If you hop on the No. 35 bus in downtown Portland, within 15 minutes you’ll reach the entrance to Tryon Creek State Natural Area — a 647-acre pocket of calm tucked at the edge of the city. For park ranger Rhett Wilkins, that forested canyon is his daily workplace.
OPB’s ‘Weekend Edition’ Host Lillian Karabaic hiked the trails with Wilkins for the latest installment of ‘At Work With’ to learn what it’s like to care for one of Oregon’s state natural areas.
What does a typical day look like for a state park ranger?
“I would say there is no normal, being a ranger here, at least,” Wilkins said. Activities could be clearing vegetation from the park’s 13 miles of trails, constructing a bridge, removing invasive species, teaching school children, or leading a nature walk. “We get pulled in a lot of different directions,” he said.
“It is far busier in the summer,” he said. “We have so many seasonals,” Wilkins said, referring to seasonal workers. Statewide, Oregon hires about 250 temporary workers in its parks each summer.
The winter is the busy season for year-round rangers at Tryon, though. “The truth is with projects — whether we’re doing trail maintenance or construction — we usually do that in the winter,“ said Wilkins, because they’ve got fewer visitors on the trails.
Where is your big ranger hat?
The iconic broad-brimmed ranger hat is actually officially an interpretive hat, so they only wear it for larger presentations or hikes, not when doing trail work. “We do an annual bat chat in the summer, that’s when rangers kind of put on the big show,” Wilkins said. With an audience of up to 100 people, “That’s a little more formal, so we’ll put on the interp hat.”
What education or background do you need to be a state ranger?
There’s no single background or education that makes a ranger, and a degree is not required. Once hired, rangers eventually take ‘post’, an in-depth training on protocols, rule-enforcement and de-escalation for commissioned officers…