"OA, Ranger!" 



Road. Only transportation was Chief's personal auto which I could 

 have if I could find man who borrowed it from Chief. Chief didn't 

 know who that was. Guarded Coulterville Road until 3 :00 A.M., when 

 ordered to Valley to beat brush by the river 

 with flashlight to locate thieves. Found one 

 thief and captured him just before dawn. 

 Somebody else assigned to guard him, but be 

 fore I turned in, got orders to meet carload 

 of trout fry at El Portal and help plant them 

 in streams. Met fish O.K., but coming up El 

 Portal Road, Quad truck slipped over side of 

 road, but was saved from going down cliff by 

 being caught in tree. Cans of fish lashed to 

 truck, so we saved them. Job was compli 

 cated by necessity of keeping water aerated 

 in cans setting by roadside while we rushed 

 more water in small bucket from stream quarter of mile away. Fish all 

 saved. Phoned for help, and kept water in cans moving until truck 

 dragged back on road and fish cans reloaded. Relieved of duty, with 

 nothing to do but walk nine miles and go to bed." 



"All in a day's work" can be almost anything for a national park 

 ranger. One day, at the end of a long battle for control of a forest fire, 

 Superintendent Lewis of Yosemite was making a final inspection be 

 fore telling the last ranger on the job to go to his cabin and turn in for 

 much-needed sleep. Every blaze was out except a small flicker in an 

 old tree trunk, dead but still standing. It looked safe enough, but the 

 rangers hesitated to leave before it was entirely out, for fear that a 

 sudden breeze might rekindle the forest fire. The blaze was too high to 

 reach with wet sacks or dirt thrown by a shovel, or by water thrown 

 from a bucket. The tree was too large to be cut down without help, and 

 Lewis hesitated to call back his already exhausted rangers. He scratched 



his head and puzzled over the engineering 

 problem of snuffing out that small blaze. 

 Then he and the ranger scouted for a 

 spring. Finding one, they made a lot of 

 mud balls and carried them in their hats 

 to a point near the burning tree. Both 

 had been baseball players in their younger 

 days, and as Lewis afterward said, "The 

 old soup-bones were still in fair shape." 

 Cheering each other's pitching, they 

 heaved mud balls until the last "strike" 

 smacked out the last flickering blaze. 



