Ralph

I started out as a child (to borrow from Bill Cosby).  Even though I’m a very responsible adult, and have the driver’s license, debts, and tax obligations to prove it, I like to think I still bring my young adventurer’s sense of wonder and amazement to my daily activities, including, and especially, while guiding tours.  I still enjoy seeing the “Tunnel View” even though I’ve been there hundreds of times before.  But I also enjoy the look on the faces of people who are seeing Yosemite’s majestic beauty for the first time – it recharges my “wonder batteries”.  I do my best to tell the story of how our culture first learned about that amazing place and how we as a nation have developed it and put it into a larger context of science, conservation, land management, tourism, and the larger economy.  Doesn’t that sound interesting?  I think so!  Western novelist Wallace Stegner wrote that the National Park is “America’s Best Idea”, (I might add the Constitution, and a couple of others to the list) and Yosemite was for all intents and purposes the birthplace of that idea, and with good reason!

I was born into an Iowa family, a late addition, making a full carload of 7 on our trips up to Grandma’s house on summer vacation.  My 8 Swedish great-grandparents all settled in central Minnesota at about the same time over 100 years ago, and most of the relations are still in the neighborhood.  In addition to running and biking and exploring around the neighborhoods of an Iowa river town, I was a voracious reader, devouring All About Dinosaurs, and its science book club shelf-mates.  I continued my spirit of exploring on foot and wheels in a Minnesota river town through college, and lived most of my adult life in Minneapolis.  Most of my siblings and their progeny are still within a few hours of the Mississippi River, between Minnesota and Missouri. 

My brother led the way to California when I was in high school, and my first year of college was my first opportunity to visit him here.  Being a biology major, I crafted a January Term project revolving around California’s big trees, and visited Muir Woods and other coastal Redwood groves, and also Yosemite.  I would have to wait until 1985 to see the Giant Sequoias with my brother, as we guided our father on his first trip to California. The “grizzly Adams” pose in front of the torrent of Vernal Falls is from that trip.  After one try at “making it” in the Bay Area, and trying the grown-up thing back in Minneapolis, several of life’s abrupt changes in directions made it possible to try it again in 2003. 

My initial plans for employment dashed against the hard rocks of reality here on the Pacific Coast, and  in the spring of 2004, I began to search for my next career, and found the tall trees calling me again.  After dreaming about returning to Yosemite for decades, I was driving there for Extranomical 3 times a week!  In order to work full time, I then began to learn about the California Wine Country, Monterey, and the spectacular landscape known as San Francisco. After moving to San Francisco to be closer to the office and vehicles, I unpacked a box and found a book I hadn’t looked at for over 20 years, maybe 30!  It was called “Big Tree”, written for about 4th grade readers, I think.  It tracked the history of one (only slightly humanized) Sequoia tree through its slightly exaggerated life span (over by 2000 years).  It was written in 1945, and given to our family before I was born.  Our understanding of the Big Trees has gotten better since then, but all in all, from my “veteran’s” perspective, it is still worth reading.  I was flooded with memories, and rediscovering its previously forgotten, but obviously important, influence on my life was a strange feeling of déjà vu, I guess, but also a little bit of fulfilled destiny, as well.

Now I spend a lot more time in the office, directing operations and helping people find their way onto our vehicles for the other guides, who I have helped to train, to lead the way.  But you can’t keep me away from those trees TOO long, before I have to get back out there and recharge.  If I happen to meet you early some morning for a Yosemite Tour, perhaps we can recharge each other’s “wonder batteries” one more time.

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