Squatters in Paradise: A Yellowstone Memoir

by James Perry

  One bitterly cold day in January management decided to impress a group of foreign travel agents who'd come from all over Europe to experience a winter in Yellowstone. The head of Park Promotion (a sinecure if ever there was one) arranged a Grand Loop tour involving two snowcoaches and ten snowmobiles traveling 100 miles together in thirty-below weather. When the French tourists discovered that I spoke their language they kicked the English out of my coach and declared it French territory. None of the guests had any experience with snowmobiles and within the first hour several people had frostbite, a Belgian man ran his vehicle off the road, and a German lady torpedoed her snowmobile into a lodgepole pine, snapping it in half and dislocating her hip in the process. She had to be flown out by helicopter to the hospital at Idaho Falls. I had the Xanterra company representative on board my coach and she was ready to have a nervous breakdown. "Look at the sky!" she almost shrieked as the helicopter wheeled away, "Isn't it a beautiful day!"

  But in the end all the French guests were thrilled with the experience (just seeing a German on a stretcher probably made their day). They gave me their e-mail addresses and insisted that I look them up the next time I came to France. Dave, the overwrought snowmobile guide, took me aside and said, "I'll bet you're the lowest paid bi-lingual guide in America."

  A few days later the head of Park Promotion shook my hand and thanked me for being the one bright spot in an otherwise disastrous day. "I had no idea you spoke French,” he said, and gave only the slightest pause before asking, "So James, how about if we schedule a few more of these tours for you?"

  As the winter season gave way to spring Mother Nature would relax her stern face and indulge us with intoxicating fresh sounds and smells. The sound of melting snow was like the unlocking of chains and made us feel playful. As I was dead-heading back from West Yellowstone one bright afternoon I received a short call on the radio.

  "Pull over."

  I looked in my rear view and saw one of the conversion vans behind me. They were passenger vans that had been turned into over-the-snow vehicles by virtue of an articulated metal track grafted onto the undercarriage. They were more comfortable and afforded a higher and better view than the Bombardiers. It was generally assumed that they were the next generation of snowcoaches for the Park when the old Bombardier fleet finally wheezed its last. Drivers exhibited a fierce loyalty to their vehicles however, and arguments would often flare up over the advantages of one over the other. Nothing was ever settled.

  I pulled over and let the van draw up alongside me. The driver leaned out the window and looked down at me.

  "We're going to settle this," she said.

  So it was to be a drag race. We were at Fountain Flats, where the road shot straight as an arrow through an open meadow until it reached the Fountain Paint Pots thermal area. It was a good choice, a half-mile track. The girl had balls. I nodded and she raised her hand showing three fingers, then two, then one. From a distance it would have seemed about as thrilling as a race between a couple of giant ground sloths, but to us the roar of the engines and the way we were kicking up snow and chunks of ice made it seem like flames were coming out of our asses. Incredibly, I found myself falling behind. I glanced up and saw a very intense girl pulling away from me and my beloved piece-of-shit 1970's Canadian-made Bombardier. I looked at my gearshift and realized that in my excitement I'd yanked the lever too far back. I was in low gear. Shit! I quickly pushed the stick forward and the coach responded with venerable acceleration. Old number 718 caught up to the van and passed it. When I crossed the finish line, a lone lodgepole pine at the foot of the geyser basin, I slowed to a stop and waited for the arrival of my opponent. When she pulled alongside me once again I tipped my hat and called out grinning, "Eat my snow!"

  Gunga Ga Lunga

  THE Yellowstone Winter Olympics are a relatively recent addition to the litany of Savage activities which are looked upon with disapprobation by the Park Service and the Company. What these people don't seem to understand is that this event, coming as it does near the end of the winter season when most employees are ready to snap, serves as a relatively harmless outlet for a lot of pent-up hostility. So what if a few bones get broken? At least we're just doing it do ourselves.

  Begun in the winter of 1983, the Yellowstone Olympics were initially - like the real Olympics - a bit of a joke. It was called "Dishwasher Days" and featured ill-advised events like riding an inner tube down a steep treed slope and skiing in the nude. Unlike the real Olympics, our version is still a joke, and a pretty good joke at that.

  "Gunga Ga Lunga!" - the battle cry of the Olympics - comes from a line in the movie Caddyshack. According to Bill Murray's character, Carl Spackler, it was the Dalai Lama who spoke these words while playing golf, just after slicing one into a ten-thousand foot crevasse. At the end of the day, Spackler, who was caddying for his holiness, asks the Dalai Lama for "a little something, you know, for the effort." So the Dalai Lama tells him that when he dies, on his deathbed, he will receive total consciousness.

  "So I got that goin' for me," he says.

  All the events of the Yellowstone Olympics, unofficially sponsored by Rainier Beer, are preceded by the consumption of large amounts of this particular beverage (which, sadly, Rainier does not provide). This is also the aspect of the games which rankles the rangers, made evident by their recent efforts to reign in the Opening Ceremonies, which feature a drunken queen and floats that make - gasp - a pro-environmental statement. I suppose they feel they wouldn't be doing their jobs if they just let us carry on like savages, but they're the ones killing bison.

  I should explain.

  One recent winter, in a place not far from where Yellowstone Lake sends forth its namesake river, a bison chose to lay down in the road and die. It was injured, or sick, and somewhere in its animal brain it had decided that it could not, or would not, see out the season. Soon, coyotes began to gather nearby, watching the bison and waiting for it to die. If the bison was offended by their presence it gave no sign. Their arrival may even have been a comfort; serving as a canid harbinger of death, yipping a requiem in the cold night and reinforcing the bison's decision to give up the ghost. It became something of a highlight on the Park tour and every day would begin with the guides asking the same questions: Is it still alive? Has it moved? Have the wolves discovered it yet? But nothing changed. The bison lay in the road, indifferent to traffic, only occasionally raising its head to indicate that winter - the greatest predator - had not yet claimed its life.

  As I drove slowly past in my snowcoach the scene would invariably stir the passions of my passengers.

  "It's suffering! Why doesn't the Park Service euthanize it?"

  I would then explain how the NPS has a hands-off policy, allowing nature to take its course, and that what we may perceive as cruel is merely the working of a natural system which functions quite well without our aid.

  The next day the rangers came and shot the bison.

  They put a bullet in its head while it was lying on its side. The blast blew a hole in its skull and left a six-inch, blood-spattered crater in the hard-packed snow. The bison, after eight days of virtual immobility and now sporting a massive head wound, got up on its feet and lumbered into the woods. If its thoughts could have been made comprehensible to us they would no doubt translate as, OW! You fucking bastards! Why couldn't you let me die in peace? OW!

  Thinking they needed a bigger gun, the rangers ran back to their cabin and brought out a higher caliber weapon, then pumped three more rounds into the dying, bewildered animal. Once dispatched, the coyotes and ravens had their feast, but I no longer gave my spiel about the Park Service allowing natural systems to run their course. Instead, whenever I passed the scene, I envisioned yellow police tape cordoning off the chalk outline of a murdered bison.

  This episode was still fresh in our minds when the Olympics began.

  Downhill Day and Beer Ball are obviously popular events, and people will request days off to coincide with these
games weeks in advance, but my favorite event by far is the No Talent Show. This is the night of the most drinking (since it takes place in the employee pub) and the most fun. There are no rules. There are no censors. There are only the occasional repercussions for nudity.

  I had actually won the gold medal in this event the previous winter, having made a parody of The Vagina Monologues with a few of my male friends in a skit entitled "Cock Tales." But this winter I wanted to make a movie: a parody of Werner Herzog's documentary, Grizzly Man, which had been seen by practically everyone at Snowlodge. I called my version "Snowcoach Man" and it featured, among other scenes, an expletive-filled rant by me (as Timothy Treadwell) against the Park Service: What is the job of the Park Service anyway? They're supposed to protect the animals in the Park. Well what about that bison at Fishing Bridge! It was sick, and it was dying, and it lay down in the road to die a natural death. So what did the Park Service do? They fucking shot it! Fucking Park Service!!

  It won the gold. A lot of people asked me if I got any flack about that film from the Park Service, but they were actually very good about it, even when someone posted it on YouTube. It was the Company that freaked out:

  "James! We're getting all kinds of flack from corporate about this YouTube thing."

  "James! You've got to take Snowcoach Man off of YouTube or there's going to be serious repercussions."

  "James! Park Service wants to talk to everyone involved in the making of your film so I'd advise you to take it off YouTube now."

  This last e-mail was a feint. The Park Service was not interested in my trifling film. As one ranger explained, "I thought Snowcoach Man was pretty funny, and I shot the bison!"

  So the movie stayed on the air and there were no repercussions (it was in fact subsequently shown at the Gardiner Film Festival, a local venue, which settled the matter), but the Company kept an eye on me the rest of the winter. They found their chance to bring the hammer down when I submitted a photo for the winter photo contest which showed several drivers standing on top of their snowcoaches in Hayden Valley.

  "Have you seen this picture? Have you seen this picture!" they shrieked at my boss.

  The dust soon settled when they admitted that there was nothing wrong with drivers standing on top of their snowcoaches in Hayden Valley.

  The picture took third place and I went on to win the No Talent Show two more times. I am now the Lance Armstrong of the Yellowstone Winter Olympics' No Talent Show.

  So I got that goin' for me.

  Bartender

  I CONTINUED to fly below the glass ceiling for those who eschew management by getting hired as a bartender. I’d had some bartending experience, thanks to three seasons at the employee pub in Grant Village, but that job only looked good on paper. In reality, all I did at the pub was pour beer and burn nachos. I couldn't have told my interviewer what went into a Screwdriver, much less a Perfect Manhattan, up, with a twist. Luckily, she didn't ask, at least not before I'd had the opportunity to cram the Mr. Boston Bartender Guide into my head during the seasonal break. As it turned out, I didn't need half of what I'd memorized. Most of the pours were beer and wine, with about a dozen mixed drinks rounding out the repertoire one needed to survive.

  So, after seven years in the dining room I moved into the Bear Pit at the Old Faithful Inn. There were a few noticeable differences from my former job of waiting tables. First of all, I discovered that most tourists regard bars in national parks as outposts of civilization in an otherwise unfamiliar and threatening environment. Here they feel at home, or at least more relaxed, especially after a few drinks, and they begin to appreciate their surroundings. The bar is like a decompression chamber which allows people to stop scrambling and worrying long enough to consider the not unimportant fact that they've arrived in one piece. It also gives haggard moms and dads a little time away from the kids, with whom they've lived a cramped, laboratory-rat existence in their cars for several days. While one parent assumes the burden of the children, the other wanders into the bar. You can spot these unyoked beasts the moment they walk in from the way their eyes play reverentially over the decor and fasten on the barman with a grateful gleam. The younger crowd traveling in groups tend to adopt the bar as their base of operations. They plan the next day’s excursion there and meet afterwards to toast its success (or to share their misadventures). Occasionally an old-school drinker would belly up to the bar and order his Martini or Manhattan, watching carefully as I poured and stirred, comparing my moves with his regular barman back in the neighborhood. These guys would invariably call me “Jim” or “Jimmy,” because for them a bar was a boy’s club and you had to keep things chummy. They drank their one drink, let you know if it was any good, and went on with their lives. They may have been lousy husbands, bigots, or right-wing reactionaries for all I knew, but I admired their approach to drink.

  Of course there were alcoholics to be dealt with, but these were generally fellow employees who were just starting their binges in the Bear Pit because they couldn't wait for the employee pub to open. After a couple of rounds they would check their watches and be off to get their bargain drinks.

  The main difference between my former job waiting tables and this one was that bartending was physically less demanding. There was no heavy lifting required, no rushing back and forth between table and kitchen. There was also the added bonus that people in bars tended to be less emotional about their service. Where diners think nothing of making a scene because the server forgot their side of mayonnaise, people in bars will generally hold their tongues about little errors like the wrong garnish or if their drink is served up instead of on-the-rocks. The reason is simple: you don't fuck with the barman. Where a waiter is seen as an errand boy, a bartender is seen as a skilled craftsman who can banish you from his bar if he doesn't like you. I wasn't used to being in charge, but I warmed up to it quickly, putting my personal stamp on the BP by playing free jazz on the sound system instead of the usual rock and encouraging customers to talk about their experiences in the Park. By the end of the summer the woman who hired me had the satisfaction of knowing that she'd picked a winner, and my dad could finally tell his friends what I did for a living - because in his world, saying his son was a waiter was no different than saying his son was gay.

  * * *

  As I came to work one morning in September I was told by a co-worker that there had been a tourist attacked.

  "What was it, a bison?" I asked, anticipating a tale of foolishness whereby Fred from Iowa got a little too close and was sent airborne.

  The co-worker just blinked at me, then realized my misunderstanding and shook his head.

  “No, no, not a tourist. A terrorist. There was a terrorist attack.”

  It was the eleventh, and I learned the grim details only a few minutes before opening the bar for the day. Management was already there when I arrived. They had set up a satellite dish and a TV, tuning it to CNN as a crowd of people began to hover outside, having heard the strange rumors. When I opened the doors they wandered in like zombies, ashen-faced and quiet, staring at the images on the screen without comment. Then they began to drink. Slowly at first, almost apologetically. As the scenes were replayed and the magnitude of the event sank in, they started lining up for their third and fourth rounds, spending their cash quickly, desperately, as if it were about to become an obsolete currency.

  Operation Maple Syrup

  OPERATION Maple Syrup was a radical experiment in the redistribution of wealth that served as a counterbalance to the systemic greed of corporate America. Or, put another way, it was a bunch of employees robbing the company blind.

  In the summer of 2001, the corporation decided to gut its accounting department and eliminate all of its dining room cashier positions, turning to server banking and requiring the wait staff to do their own cashiering as well as a good portion of the bookkeeping duties formerly handled by the accounting staff. For this extra work the company was willing to pay exactly nothing. They figured to sav
e tens of thousands of dollars by downsizing one department and simply heaping the added work elsewhere with no attendant increase in pay. So it had to have been an easy step for the $3 an hour employees to take when they perceived that with no accounting oversight, money could simply “disappear” into their pockets (especially during the breakfast shift - hence the name of the operation).

  There is a Dilbert cartoon in which the title character explains to an innocent co-worker that they are in the process of doing something unethical. “Are we bad people?” the co-worker worriedly asks. Dilbert replies, “We’re good people who have been influenced by a corrupt corporate culture.” And so it was in the summer of 2001. But this practice could not have reached its extortionate extremes without some of the managers turning a blind eye to what was going on. In fact, there were managers who were just as appalled by the blatant greed and disregard for employee welfare as were the employees themselves. So they not only turned a blind eye, they did it with a wink, and the trickle of misdirected money became a flood. What remained of the accounting department could only watch in horror as the receipts came in. They knew something was up, but they didn’t know the scale of it. I heard one accountant lament, “The company must have lost ten thousand dollars this summer.” When I relayed this information to a friend of mine who worked in the restaurant he laughed and said, “More like ten thousand dollars a week!”