Where I work

I realized the other day that I haven't really writeen much about my volunteer gig here in the Park.  People have said to me “What are you doing on your volunteer job?” and when I tell them, they find it interesting, so maybe you will as well.  If not, just skip down several paragraphs to the close--or turn on the TV.  I had posted a couple of links and will inswer them at the end of today’s post to help give you a better background. 

I am a volunteer at the Yellowstone Heritage and Research Center.  It is the second largest facility of its kind in the entire National Park Service system.  It is housed in a new, state-of-the-art, LEED-certified green building that sits at the edge of the town of Gardiner, Montana.  My drive to work from where I live at the Utah Dorm in the Upper Terraces of Mammoth is less than eight miles but takes close to thirty minutes:  curvy roads, animals on the road, Park speed limit of 45 miles per hour (due to blind curves I drive this about 30 mph most of the way), narrow road, rock slides, and the ugly fact that human beings as fallible as me are also driving on this road, coming towards me in the opposite direction around those curves.  And some of these people do hold cell phones as they drive.  I am a much better person than those folks because my car has a Bluetooth connection and so I can talk on my cell phone hands free.  Isn’t that special?  Besides being a good person for that reason, I am even more good because I volunteer thirty-two hours per week.  I am selfless, noble, and also interested in having a place to live here in Yellowstone rent-free for a month.  My volunteer time gives me such a place to live, a place with running water (that seldom freezes, even at 17^o below), generous heat and light, and a spacious well-equipped kitchen.  Oh, yes, and laundry facilities. 

But back to the topic at hand, which is not my living quarters but my volunteer job.  So, I volunteer thirty-two hours a week, Monday through Thursday, at a new, spacious, beautiful, and well-equipped facility called the Yellowstone Heritage and Research Center.  Even though I have to drive out of the Park, into the edge of the town of Gardiner, MT, to get to the HRC, I drive back into the Yellowstone National Park boundary to get to the HRC.  This facility is the base of operations for three different functions:  library, archives, and museum.  And I have been exposed to tasks in all three areas.  It is a secure facility, meaning that I have a badge and code that gets me into the building before hours, and that can gain me entry into very secure areas.  Secure also because cameras are positioned in numerous places which continuously record activity.  And secure as well due to the fact that no one may enter the library or archives with any bags, boxes, backpacks, or even with a pen.  All note-taking done by staff or public is with pencil.  The library is open to the public, but the archives area is closed except to researchers who make previous appointments. 

I will start with the museum because that’s perhaps the easiest to describe.  Furniture and light fixtures and textiles from old hotel and other properties within YNP are housed in the museum, which by the way is not open to the public.  A large part of the museum is housed six miles away, at Mammoth, in a building shared with the recycling facility for Yellowstone.  It houses the antique vehicle collection:  Tally-Ho stagecoaches, other horse-drawn wagons,  early motorized vehicles (including the famed White Motor Company tour coaches), and fire-fighting vehicles that saw their last use during the catastrophic 1988 fires.  Perhaps the most important, or at least most interesting part of the museum collection is the artwork, principally two-dimensional paintings.  Most of us know at least vaguely of the work of Thomas Moran, and here in the museum I have laid eyes upon some of Moran’s original watercolor sketches that he did while on the 1871 Hayden Expedition of discovery into the Yellowstone area, along with Thomas Henry Jackson original prints and negatives.  These watercolors and photographs helped convince the U.S. Congress that Yellowstone’s wonders were not imagined or exaggerated and that they were national treasures worthy of protection and preservation.  The museum also holds the bones of several animals of note from the Park.  And, it holds ceremonial beadwork and other crafts from native American tribal nations that lived in or frequently visited the area, including a few items that in accordance with tribal practice, only men are allowed to view.  The HRC keeps a muslin cloth covering the item, so that the women who work there do not violate tribal customs.

For more info on the HRC, take a look at:

http://www.nps.gov/yell/historyculture/collections.htm

More on the HRC coming soon, including the archives and the library!