With the government shut down, we're trying to keep chaos at bay in Joshua Tree

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

With the government shut down, we’re trying to keep chaos at bay in Joshua Tree

By Sabra Purdy
Sabra Purdy is a restoration ecologist, climbing guide, and guide service owner. She lives with her husband, Seth, and her two Jack Russell Terriers in Joshua Tree in the winter and in the Sierra Nevadas in the summer.
January 2 at 9:07 AM

Clear across the country from Washington, it can feel as though Congress is continually in crisis, and a shutdown always looms over us. At any moment, we’ll have to spring into action to keep things from falling apart. For me and 40 or so other volunteers, this means cleaning up after the tens of thousands of tourists coming to Joshua Tree National Park every day. When government workers are told to stay home, we trek in and do some of what they can’t.

We scrub restrooms, restock toilet paper and empty the garbage cans, hoping to keep the chaos at bay. We’ve been doing this amid the flurry of the holiday period, the busiest time of year for the rock climbing guide service that my husband and I run. It isn’t pretty, but we count ourselves lucky that the park’s gates are open at all. If we’d had to cancel all our trips and refund our customers’ deposits, we wouldn’t have been able to make payroll and our staff would have taken a huge financial hit.

The last major shutdown, in October 2013, locked us out of the park for 16 days. Between that and nearly 1,300 civilian employees of the nearby Marine Corps Base Ground Combat Center getting furloughed, the local economy suffered enormously. The motels, restaurants, and shops were all empty. Joshua Tree was a ghost town. A shutdown affects not only those directly employed by the government, but all the people whose livelihoods depend on federal land: Although October was relatively early in the season, my husband and I still lost about $5,000 in income. With our schedules suddenly clear, we filled the time with gardening, and getting people to call their congressional representatives and attend our Shut Down the Shutdown rally. (We sang “This Land Is Your Land” in front of the locked front gates and put on some silly political theater involving Uncle Sam being attacked by zombie congressmen.)

This time, the shutdown is happening during peak tourist season. It has barely dented the usual traffic — in fact, more people may have come once they figured out there wouldn’t be fees or rangers. Cars are lining up to enter, and then parking in crazy configurations. No one is staffing the kiosks out front to collect entrance fees. The campgrounds are completely full. There are people everywhere.

We now have a standing 10 a.m. meetup to organize volunteers to head to the park together. We’re driving trailers full of trash out of the park, and spending hundreds of dollars on cleaning supplies. ...

-snip-

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/02/with-government-shut-down-were-trying-keep-chaos-bay-joshua-tree/

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[Beatlelvr]

2. You're a typical civil servant

And I mean that as compliment! You are dedicated to your work, care about doing a good job, and have the character to take the high road. I saw on tv that they kept the park gates open but no one available to take the fees.
I was a state employee for 38 years, and we dealt with the occasional furlough, and lack of contract agreements between Sacramento and unions, but I never went without pay. Although some folks, in other departments did.

This is the result of just plain pettiness and stubbornness by Prick in Chief. It's not a matter of two sides trying to negotiate fairly on issues of merit.

I commend you for your dedication and resolve. I would be there to help if I could. Thank you.