Tim is at the Dutch Joe Guard station on the Pinedale District this summer. He first saw the cabin in 1999, on his first trip to Wyoming from New York. His brother was a BTNF ranger on the Pinedale District and the two did a backpacking trip into the Winds. “On our way to the Big Sandy Trailhead, I saw Dutch Joe Guard station and wondered aloud about who could be so lucky to live there,” Tim says. His brother replied—“You could if you were a volunteer!” Tim immediately put it on his list of things to do in retirement.
It took Tim 27 years to get back to Dutch Joe because he retired from his first career with the New York State Division of Parole only to start a second career with the Forest Service in the American West! (Also, Dutch Joe is a popular volunteer posting.)
“Leaving the Eastern U.S. 20 years ago and beginning my life in the West where the beauty and serenity of our public lands enabled me to enjoy my life in a more complete manor is my biggest adventure,” Tim says. He started as a volunteer mounted wilderness ranger on the Rio Grande National Forest in Colorado but that quickly turned into a paid seasonal position, which he returned to for five summers.Tim then volunteered on public lands across the country, even sometimes venturing back east—the Osceola NF in Florida, Utah’s Dixie NF, Big Bend National Park in Texas, the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Florida, Panther Wildlife Refuge in Florida, Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado, and Idaho’s Salmon-Challis NF.
“I believe establishment and protection of our public lands to be one of the greatest policy accomplishments of our country,” he says. “Anything I can do to help maintain our Forests is my contribution to that.”