“Ranger! Ranger!” I scanned the busy street in confusion–was there a rogue ranger on the loose?
From her aggressive eye contact, I realized the woman was calling out to me. I was walking home, still in uniform, after a long day at my first US national park job.
I crossed the road, dodging cruise ship passengers snapping selfies. The main avenue of the tiny Alaskan town was lined with a boardwalk a few feet high, to give it the historic feel of the Wild West frontier it once was. The woman waving me over stood amid a circle of people in the street, at the base of the boardwalk.
In the center of the ring of concerned folk was a petite woman, lying crumpled on her side. She was elderly. One leg twisted beneath her in an unnatural way, doubled back at mid-thigh as though she had grown a second knee. I was grateful her trousers covered the gruesome injury. Her eyes were wide and bright with pain.
“She fell off the boardwalk,” the spokeswoman announced. “Help her.”
I nodded–many, many people tripped on or off these boardwalks, though I had never seen someone snap their femur from the meter tumble. I looked around for something I could do.
“Did someone call 911?”
Yes, they had already called and an ambulance was on its way. The fire station was a couple blocks away (the town itself was only five streets wide and twenty-three streets long–a narrow strip of civilization nestled amid wild, Alaskan mountains). Help would be here soon.
“Help her!” The woman who had called me over was starting to glare at me, gesturing to the injured woman on the ground. I wanted to say that I wasn’t that kind of ranger, that I only had basic first aid training, that calling 911 was the extent of what I could do for a fractured femur. Instead I just stood there, looking dumbfounded no doubt, until I was saved from additional embarrassment by the sound of a siren.
I knew most of the folks who hopped out of the ambulance, colleagues of mine who volunteered as firefighters on days off, rangers trained for these situations. I stepped out of their way, stood around awkwardly watching for a bit, and then gave up trying to appear useful and walked home.
The boardwalk incident stung. Not only because it had been embarrassing, but because I genuinely wanted to help in some way and didn’t know how. I also felt that I had disparaged park ranger honor in some way. These park visitors seemed to think that a park ranger is a medical professional. Some park rangers are medics, but many are not.
I was hired by this park to talk for a living, to lead historic tours of the town and staff the visitor center, not care for the wounded. But in an emergency, no park visitor knew the difference between me and one of my medically-trained colleagues. In uniform I was expected to be all the things a park ranger should be, and a park ranger should help those in need.
So I got training. A couple years after the woman fell off the boardwalk, I spent nine days at a camp in the woods of North Carolina, learning how to take care of the ill and injured in the wilderness.
Called Wilderness First Responder training, the course was ostensibly for people who led outdoor excursions–rafting, backpacking, mountain biking, climbing–all kinds of outdoor activity guides. I wasn’t as hardcore as most of them–I still spent most of my work days within shouting distance of a park visitor center, but I felt better prepared to wear the ranger uniform after those nine days.
Sometimes new knowledge teaches you how to do something; sometimes new knowledge teaches you that it’s okay not to know how to do something. My wilderness medical training taught me that what I did that day in Alaska was correct.
Today, I would still call 911 and wait for actual medical care if I saw a woman on a crowded city street break her leg, but now I would do so with confidence that it was the right course of action. Doing your best is always enough.
And, should I be in the backcountry when medical care was needed, miles from an ambulance, I would actually know a few ways to help.