she expected to arrive via a flying saucer. It took me quite a while to convince her that she was not allowed to camp there and she might have better luck meeting her friends at the Furnace Creek store. She then packing up and left the dunes. When I saw her the next day at the store, although she told me that she did not remember me from the day before, when I asked her if her friends had arrived, she told me that her friends had contacted her and told her to meet them there at the store. I did not see her again.

Death Valley Sand Dunes

Still another unexpected incident happened one day when I was at the information desk at Furnace Creek. A gentleman walked into the Visitor Center, walked up to the desk, and calmy informed me that he had just shot his wife, who was outside in his car in the parking lot. He explained that they had driven to Death Valley from their home in Las Vegas planning to commit suicide. After flipping a coin to determine who should go first, she won, and he shot her. And then he apparently reneged, did not shot himself, but had come into the Visitor Center to report his crime. He was very calm and seemed unregretful.

Another unexpected happening at Death Valley began in the little town of Beatty, located just outside the park, where park families often bought groceries and ate dinner at the Beatty Club. Several of the park rangers, including me, who had spent a good part of a day unsuccessfully attempting to find someone reported lost in the area, were gathered in late afternoon at the Beatty Club to eat dinner and discuss our day. I wrote about an incident in My Wild Life, as follows:

Just as we were finishing our dinners, a gentleman suddenly ran into the club, calling for a policeman. Someone in our group immediately identified us as park employees and offered to help. He rapidly explained that he had been forced at gunpoint to drive a guy from Las Vegas to Beatty. When they arrived in Beatty, the vehicle was overheating and in need of gas, so they stopped at a service station just down the street from the Beatty Club. While filling the gas tank, this gentleman grabbed a tire iron and smashed the kidnapper over the head and knocked him to the ground. When the kidnapper started to get up, the gentleman ran off down the street and happened to come into the Beatty Club.

Just then, he pointed out the front window at his vehicle which was speeding out of town toward Daylight Pass and Death Valley. Immediately we all started out the door to give chase. District Ranger Matt Ryan and I (passenger) got away first, heading west some five miles or so behind the kidnapper. We later learned that the kidnapper had killed his wife in Los Angeles and forced another individual to drive him to Las Vegas. At Las Vegas he kicked the man out of the vehicle, and the man then reported the incident to the police. The next day, as this man was walking around town, he suddenly saw the thief driving his vehicle down the street. When the owner ran after him, shouting, the thief deserted the vehicle and ran. That was when he kidnapped the man in Las Vegas and forced him to drive to Beatty.

As we sped down the highway, Matt radioed his wife, Rosemary, at the Emigrant Ranger Station (his duty station) and informed her of the situation. He warned her not to open the door in case the kidnapper stopped there. As they were talking, Rosemary saw the vehicle very slowly passing the station. She said it appeared to be overheated. In another fifteen minutes we passed the station and started to take the Towne Pass Road that continues west to Lone Pine. As we passed the Emigrant Canyon Road