THE RANGER POET

I receive National Parks magazine, and found an article in the latest issue so interesting that I
extracted the following from it:

84 year old Ranger Doug Follett is a seasonal ranger for the National Park Service, and has served in that capacity at Glacier National Park for some 50 years. The story tells us “In recent years, Follett has become somewhat of a local celebrity, gracing the front page of local newspapers and leading Whitefish’s 2010 winter parade as Grand Marshall.

But his connection with Glacier National Park started long before he became a ranger. He tells of the times when he was just a baby “...the old timers -- the frontier people -- were still around. We would all go down to the depot and meet the trains, with the Indians in white buckskin from head to toe headdresses dragging on the platform. While we were waiting they would carry me up and down the platform. ... Just imagine what it was like for those tourists from the east to get off a train in Glacier Park to see these Blackfeet Indians.”

“One time two ladies from back east came over and said to my mother ‘Little girl, you should not let those people handle your child’. And my mother said ‘Why?’ And they said, ‘Because they might steal him.’ And my mother said, ‘If you look around, you will see they have plenty of their own kids -- and they’re all better looking than mine.’ ”

He was asked how he came to writing poems, and he replied that he was too lazy to write stories. He tells of the time when he was out with a group of people, “...and there were two golden eagles in the sky, way up there at a thousand feet. They plunged past us, down into the valley, then flew up, grabbed onto each other, and tumbled through the sky together.”

Walk with me where eagles fly, And tumble wildly through the sky. Giving truth to ancient words That sometimes love is for the birds.

He tells of the marmots that keep an eye out for eagles,and whistle a warning to their companions, because those birds thrive on that mammal.

Walk with me where the sentries whistle, Warns the world of a deadly missile. Not on two legs, nor on four, But from the sky with a sudden roar, That takes a life in a single breath And is gone again on wings of death.

A bit of humor --

One day the pilot of a Cherokee 180 was told by the tower to hold short of the active runway while a DC-8 landed. The DC-8 landed, rolled out, turned around, and taxied back past the Cherokee. Some quick-witted comedian in the DC-8 crew got on the radio and said,
"What a cute little plane Did you make it all by yourself?" The Cherokee pilot, not about to let the insult go by, came back with a real zinger: "I made it out of DC-8 parts. Another landing like yours and I'll have enough parts for another one."