My First Day of School, September 1953

Just after Labor Day in 1953, I went to school for the first time. I was enrolled in an overflow classroom of Upson School and it was located in the basement of the Lutheran Church at the corner of East 260th and Forestview Avenue in Euclid. The Baby Boom had started, and the United States was in for a dynamic growth spurt. One or two blocks south of the Lutheran Church was Upson School, a large brick edifice that had been there for ages. In one of the kindergarten classrooms in the big school was Beth Hodder, who I would meet 62 years later in West Glacier, Montana--the front door to Glacier National Park. Beth was my age and was also a Euclid native. At some point she found her way out West, married a forest ranger, Al Koss, and made her life in the mountains and forests of the American West. When I met Beth, she was hawking her children's book, set in the Bob Marshall Wilderness--exactly where my daughter Carolan worked. Beth's book is The Ghost of Shafer Meadows. And ironically, Carolan has also written a book set in this same Wilderness, authored with her cousin Megan Sanders Hartfelder, called "The Great Bear Surprise" (available on Amazon, Carolan and Megan's book).

My Mom walked me north on East 266 Street that morning to Oriole Avenue, then down Oriole to East 260th and the Lutheran Church, 8/10s of a mile. She gave me a little kiss and said goodbye and good luck--and then she left, never to walk me to or from school again--it just wasn't done much back then. Our family had one car, which my Dad drove to work, and Mom was at home with Denny, who was three years old, and baby Mary Ellen.

I was struck in that first hour of kindergarten by the fact that a couple of children were crying. I thought, "What babies!" Soon, school started--and I loved it. We might have had 12-15 kids in our class (which would contrast with my years at St. William's School, when we had 50-60 in a classroom in my early years). The teacher's name was Mrs. Ockunzi (I bet that spelling is off). I remember some of the kids in class--Billy O'Neal, a great and happy guy; Joanne (can't remember her last name, but she had carrot-red hair and lived in the F & S homes); Bob Ernst and Barbara S, who went to St. William's with me for 8 years. If I had the class photo in front of me, I could identify others.

I remember kindergarten as great fun: we had a band, and I got to play the triangle; we did finger painting; we sang and marched; and we even took a little nap. At the end of that first day, I walked the 8/10s of a mile back home by myself. I had just turned five. Now days, a National Guard battalion would accompany the kid home. That was not our world in Euclid in 1953!

Who Will Defend the Wilderness? I Know a Few Warriors!

On my recent visit to Montana I started to think about the importance of defending Wilderness, defending the natural environment. We need to explain the importance of Wilderness to people of good will--and then stand up and fight for it! If not us--then who? I know there are a dozen other critically important things to think about. Please include the natural environment and true wilderness among them.

I am proud to say that my daughter Carolan is one of the defenders. She works much of the time in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, a gigantic and important wilderness complex just south of Glacier National Park. A couple weeks ago we met her after she hiked out (I think that morning it was a 15-mile hike) to the Spotted Bear Ranger Station. She had been supervising and training trail maintenance crews in "The Bob," as the Bob Marshall Wilderness is called. Sometimes she works at the Kalispell office of the Montana Conservation Corps (MCC). Other times she's in the field--The Bob, Glacier National Park, the Kootenai, or some other park or forest in Northwest Montana.

Carolan and Bob at Spotted Bear Ranger Station

Carolan's friend Jeremy Rust is also a defender of Wilderness. He works for the U.S. Forest Service and is Carolan's companion-in-adventure. They recently hiked in Glacier NP from Bowman Lake to Quartz Lake, paddled the length of Quartz Lake, then bushwacked their way up to Cerulean Lake. I don't think many people have had this firsthand experience! I recently saw Jeremy in the Two-Medicine area of Glacier:

Jeremy and Bob, by Running Eagle Falls, Two Medicine area, Glacier NP

I have met many other MCC and Forest Service workers: Lauren, Cliff, Elisheba, Beth Hodder, and many others. They are the hardest working people I know, tough as nails, and vigorous defenders of Wilderness and the Wilderness Ethic (which I will talk more  about in the future).

Montana Conservation Corps--A Dad's Perspective

My daughter Carolan has worked as an MCC (Montana Conservation Corps) crew leader this summer and has lived in the Bob Marshall/Great Bear Wilderness. This past hitch she was near Inspiration Point and Sunburst Lake, rerouting and maintaining trails. I found this out last evening when she called me from the Spotted Bear Ranger Station. During the past ten-day hitch, she and her crew have lived in tents; in fact, they have lived in tents most of the summer. Most of the summer Carolan, Adam, and their crew (Lemmy, Evan, Barry, Elisheba, and Mark) have lived and worked near Strawberry Creek, just west of the Continental Divide. At times they camped by Sabido Cabin, and other times near a branch of Strawberry to the north of Sabido. If I understand correctly, Sabido is about 20 miles from Schafer Meadows Ranger Station, which is about 14 miles from the Morrison Creek/Skyland trailhead, where Carolan has parked her car most of the summer. In other words, she and here crew have lived a 2-day walk from what we in the "real world" (Carolan's words) think of as civilization.

As a Dad, I glory in the stories and photos that have come back our way to Northeast Ohio. I love that her food and mail come via mule train. I love the way these seven young people have learned to live and work together. They have done such good work in the Wilderness, a service to the state of Montana, the United States of America, and even Planet Earth itself. Presuming to speak for all these entities, I'll say, "Thank You!"

In the beginning of my daughter's MCC adventure, I worried about grizzly bears, mountain lions, black bears, grey wolves, and all the wild things that can potentially harm a person living in the wilderness. Turns out that they haven't had many encounters with dangerous wild animals, and when they see one they feel lucky, blessed. Carolan and her companions won't forget that rare glimpse of a grizzly browsing along Strawberry Creek. So I have stopped worrying so much about bears and mountain lions (still worry a little, I admit).

I've also worried a bit about their health. Say they broke a leg two days from help; or someone suffered a burst appendix or a thousand other health emergencies, big and little. So far they have escaped major medical problems. But I'm sure they've lived with a lot of minor problems, colds, headaches, sore throats, stomach aches, etc. These guys are tough hombres, who can't run to the medicine cabinet or doctor for every complaint.

Every day I check the weather in Carolan's vicinity, using the Weather Underground website. Of course there usually isn't a weather station right nearby, so I end up researching the weather in Hungry Horse or East Glacier Park or Choteau or someplace like that. I've noticed that fall is approaching in the Montana mountains and that night temperatures are often in the 30's (and these guys are usually in tents!). I guess the next hitch they will be sleeping at Spotted Bear, in cabins. On actual mattresses, for God's sake!

Another thing I do is study maps and handbooks about trails in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. I also use Google to find images near where her crew works. I've even located some videos on Youtube that help me picture their work and living environment (there are several videos of small planes landing at the Schafer Meadows airstrip). I do other things, like check in with the MCC Krew blog, http://mcckrew.blogpost.com/ (which I think is so interesting and wonderful that it should be published as a book), and go to the Glacier National Park website and look at their many webcams. These images are not exactly what Carolan is experiencing, but she is not far away from these places.

My wife and I have discovered two mystery novels set in The Bob, near Schafer Meadows. One story, by Beth Hodder, is called The Ghost of Schafer Meadows; the other, just out, is called Stealing the Wild. Beth and her husband worked for the Forest Service for many years, living at Schafer Meadows and working throughout The Bob and know this landscape intimately. These books have also helped us understand my daughter and her crew's working and living environment. In a strange coincidence, we have discovered that Beth Hodder and I both grew up in Euclid, Ohio, and graduated from high school the same year. The website for her books is: http://www.grizzlyridgepublishing.com/.

So I have vicariously followed the adventures of Carolan and Adam's wilderness crew. And once this summer my wife Linda and I were able to visit the MCC office in Kalispell and then actually meet up with Carolan for a day at Glacier National Park.

All in all it has been great fun, a wonderful trip!