Forest Rangers

Angeles National Forest rangers are holding an open house this weekend featuring storytelling, country music and nature walks to celebrate the centennial of the U.S. Forest Service. Among the events will be a presentation of "environmental magic with garbage" by Steve Trash, country music with Ric Kirk and The Sidewinders, re-enactment of a gunfight, a nature walk called "A Walk on the Wild Side," a history lecture on the Gabrieleno Indians and a slide presentation on geology.

Terry Barton was living her life's dream, working for the Forest Service and spending her days among her beloved trees. That dream shattered, along with the property and lives of thousands of people across Colorado, when marital disquiet led Barton to put a match to a letter from her estranged husband, setting off the largest wildfire in state history.

Christmas tree rustling in California's national forests is one holiday season rite that must be stopped, forest rangers said. "A lot people think that if I just take one, it's not a problem," said Carla Van Dyne at the Tujunga district office of Angeles National Forest. "Once they start cutting or even damage (the tree), it is going to die." U.S.

Retirement feels awfully peculiar to John Boggs and it probably won't last long. Call it a well-deserved respite for now. Boggs, 53, sits at the kitchen table of his Oak View home, drinking coffee and reflecting on 29 years spent patrolling the Los Padres National Forest as a ranger working out of the Ojai station.

Here in this remote slice of the High Sierra the U.S. Forest Service has launched a first-of-a-kind, summer-long, turn-back-the-clock training program in which rangers learn and apply the skills of a bygone era. In keeping with the pristine character of the surroundings, rangers enrolled in a special wilderness school maintain trails and footbridges in the old-fashioned way, without benefit of mechanized equipment.

A 29-year-old forest ranger from Bishop claimed a 2-hour, 8 1/2-minute speed record Tuesday for climbing Mt. Whitney, which at 14,494 feet is California's highest point and the highest peak in the United States outside of Alaska. Marty Hornick, a trails ranger for the U. S. Forest Service, hiked and climbed about six miles and ascended nearly 6,200 feet Sunday. He left from Whitney Portal and climbed the peak by the so-called Mountaineers' Route pioneered by John Muir in the 1870s.

Much is being neglected in current discussion about which legislator's district is to be hit by reductions in military bases or defense contracts. The deeper question is speeding up conversion of military facilities to peaceful uses. The possibilities for conversion are even broader than usually seen. They do involve planning by corporations and labor unions but also by local and national governments. They need to include both substitute use of facilities and alternate employment for employees.

For 28 summers, ranger Randy Morgenson has worked the treacherous high country of Kings Canyon National Park, clearing rocks from trails, instructing hikers on the beauty and hazards of its alpine lakes and rescuing those inevitable few who misjudge their skills. On July 21, Morgenson tacked a short note to the door of his solitary one-room cabin near Bench Lake at the 9,500-foot elevation: "I'm going on patrol. Back on the 24th." He hasn't been heard from since.

Along Grizzly Flat Trail, there are mountain tops for skyscrapers and waterfalls for swimming pools, pines for telephone poles and sunshine for fluorescents. It's not exotic, but it allows a city dweller to step quietly away from rush hour for a few moments that could make a difference.

Hundreds of firefighters aided by bulldozers worked Friday to contain an 11,000-acre brush fire in southwest Florida that destroyed six homes and forced the evacuation of 200 persons. Across the state a second major fire raged on in the Everglades. The more serious fire was burning in tinder-dry vegetation in the sprawling Golden Gate subdivision of Naples in southwest Florida.

So you think poison oak is a horrible plant whose only function is to cause severe rashes? Then prickly pear, a cactus with a barbed spine, can't be much better. It's covered with sharp thorns that can be quite painful. Believe it or not, both plants have medicinal value, despite their negative reputation. Though seven out of 10 people in the U.S. are sensitive to poison oak, it's a highly effective wart remover and has been known to cure ringworm.

It's springtime in the woods of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and here's the view: A couple of soggy, soiled mattresses are slumped against a dented washing machine, their faded yellow stuffing showing through gaping holes in the fabric. Strewn nearby are a rusty set of bedsprings, two deep freezers, two refrigerators, a water heater, battered easy chair, color television with broken picture tube, and other castoffs partially buried under what remains of the snow. "What a mess," U.S.

For 28 summers, ranger Randy Morgenson has worked the treacherous high country of Kings Canyon National Park, clearing rocks from trails, instructing hikers on the beauty and hazards of its alpine lakes and rescuing those inevitable few who misjudge their skills. On July 21, Morgenson tacked a short note to the door of his solitary one-room cabin near Bench Lake at the 9,500-foot elevation: "I'm going on patrol. Back on the 24th." He hasn't been heard from since.

Bouncing along a twisting, potholed dirt road, Guy Pence appears oblivious to the mountain trail's crumbling edges and hairpin turns. The tires of his government-issue Jeep are inches from a sheer drop, but Pence is busy scanning the forest around him. The fire came over the hill right there, he explains. Burned 18,000 acres in August, 1994. Before it hit, his people had a timber sale to reduce overgrowth.

Twenty years ago, a summer volunteer for a group that took Atlanta city children out to the country made a comment I'll never forget--though it was 20 years ago. These kids didn't "know how to walk" on the grass, she marveled, describing how her charges rolled gleefully around in the meadows as though on another planet. "They had only walked on cement before." Today the number of children exposed to wild lands and animals is smaller than ever before in human history, lament naturalist writers Gary Nabhan and Stephen Trimble, in a provocative and compelling collection of essays, "The Geography of Childhood."

A U. S. Forest Service ranger at the Green Valley ranger station in the Angeles National Forest was shot at Tuesday morning by a man who tried to steal a truck. The ranger first spotted the man, who remained at large Tuesday evening, as he hot-wired the ranger's Forest Service truck, which was parked in front of the station. After the truck was driven about a quarter of a mile, it broke down, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said.

Texas Canyon is an unlikely place to discover something worthy of inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. The canyon, tucked deep in the heart of Angeles National Forest about 11 miles northeast of Saugus, for years resembled a war zone. Thousands of gun enthusiasts had sprayed the hillsides, cottonwoods and desert plants with bullets and had illegally hauled in rusting cars, refrigerators and buckets of paint to use as targets. Only when forest rangers closed the area to shooters last year did the forest's two archeologists feel safe enough to approach the canyon, which was littered with a carpet of spent shells and shotgun casings.

Texas Canyon is an unlikely place to discover something worthy of inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. The canyon, tucked deep in the heart of Angeles National Forest about 11 miles northeast of Saugus, for years resembled a war zone. Thousands of gun enthusiasts had sprayed the hillsides, cottonwoods and desert plants with bullets and had illegally hauled in rusting cars, refrigerators and buckets of paint to use as better targets. Only when forest rangers closed the area to shooters last year did the forest's two archeologists feel safe enough to approach the canyon, which was littered with a carpet of spent shells and shotgun casings.

Ten pine cones are OK, fallen not picked. Or a manzanita branch--dead, of course. No problem with mistletoe, if it's only a grocery bag full. But forget about decking the halls with boughs of holly from the Angeles National Forest or trimming a tree from the San Gabriel Mountains on Christmas Eve or any other time during the holidays. During the holiday season, U.S.

Ten pine cones are OK, fallen not picked. Or a manzanita branch--dead, of course. No problem with mistletoe, if it's only a grocery bag full. But forget about decking the halls with boughs of holly from the Angeles National Forest or trimming a tree from the San Gabriel Mountains on Christmas Eve or any other time during the holidays. During the holiday season, U.S.