“What is the stupidest question anyone ever asked you?”
I get asked this a lot. People find out that my job as a seasonal US park ranger involved answering questions from sometimes hundreds of visitors a day, in busy visitor centers, on crowded cruise ship decks, at the edge of the most congested trails, and they want to know about the stupid things people say.
“No questions are stupid,” I’ll respond, which isn’t an answer people like.
“But like, you have to get some dumb ones, right?”
The truth is that I have been asked some doozies, but they weren’t stupid questions, nor were the visitors who asked them stupid people. Questions like these helped me understand how to better help the person. Some people need to know where the nearest trailhead is, and some people need a much bigger lesson.
When someone asks a “stupid” question, it usually means they fundamentally don’t understand what a national park is or where they are or something else basic that most other people understand.
A question like that is an opportunity to learn.
One clear, crisp evening sitting around a campfire, a colleague shared a story from their day.
A woman had stormed into the visitor center that afternoon and yelled at the rangers.
“Why don’t you people put up signs pointing to the bears so I can find them? I haven’t seen one all day!”
The simple answer to her question is that the park is massive and the bears move around. Wild animals don’t stand politely next to signs all day, desperate to feature in your selfie.
The real mystery here is why this woman didn’t know what a national park was.
She thought she was at a zoo, where animals do reside in enclosures with their names prominently displayed on signs beside them. She didn’t understand where she was or what a national park was for.
And here’s the teaching moment, which is actually remarkable. I mean, imagine not knowing that something like a national park exists in the world, and then getting to discover it for the first time again, like the fortunate among us did as children? What a joy!
“Mam, you wouldn’t believe, but in a national park, we don’t keep animals in cages. We don’t chain them to a sign that says: BEAR, with an arrow pointing to their adorable, fluffy faces. In a national park, we allow wildlife to roam free. They are able to live wild and unfettered here. You are in a miraculous place, full of wonders. Rejoice.”
Now, not everyone is excited to learn something new. Not everyone wants to be told they are wrong. I’m not certain that this woman would have been overjoyed to learn that she wasn’t in fact in a zoo.
But no one should be called stupid for not understanding or not knowing or for making a mistake.
We have to not understand, not know, and make mistakes, so that we can learn.
We all need environments in which we feel safe being wrong so that we can take risks, so that we can be brave enough to stumble into new knowledge. And traveling to new places, like our first national park, is a perfect time to be a little wrong and learn something new.
We should all strive to be safe people for others to be wrong around, especially if we spend our days answering the questions of travelers, people already courageous enough to step out of their comfort zones and into new spaces.
Let’s not call people stupid for not understanding, not knowing, or for making mistakes. Because we want to be treated the same way by them. Because hopefully we rangers will be wrong sometimes too.
And if you are visiting a park and you have a question, ask it. If there are things you don’t understand, try to find the answers. Be bold and brave enough to learn.