ONE VIEW OF THE FOREST RANGER 



By PAUL G. REDINGTON 

 Forest Supervisor, Sierra National Forest 



A LREADY much has been written higher authority. There will always be 



/ \ about the forest ranger some romance in the ranger's life, and it is 



/ V good poetry more bad; some safe to say that his work and his life 



true-to-life fiction, more that will furnish the basis for many of the 



widely misses the mark. To those people really readable novels of the future. I 



who have never come in contact with have often thought of what a chance any 



the forest ranger easterners and those man in the field force of the Service, 



of the west who do not frequent his blessed with the knack of throwing 



habitat his life is one of romance, together a, good novel, has of putting the 



adventure, danger. To them he is a forest ranger into a story that would 



mighty man of brawn, clad in the stage deal with the romantic and the hum- 



habilaments of a frontiersman or cow- drum, the humorous and the pathetic; 



boy, superbly mounted, travelling in a story that would give to the public a 



a country where heretofore "the hand clearer idea of the real work of the 



of man has never set foot;" classes in average ranger than has been conveyed 



the same category as a member of the in the writings hitherto. How many 



Northwest Mounted Police of Canada; little anecdotes each one of us knows, 



an officer of a great government, clothed which, if put into properly embellished 



with the stern and unyielding authority English, would make one of the most 



of the law as he does his business with interesting groups of short stories in 



the grazer, the miner, the lumberman existence. But I am going to side- 



and the settler. This poorly drawn pic- track this phase of a many-sided sub- 



ture of a forest ranger has been displayed ject, and try to tell just what I think 



before the eyes of many people by of the forest ranger and his future as 



noted authors and writers of fiction and viewed from a few short but pleasant 



one cannot blame the uninitiated if he years of contact with him and from the 



fails utterly to comprehend that com- angle of a good many different positions, 



monplace and hard, grinding work also The forest ranger is, though he may 



are to be found in the daily life of a not fully appreciate it, the foundation 



ranger; that this government officer of the Forest Service, on which the vast 



seldom has to resort to force to carry establishment absolutely depends for 



out the law under which he works; that support. He is the real forester in this 



he is the friend and not the enemy of the great government machine. If not, in 



men with whom he transacts business; technical parlance, now, he will be not 



that he is a respected member of a many years in the future. The practice 



community ; in most cases a man with of the profession of forestry must natur- 



a family, with the cares in this respect ally be based on, first, a chance for the 



of the average American citizen on his largest possible amount of field work, 



shoulders; that he does his work from and, second, on observation; assuming, 



a sense of duty and because he wants to of course, that the man practising it has 



see it well done rather than because of had sufficient of the theory of forestry 



arbitrary instructions of a superior to allow him to do proper and accurate 



officer. These people fail to appreciate work in the woods. As I say, the work 



because they do not know that a must be done in the field where results 



large part of the work of the ranger is can be watched for and studied. This 



of his own initiating; that within cer- cannot be done by an administrative 



tain limits he plans the greater part of officer of the Service, who necessarily 



the work which is to keep him busy, has to devote a great bulk of his time 



unhampered by dictation from any to office work in connection with proper 



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