Excerpts from an interview with Mark Douglas, Wilderness Fellow at Glacier National Park - September, 2012.

Interview was conducted by Jesse Engebretson, Wilderness Fellow at Saguaro National Park and Chiricahua National Monument.

JE: Overall, how was your experience as a wilderness fellow this summer?

MD: I’ve had a wonderful time being a wilderness fellow. Glacier National Park is an amazing place and I feel lucky to have gotten to spend a summer in the park.I enjoyed working in the Science and Resource Management center and learning about other scientific work going on in Glacier. You know, I really liked developing a relationship with the place and getting to know the area.

                       Mark spending some free time on Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park

JE: What were the biggest challenges you faced?

MD: Deciding on the most meaningful, sensible, and practical measures can be tough. Since a wilderness and the way we steward it are interconnected in a socio-ecological system, it can be tricky selecting a set of components when you see that what relates to one part of the system, feeds back into outcomes you might expect in another part. Fortunately, the agency leaders and past wilderness fellows have been good to keep track of what has worked for better or worse in other cases of wilderness character monitoring. And they provided strong guidance for me navigate those challenges.

JE: Can you talk a little bit about the measure selection process? What did that look like?

MD: Well, first of all, what worked for me in Glacier might not work in every setting with all the differences from protected area to protected area. That said, my approach was to spend about a week looking over park planning documents and past reports to identify where the focus has been and where there was a greater likelihood to keep the momentum going. So, after that, I sat down with the scientific and cultural resource management program manager on one occasion, and the wilderness specialist at another time, and we discussed the feasibility of using different measures and settled on a hopefully indicative and significant set. Throughout the summer some measures were added or removed based on the emergence or lack of appropriate data. I think it was a structured and dynamic process.

JE: How about the narrative? Were there any particular challenges with it?

MD: Yeah, that was definitely one of the greatest challenges. It’s almost a challenge just to describe why it was difficult. But, trying to capture in words the intangible nature of Glacier’s wilderness and then translate those multidimensional meanings into a sensible narrative was daunting. That’s why I began that chapter of the final report with George Grinnell’s quote regarding Glacier: “No words can describe the grandeur and majesty of the mountains, and even photographs seem hopelessly to dwarf and belittle the most impressive peaks.”

JE: What are some memorable things you got to do in the park outside of your role as a wilderness 

fellow?

MD: I have several amazing memories, but I’ll share this one: One afternoon I decided to treat myself to a walk around Avalanche Creek. After a long day of data entry I made the relatively short trip up the Going-to-the-Sun Road to the Avalanche Lake trail head. I had been told that the interpretive signs for the Trail of the Cedars were unique in comparison to what you commonly find on NPS interpretive signs. I started up the trail on the campground side of the creek and quickly found myself enveloped in a Cascadia forest. Big trees, many ferns, moist air, organisms galore. It reminded me of some of my old haunts in the redwoods of northern California. I saw some other folks out enjoying the early evening and crossed the creek. I was making my way down the path when a large old trail blaze caught my eye. For folks that may be unfamiliar, to mark the route of a trail, it had been a common practice to shape and remove some of the bark on trees to make it easier to stay on track if the path became overgrown or covered in snow. So I was looking at the blaze and wondering when it was first marked when I heard a loud twig snap between the trail and the creek. It sounded like it came from a somewhat heavier footfall. I peered through the brush and saw a medium sized black bear foraging about and eating some berries. The bear didn’t see me or at least acknowledge my presence. I watched it for a while and saw the bear make its way over the trail and off into woods. It was just really great to see a bear doing bear stuff and taking its role in the forest. There’s something inspiring to me being in the presence of wildlife. 

Trail of the Cedars interpretative sign, Glacier National Park 

JE: What’s next in the wonderful world of Mark? What are your plans now that you’re done?

MD: Well, I’m beginning the second year of my forestry doctoral program at The University of Montana. I’ll be spending the fall in classes and working on my dissertation proposal. I plan to investigate the role that meanings play in visitor perceptions of and relationships to wilderness in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. I’m also working as a research assistant to my advisor, Dr. Bill Borrie, helping him investigate visitor travel patterns in that same wilderness area. More of the same in the spring, next summer, I will be collecting data for both efforts in that north woods canoe country. After that, I’ll finish the PhD and look for more opportunities on the horizon.