Finding the Wild: How MacNeil Lyons Turned a Dream into Yellowstone Insight

What does it take to build a real life in Yellowstone, not as a visitor, but as someone who stays? MacNeil Lyons grew up crisscrossing the country, from Colorado to the eastern shore of Maryland, to California, and never lost his pull toward wild, open places. In this episode, he traces a career that moved through nine years of National Park Service seasonal and term positions, a stint with the Yellowstone Association Institute, and a brief private sector chapter before founding Yellowstone Insight, his own guiding company, roughly ten years ago.

We get into what it actually looks like to build a life in a place like Yellowstone — not as a visitor, but as someone who has chosen to stay when the seasonal contract ends. MacNeil talks candidly about the appeal and the limits of NPS life, the pivot to nonprofit and private work, and what it cost, financially and personally, to launch a small business in a gateway community. He also reflects on the unexpected forms mentorship took across his career, how his college major opened rather than narrowed his options, and the version of success he never anticipated but wouldn't trade.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Trust in yourself and see your dream or your goals through as far as you can, but knowing full well that when there is that twist or that there is something, you try to find purpose moving forward in those detours that are given to you in life, but know that an end is always a new beginning. And try not to get too pessimistic about something getting cut off or coming to an ending point. Just try to be open-minded, be yourself and be undeniable to what you want to be, and things will happen for you. If you stay true to yourself, that's what matters.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Hi everyone and welcome to Pass Down, the podcast about the real, messy, unexpected journeys that lead us to the work we love. I'm Monica Argandonia, and every week I talk with someone who stories proves that there's no single right way to build a meaningful life. Spoiler, he pulled it off, one year ahead of schedule. What followed was nine years of seasonal and turn positions across the National Park Service, from the Marin Headlands to the Blue Ridge Parkway, to Yellowstone's education programs and wolf monitoring teams, before McNeil made the pivot to the nonprofit world and eventually to running his own show entirely. For the past decade, Yellowstone Insight has been McNeil's vehicle for doing what he's always done best, taking small groups of curious people into one of the most extraordinary places on earth and helping them actually see it. Not just the geysers and bison, but the geology, the ecology, the history, and the quiet moments between. We talk about what it really takes to build a career in the national parks, what he learned from walking away from a government career, and why he still goes to work every day with, in his words, a pocket full of optimism. Welcome to Pathfound. McNeil, thank you so much for your willingness to share your story today. I'm excited to talk with you. And as I start all these podcast episodes, if you could just go back and tell us what were you like as a kid, where'd you grow up, and what did you think you would be doing?

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Sure. Well, thank you again for the invite. This is an amazing opportunity just to connect back with you after so many years, and also an opportunity to tell my story in a way that usually doesn't get told when it comes to what I do for my life and my day job. So growing up as a young man, I was in Boulder, Colorado. And I think that's when I fell in love with kind of the West and the open country. So it really instilled in me the love of just the natural surroundings, but also little things like the smell of sagebrush after rain, how potent it is on the landscape and such a pungent, beautiful smell. And that really kind of resonated and stuck with me. But then I also had amazing parents that took me outside a lot. So this is back in the late 70s and 80s and things like that, where we would go travel to national parks. And it wasn't really backpacking, but it was car camping kind of trips. And I came to Yellowstone as a young boy. I was probably six or seven years old, and I have some very fond memories of that. So I think moments like that in my early days kind of instilled the appreciation of open spaces, wildness, and the opportunities of the unknown of what's right over the next hill.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

Nice. So from Colorado, where'd you go?

SPEAKER_00 3:22

So Colorado, we moved to the eastern shore of Maryland, and I grew up on the Chesapeake Bay, sailing and fishing in that area. Just wasn't cutting it for me as far as the wildness goes. Nothing against that part of North America. I have very fond memories of growing up there in middle school, high school, but wanting to get away from like the DC Beltway traffic, the 100% humidity, just that time in Colorado was very, very fulfilling for me as I think a young man. So I graduated from West Virginia University with a degree in recreation and parks management. And that put me to work for the National Park Service, as kind of my early career path. I guess we'll delve into it just a minute. But I tried to work west and get away from that East Coast side of living.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

So you knew really early on all that, how you grew up in Colorado, that is what you wanted to do.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

I think that there comes a moment when I reflect back to life's path. And there are a lot of forks, there's a lot of opportunities, there's a lot of hardships that go into the path you're trying to achieve. But a high school English teacher, I think it was in 10th grade or 11th grade, he had us say, What are we going to do 10 years after we graduate high school? Where are you going to be? And in that multi-page essay, I said I was going to be a park ranger working in Yellowstone National Park. I think if you look at the math, it was one year ahead of schedule. That was kind of a dream that worked out. So it was maybe a path found in that sense. That's something that I really had aspired to do. But I can tell you a little bit more, I guess, about how the Park Service jobs came into play. It wasn't really choices that worked directly to that. It was a little circuitous the way it came to be.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

So I mean, even you knew that was a career path or that was a job is kind of amazing, right? Not everybody knows in high school that's something I can do.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Honestly, Monica, in high school, I didn't know how to achieve that job opportunity, but I thought it would be really awesome. It would be a neat opportunity to wear that historic uniform of a flat hat and a green and gray uniform and work in a beautiful natural setting and teach people about nature. A term we don't really use so much anymore is a naturalist. And now it's turned into like interpretation. You're interpreting nature. But I can't tell you how many times I told people when they asked the question, what other languages do you speak? When I say I'm an interpretive park ranger. So you're interpreting nature, and that's where it goes into that older school terminology of a naturalist, where you're kind of incorporating the geology, history, ecology, and mixing that all together. I had no idea in high school how to achieve that, but I can think through the next couple educational moments in life where you move on to college and you have, I wouldn't call a mentor, a advisors that kind of lead you into certain areas. And I can recall that in college at the university in Morgantown, West Virginia, that the gentleman said, Why don't you try forestry courses? You know, that's outdoors. Nothing against that. But you know, the classmates there were in these courses are looking at how many bored feet can I get out of that tree when I cut it down. And that was not the outdoor experience or the connectivity that I won't wanted or was looking for. So I went back and then he said, Well, what about this new idea of recreation and parks management? And I had no idea what that was. But what I did appreciate over time is that it gave me a variety of different types of classes that were not pigeonholing me into something specific. It was more dendrology, the study of different types of trees, fisheries, wildlife management courses, public speaking, how to get different groups of individuals to get into a recreational outdoor setting, whether it be people with disabilities or younger children or even adults, how to connect them to nature. So every class that I took was slightly different, but yet leading you to something more grandiose or more bigger. And I thought about in that moment in time, I think a lot of us as students were thinking about, well, maybe I'm gonna open up a climbing gym and in an urban setting, or maybe I'm gonna try to be a superintendent at the local state park where I like to go rock climbing. Maybe I can aspire to manage that place that I love so much. And others were thinking, I'm just psyched about rock climbing and mountain biking, and it's recreating, so I'm doing what I love. So it became a variety of different options to look into. But in my heart, I thought about National Park Service, and that's where it came to the next segment of my uncle was actually in living in California at the time and went to a place in Golden Gate National Recreation Area, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, a place called the Marin Headlands. And he stopped and spoke to an interpretive park ranger there at the visitor center and said, Hey, my nephew is very interested in a career maybe into the national parks. What can you tell me? I can pass along to him. So that was actually the catalyst or the door that opened up for me that gave me an opportunity to work into an internship as my first opportunity to work into the National Park Service.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Okay. In college or right after college?

SPEAKER_00 7:58

In college.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

So it was kind of a requirement that we did some sort of internship our senior year. And this dovetailed right into that very nicely, where it became a $10 a day in West Marin County, eating a lot of ramen and living in park service housing that I didn't have to pay for, or maybe there was a small stipend fund for the seasonal job that I was doing in the grand scheme of things. It was pretty minimalistic for a three-month position outside of San Francisco and Marin County. Did you like it? I loved it. I loved it. It was, you know, a world away. I had not spent much time in San Francisco before that. And coming from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, have the summer where it's a little cooler, air temperatures, the fog bank that rolls in off of the Pacific Ocean, the cultural diversity of the city, food and everything, the music. It just became a neat opportunity to be able to work into that time of my life, but also to connect into maybe a future career path. And I was going to say that maybe that might be one of the pivotal moments in my adult life where two women, it was Roxy Farwell and Gail Lester, if they ever hear their names, hello. But they were the two women that I worked with at the time, were kind of my supervisory rangers at the time that kind of led me to how to write an outline for my first public speaking event and do things like that, and how to apply for future seasonal jobs with the National Park Service after I graduated college. So they kind of really helped mentor me into that opportunity. Then I took the reins by myself and went forward with it. But if it wasn't for that connection between my uncle just asking some random questions, getting a contact name and a number, me following up on it, that's where it led into. I mean, I could have done something in Virginia, maybe closer to home, but this was a real great opportunity for a new chapter in life.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

So you go back to West Virginia, you graduate, and what happens?

SPEAKER_00 9:46

I say this a lot to my guests that I have on a tour now that when we look at our national park system, a lot of people don't understand that the national parks that we have a coast to coast across this great nation are really run heavily on seasonal jobs. So great professional positions, but there's no health benefits, there's no retirement funds starting, and there's no overtime. You just work the seasonal jobs. So I had to figure out how to work my way into the system by getting a first position in the national parks and then from there build up that resume. And I thought one of the better opportunities would be to work in a variety of different sites rather than staying in one specific realm, like maybe if you're a history buff, sticking to battlefields and monuments and birthplaces and things like that. I decided Marin Headlands, part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area, ended up working on the Blue Ridge Parkway outside of Roanoke, Virginia. The Blue Ridge Parkway again on the North Carolina side in the Highlands district, south of the Virginia border on the North Carolina side. Point Reyes National Seashore, again in Northern California. And I spent a little bit of a summer season working for George Washington National Forest in Virginia. So a little bit of forestry or U.S. Forest Service work, but primarily just trying to see what opportunities were around. But building up that resume, I think, was very beneficial to getting me lined up for a job here in Yellowstone National Park 26 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Okay. So you ended up Park Service at Yellowstone.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Yes. So it started in the September of 2000. I had applied to Yellowstone in ride of different seasons, but I guess, you know, the resume was still in the building process. In a place like Yellowstone, it's hard to get opportunities here because people fall in love with the location and they don't want to leave, even if it is seasonal. So there were a lot of people doing the positions that I had been applying for that just kept resurfacing for seasonal jobs. So in the summer of 2000, I was working wildland firefighting jobs in Utah and Idaho. And I'd been out sleeping in the stage brush, breathing smoke for about seven days or so. And we finally got a night where we could clean up in a hotel. So I woke up the next morning, called my parents early just to check in, say, I'm still alive, everything is doing well, here's where we are. And my mother said, Thank you so much. I'm so glad to hear that. But also, Yellowstone called about your availability for a job. And so I took a pen out and name a number, but we had to get back onto the next fire opportunity. So with the help of my crew boss's cell phone, I was able to contact Yellowstone and accept that job. So as soon as I went back to Virginia from a 20-day, 18-day stretch of fighting wildfires, I had to inform my boss at the time that I was going to be leaving to take a job in Yellowstone. So I started in September of 2000 working in the education office, working a program called Expedition Yellowstone. So I was teaching school programs to classes that were coming here in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade primarily that lived at the Lamar Buffalo Ranch in the heart of the northern part of the park here in Yellowstone. And there were two park rangers for that school group that were kind of like maybe your personal guide, but you're a park ranger and you're a teacher. So every day is a different curriculum-based subject matter. So Geology Day, History Day, Wildlife, like Ecology Day. And then we intertwine activities and journaling and artwork and photography, kind of mixing all that into learning styles for students that were coming here to learn. And this became your classroom. And so it was a great opportunity to be a school teacher. But this is the classroom, Yellowstone National Park. But it was only guaranteed two months of work. So I drove from Virginia to here for two months of work, September, October. And then that led into other opportunities to stick around. And I'm not sure if this gets ahead of us or not, but kind of networking, I think, is a key thing to kind of tie into this part is that only guaranteed two months of work. I put my ear out there for different job opportunities. I know that Yellowstone is one of those national parks that has primarily summer jobs and winter jobs, but there's a slow season in between. So I could apply to a winter position, but I still didn't know what I was going to do, waiting for that call or an exception to a job. So heard that Doug Smith, the chief wolf biologist, was looking for volunteers. And so I contacted him and I set up an appointment. Actually, I should do it this way. I say this way that I was very professional and sending my resume in advance and set up an appointment. And I walked over to his office. I sat down with him, very formal, and said, This is what I can offer you. I'm not a biologist, but I'm a quick learner. And you know, you you tell me how to jump, I'll jump, and I'll do it. And he let me speak everything, and then he says, You want it, you got it. So uh it was real simple, real easy. I made it too much, but uh but that was a volunteer position. Correct. That was just a volunteer position. Gave me park service housing and again a small stipend for I think it might have been $200 for a month of hard labor. It's 30-day study that they do for November into December, and it's sunrise to sunset for 30 days monitoring northern range wolf packs and being out in the cold for the entire day. But that's where I was able to wait and then not leave the park. And then winter job called and said, We'll hire you for a winter season at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone in the heart of the park. And then that led me right into the spring season back with the education program.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

But these are still jobs that are just a couple of months at a time.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

No benefits, and you're just kind of getting through. Okay, but you're young, so sure.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Six at the time. So yeah, I was at that point where I was getting a little bit tired of living in dormitory kind of housing or wanting a little bit more stability. Whether it was to where am I gonna kind of tie down a little bit deeper and set some roots and try and think about purchasing property or getting family started and all those things are kind of in your mind as you're getting closer to your 30s and knowing full well that every job I'm accepting doesn't have long-term benefits, but you hope that it's gonna lead into something else.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

So how long do you do this?

SPEAKER_00 15:33

I'm a little bit fuzzy on this timing of things, but I can tell you with certainty that it was nine years with the quote company, nine years with the National Park Service as a seasonal or term government job opportunities. And the last position I held was a term job, which some people might understand as you're guaranteed two years of work, but at the end of the two years, it's not so much the job performance that's evaluated, it's the financial backing of where they're getting money for that position. And so at the end of the two years, even though I'd done excellent work and had glowing recommendations with my supervisors and coworkers, it was a hearty handshake and see you later. Thanks for your time, because the funding sources have come to an end. So that was about the ninth year, and I didn't want to continue that anymore. And also I fell in love with Yellowstone. I found a passion for this place that I didn't want to keep bouncing around. That's where I transitioned into another opportunity, and that was to work for the nonprofit partner with Yellowstone National Park, which was then called the Yellowstone Association Institute. And so I found that I could do very similar work, being a good steward to the land, being a mentor to people in the outdoor educational field, and also teach people from around the world, but do it even more in-depth than you could as an interpretive park ranger or the educating aspects of what the National Park Service can, working for the government. Now I could work for a nonprofit and expand the topics and delve a little bit deeper. So I took a position as one of the very first resident instructors with the Yellowstone Association Institute. So I could still live out of Park Service housing in the Yellowstone, but work out of the North Entrance Gate in Gardner, Montana, and still work in the national park and still be, I guess, recognized as doing good work, but still it was more permanent opportunities, but still you're working at a nonprofit. So if you're trying to expand family or trying to purchase property, that can be difficult too, especially in a gateway community to a national park.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

So how long are you with them?

SPEAKER_00 17:27

This is the hazy time. I'm sorry, I don't remember the exact dates. I got to go back and look at my resume. Let's say I want to say that was a few years. So I I think it was 2012 or 13 is when I branched off into the private sector to work as a private guide for a private company that was based in Gardner. And so I did that for a little over a year and a half, maybe about two years, and found that life with a child in a mortgage and trying to make a long-term plan was about time I should maybe try it on my own. I guess I jumped into the deep end, but it was familiar waters. I knew what I was doing. But being your own boss or trying to start a brand new company from scratch with just name recognition, I guess, is what was being to my benefit, because there's only one MacNeil in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. And so I had had that time in the national park, I had the time in the nonprofit, and then a little bit in the private sector. So that was a benefit to me as a small business starting out.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

So before we go into the your business, were you disappointed at this point? Like, you know, you kind of had set your sights on a park ranger. It's not happening. I mean, that's got to be super frustrating.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

It was very frustrating. And, you know, I don't want to get onto all the specific parts of it, but I can say that when you invest a lot of your personal time and efforts for a person like me, I try to give 150% or 100 to 10%, whatever you want to say, just do my best all the time. That came to a point where it made very difficult to know that that was not going to keep panning out and what I had invested into. I was still in a good place. It was just a matter of trying to make that pivot or, you know, that career turn to do something that you're doing the right thing, it's just not what it was thought to be. Like early path, I would say that a good friend of mine in college, we kind of shook hands at graduation and said, we'll see each other at superintendent meetings. You know, we both aspired to work for the National Park Service. And we chose two different ways. He went to the Peace Corps, where if you devote two years of your life in a volunteer position, maybe not knowing where in the world you're going to be sent, but after the end of the two years, you can apply to permanent positions within federal agencies like the National Park Service under the Department of Interior. I wanted to jump right into it. So I started taking the seasonal route. I thought for sure he was going to come back get permanent. I found out after two years of seasonal jobs that it's very difficult to get permanent in a place where you want to be. So I'm not sure if I made the right decision. Maybe I should have done what he did. But we agreed on we'll see each other as national park superintendents down the road. That's our retirement plan. The actual was he ended up coming back and working for, I think it was the city of Boston in their recreation department. And I ended up, you know, opening up my own business after, you know, these other avenues I just mentioned to be able to support my family doing something that I love. And so I think that at a younger age, you might find that there's a dream for you, but you're still learning. You're still working that path. And it doesn't have to be that goal. It might be something that's very similar, but in a completely different realm, a different aspect. So I think that was something that evolved over time, that I wasn't mad or annoyed that I didn't have that life dream come true. I had opportunities, but I also through that time I saw some of the bureaucracy of the National Park Service. I saw some of the hardships you can get stuck into as a like a middle management person within the government. And I didn't like those ideas. So I found other ways that I think were better for my personal heart and soul that I'm still able to do education. Instead of working that career path to be a superintendent, I'd have to sit at a desk for many, many, many years working budgets and schedules and everything else. And I that wasn't who I am or what I wanted to be about.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

So really realizing those realities, but you didn't pack up. Now you're pivoting and you're still in Yellowstone and you start your own business. How was that?

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Like it was very unnerving. I had to put a lot of things together in a short period of time, getting an online presence, get a vehicle that works for what we need out here 12 months out of the year in winter and summer conditions, the proper gear, high-powered spotting scopes, binoculars, things like that. But also make sure I had financial capacity to pay all the dues that I need to for the National Park Service, being a commercial entity in a government land, federal land, to be able to get commercial insurance and just making sure you do everything. Right. So that was a big shift, but I did it. It was very overwhelming, I would say, and disconcerting that when I left. The other private company, it was kind of short notice. And that's not really meant for this place and time on this podcast. It was a quick transition. So then I really had to kind of scramble to get things done because I had a child and because I had a mortgage. And I was basically just kind of thrown out without any opportunities or severance pay or anything like that because the seasonality of that type of job, which is kind of what you get out of it. So it's very scary, but it took a little bit of time. But I would say that again, because of the person that I am, because of the history that I had in this place, it definitely was a benefit. Not just opening up a brand new business starting from scratch. I had history here.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

Right. So how long have you been doing that now?

SPEAKER_00 22:41

This is 10 years. So successfully managing a small business for just this is my 10th year running now. And that's through COVID, that's through international travel restrictions, that's through flood, flood event in 2022 where we lost access to the park and $60,000 went refunded from tours that were already booked on our schedule that I had to refund because it was out of our control. So there was a lot of a lot of hardships in continuing forward and staying optimistic, staying positive and keeping it running.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

So just what do you do exactly? Like what is your business?

SPEAKER_00 23:14

So it's called Yellowstone Insight. And what I thought of is when you're trying to be catchy, trying to have something that's interest, I wanted my tours to be more deeper in education. So insightful rather than just see Yellowstone in a day type of tour. So my company is a small private guiding business that is no more than six people in a Chevy suburban. I'm your personal guide throughout an eight-hour tour experience day, but we can have multi-day trips and the subject matter is whatever you want. So it's very personalized, very customizable, and geology, history, wildlife, watching photography, human history in the park. Or we can dovetail all that into one tour and just answer all the questions you might have about all the different subject matter. So it's a private, guided experience based out of the northern part of the park. So we can pick up in the park or adjacent the northern area, but it's pretty much goes throughout most of the park. It's all about your the best experience I can give to you. Are you busy? I am overly busy. So as a small business, I expanded to the point where I even hired two friends that were looking for a different avenue of work. One was retiring from the park service. The other one was a good friend of mine in the nonprofit side of things that she wanted to go a little bit more on the private side. So anyway, I expanded and bought two new suburbans, bought more gear, had employees for a little while. But again, after the hardships in the tourism business after COVID and the flood and everything else, and then not only trying to manage the business, but also be a husband, be a father. And my family, we moved from Gardner to Bozeman in 2020, and that's a whole other avenue. But the small community, it was getting a little bit more difficult for family life through Airbnb and VRBOs taking over the small gateway community as an unincorporated town. There was not a lot of oversight or rules and regulations. So with a young daughter who's also getting very interested in swimming, where there are no pools in Gardner, we jump ship and we had to sell our property in Gardner to buy in Bozeman. So I was kind of commuting an 85-mile distance, trying to manage the business, working into the park, but also being a father and a husband and Bozeman. So a few years passed after with that transition where it wasn't a healthy lifestyle for me. I was trying to, you know, manage myself, my family, but also trying to keep employees happy. And so I decided that we all parted on great level, but but it was time for me to just kind of settle down and take care of myself, take care of my family, and do what I do with the business that I opened by myself anyway. It was not meant to really be a big, big business. That wasn't my goal. That was not my objective. It was to be a small footprint on Yellowstone and give a quality opportunity for visitors coming through.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

So it's just to you now.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Just back to me. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Do you like what you do?

SPEAKER_00 26:01

I love what I do. Yes, Monica, every day it's something different. And yes, there's mundane aspects of any job you can go to. There's some negative aspects of every job. But I found early in my, I guess, adult life that sitting in a cubicle or sitting inside an office structure with fluorescent lights up above was not meant for me. I needed fresh air, I needed movement. And so every day I go to work, it's always something new because the season changes, the light changes, the wildlife is never the exact same spot. And the enthusiasm that the guests bring to each morning because they've booked with me months and months in advance, this becomes an exciting moment that they're coming to. And so they come with enthusiasm. So that gets me enthusiastic too about going to work and the questions that are asked. Even they might be similar questions as the day before, or the day before that. I try to keep it lively for myself by answering in slightly different ways. I'm not a cookie cutter, canned interpreter. I just try to keep my brain kind of moving along too.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

So what do you see in your future? You've done this 10 years. What does the next 10 years look like?

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Well, I can't quite retire just yet. So I've got to get a kid through college. So I'll keep going as long as I can. I guess for the younger folks out there that might be listening to this podcast, what is that? The word, you know, side hustles and side gigs. I'm always looking for other opportunities to be able to kind of keep alive out there in different ways. And so I have speaking engagements that I do with different larger tour companies that they hire me on as a guest presenter. I have other ideas for maybe a couple books down the way, just other things to think about, ideas that I might be able to pivot again into as some more years progress. I don't want to be that curmudgeon old man that's been doing this way too long and getting fed up with it. So I'm not there yet by any means. It's just, you know, you see the increased park visitation and you see a lot of the term it stupid human tricks on a regular basis. And it gets pretty overwhelming when you see it year after year, and not a lot of respect by the masses to the resources that they're here to see. So it can get demanding. So will I do it for another 10 years? I don't know. Another five years. There's always concepts out there. So, you know, just keep an open mind, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

So looking back, knowing what you know now and all that experience, especially through the park service, what would you go back and tell your 20-year-old self?

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Oh, there's so many things I was thinking about, Monica, about what to say, what would be good words of wisdom or lessons learned. And I think a couple different varieties of things I was coming up with in the last couple of days about thinking back to my career would be trust in yourself. You know, your life is your path, and you should enjoy the ride. You should hopefully find the purpose in the path that you're choosing. So my father gave me a lot of life lessons growing up. One of those he said to me, he said, Son, you got to find a job you can go to with a smile on your face. If you can't, it's not worth going. And that's a hard thing to follow through with. And so I've been very blessed to have found that opportunity. I go to work with a pocket full of optimism and a smile every day and just see what happens. So I think trust in yourself and see your dream or your goals through as far as you can, but knowing full well that when there is that twist or there is something, that you try to find purpose moving forward in those detours that are given to you in life, but know that an end is always a new beginning. And try not to get too pessimistic about something getting cut off or coming to an ending point. Just try to be open-minded, I guess. That's something that might be a life lesson or something that I didn't learn in school or something that took time to figure out. But be yourself and be undeniable to what you want to be, and things will happen for you. If you stay true to yourself, that's what matters. Of course, you have to work for the man, you have to work for a certain company or a boss, or things might not be 100%. But if you can stay true to your core doing that job, then that's going to benefit you in the next chapter, in the next job opportunity, whether it be through the networking or word of mouth or great recommendations by the job you've done, just be true to yourself and do the right job and try to do something where you're kind and considerate in what you do. And hopefully that's not perceived as a weakness.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

I mean, I that's all great advice. But just going back, the National Park Service, and I think a lot of people who may think of that as a career and would want to pursue that, it's disheartening to hear how hard it is. And right, these are our national parks, these are our treasures. It shouldn't be that way. We should invest more, but we don't. And so there's a lot of kids out there or young people and college students, they also get struck by that. This is where they want to be in the outdoors, and this is what they want to give back and do. Would you go back and not do that again? Do you what advice, even for someone like that, who wants to pursue that field?

SPEAKER_00 30:43

I I would not do things differently in retrospect. I think that opened up doors, opened up learning experiences, even though knowing that they were just seasonal or they were a temporary piece of the puzzle to moving forward in that path of life. But it was a fun opportunity. I got to live and work in spectacular places in our country and meet like-minded people, meet good people. In my younger days, I didn't care about retirement. It was never even a consideration. Would it be nice to make a little bit more hourly rate, maybe have a guaranteed overtime? Sure. But then you'd be stuck into a job maybe in the location you want to be. So for the younger crowd that's out there that are thinking about working in the national parks, I'd highly recommend you do those. Take advantage of those opportunities. But keep in mind, too, that's something that if you want to fast track your permanent job opportunities in the National Park Service, then you can always work in places that are maybe not your ideal location, like saying the Washington Monument or the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia or a smaller battlefield, maybe not a smaller battlefield, something that's maybe more in a metropolitan area. There's more of a turnover in permanent positions. So I do remember that was an opportunity. I could work in Washington, D.C., but the permanent position was at a GS fiver grade series five, which is pretty minimal pay for living in Washington where the cost of living is high. So there are opportunities to be able to get permanent status sooner, but I chose more of that follow my own dreams and stay in the locations I wanted to stay in. So once I got the hook in Yellowstone, I wanted to stay here and ride that wave as long as I could without saying, okay, I've given it two years or a year and a half. I'm not getting any younger. Let me try to apply for that job in in New York City or Washington, D.C. and see what happens.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:33

But that was just me personally. So I think that there's great opportunities that are still out there. And don't let any negativity I might have said about these opportunities come across as a closed door to you. I think there's always opportunities. It's just a matter of how you specifically want to take that into your craft, your career, your path. And the National Park Service needs good people, especially in today's society, today's time. I don't want to get too political on this because I think we all know what's kind of happening. But my concern is that we're starting to find less people in the younger jobs, opportunity, workforce that want to get to be a government employee if they're not being treated so well, if they don't think there's going to be any long-term benefits. That's going to lessen the staffing issues. And we need people in the staff. So when you're young and you're capable of moving cross-country and you pack your life in the back of your car or your truck, do it. Have fun with it. Make it an opportunity, make it an experience. I wouldn't trade it for anything. I had so many amazing times throughout the course of those nine years building up my resume.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

So where can people find you? How do we book a tour with Lake?

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Thank you. Um Yellowstone Insight, I-N-S-I-G-H-T.com. But you can always follow along on the social media side. Something that I try to do as one of my other administrative duties is to keep the social media feeds up and running. So every day of what we see on tour, I try to post on Instagram and the stories. Sometimes there will be a post, but most likely, if just look at the circles, I've archived almost 10 years of daily activity. So you can see you can live vicariously through those sightings and see the seasonal changes, but also kind of if you're leading up to a tour in July, then follow me for the month leading up to your tour and you can kind of see what we're doing daily as the days progress.

SPEAKER_01 34:16

Yes, it makes me miss miss that area.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

Following along, thank you for it.

SPEAKER_01 34:20

Yes. And I can vouch personally, having been on several of your tours, it is well worth it. And I look forward to my next one sometime in the future. Nick Neil, thank you so much for sharing that and sharing your experiences. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 34:35

No, thank you very much for the call and opening up this door as a possibility. And one more thing I thought I'd mention just is that networking is something you should be constantly thinking about, no matter what your career path is. But everybody knows somebody. So just try to meet and greet and constantly network and keep your little list of names and numbers and what important things about them. You know, how many kids do they have, you know, what other parks do they work at? And just keep little notes so you can remind yourself in two years' time. Oh, yeah, that gentleman that was from that job back there, maybe I can give him a call again. And find the qualities that you love about your career and dive deeper into that. Make sure that you're integrating that into your job to keep it fun and exciting for you. And hopefully live the life with intention that keeps you going forward with a smile.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

That is wonderful advice. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 35:21

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Thank you so much for listening to Pat Stock. If anything we've talked about today connected with you or gave you a new perspective, we'd love it if you subscribe, left a review, or share the FSO. You can also find us on Instagram at the podcast. Explore more stories, Instagram stories.org. You can find a number of things for helping three stories to live editor design and mine creative for the beautiful artwork and web design. And if you're on your own path, navigating the unknown, making a pivot, or simply figuring it out as you go, just know you're not alone. The route may not be linear, but there's always a way forward. I'm Monica Gandonia, and I'll see you next time on Path Foundation.