“The Bear Dogs Of Katahdin, And Other Recollections of a Baxter State Park Ranger,” published by Xlibris Corporation, 2007, 91 pages, $15.99

Ever since he was a kid in Connecticut, all Steve Tetreault wanted to be was a park ranger. He attended Unity College, graduated with a degree in park management and landed a job in Baxter State Park in the spring of 1986. Over the next three summers, he uncovered just what being a park ranger means. The years he spent there must have been remarkable, because he recently wrote a book about his memories of those summers.

In his book, “The Bear Dogs of Katahdin, and Other Recollections of a Baxter State Park Ranger,” Tetreault tells tales and shares stories of his ranger duties with other co-workers, revealing a slice of outdoor life that few of us will ever experience. The stories are sometimes comical, sometimes tragic. They’re all told in a clear, concise style.

It all starts when he’s a summer intern during the spring of his graduation year. He’s assigned a job to develop a summer campfire program for campers at the park’s campgrounds. The next thing he knows he’s interviewed for a summer job as a campground ranger. He lands the job outside the park boundaries on newly acquired park land as a campground ranger without a campground. His main job is to paint a concrete block building to “blend in” with the forest surroundings.

He’s not sure what he has gotten himself into when he pulls in to Togue Pond and his live-in job in 1986. He writes, “This land wasn’t even in the boundaries of Baxter State Park. At the time, I was a little disappointed. I didn’t feel like I was a ‘real’ ranger. I felt like just another worker hired to perform duties with a pick and shovel. All those years spent dreaming and studying to be a ranger just to dig in the ground.”

That summer, though, he settles in to his log cabin with a great view of Mount Katahdin across the pond and starts to take ownership of his job of protecting the resource that is Baxter State Park. That first summer he has encounters with black bears and, in one funny incident, a mother moose protecting her young.

The next year, in one particularly interesting episode, he confronts an angry developer with two Maine state senators in tow. The confrontation happens as he’s cleaning up his tools and brushes after painting the cinder block building that is to become the present-day visitor center at the Togue Pond Gate. He looks up from his chores to see a pickup truck driving too fast down the dirt road to his cabin.

Tetreault confronts the people inside about the damage they’re doing to the sensitive environment near the pond, voices rise, then a man identified only as a developer introduces himself and the two people with him as senators. Tetreault says he doesn’t care who any of these people are, they have to leave. The developer and senators demanded his job, then involved the park director, Irvin “Buzz” Caverly, to force him to sign a letter of apology. Tetreault learns an important lesson about his place in the park, himself and public relations.

Throughout the book, you get the sense the park comes first and recreation second. In fact, Tetreault refers to that philosophy often. He writes, “I really thought I could see Governor Baxter’s vision of preservation first and recreation second. Togue Pond might become part of Baxter State Park someday and I felt great pride in that I was able to heal its shoreline. And I’m sure I felt a little overprotective of the Togue Pond area as the season wore on.”

In the story called “Rodeo Bulldogging – Baxter Style and The Bear Dogs of Katahdin,” he explains what bear dogs are and how to bulldog them to the ground. It’s hilarious. It turns out that every year bear-hunting dogs end up in the park after losing the bear they’ve been tracking. Tetreault and another ranger, Greg Hamer, then figure that with Hamer straddling the hood of a pickup he can leap from the moving truck to wrestle the bear dog to the ground. The image of a ranger on the hood of a truck driving down the dirt Perimeter Road chasing a dog is unforgettable.

In one tragic incident, the author is called on to aid in recovering a body from Knife Edge. He was to be the park representative to meet the boy’s parents at the Millinocket airport. According to the book, “But the most vivid memory I have of this whole sad story was landing at the airport. I don’t think I could have said anything to comfort them. ‘Sorry for your loss’ doesn’t quite cut it in a situation like that.”

These are just a few of the stories in the book. There are the stories of other rangers with whom he develops strong bonds and shares adventures – people such as Bernard Crabtree, Scott Fisher, Loren Goode, Bob Howes and Chris Drew. This book is a great addition to your “books-on-Katahdin” collection and is one of only a few from a ranger’s perspective. In all the tales the setting itself is part of the story. It’s tough to imagine a better place for them to be set than Baxter State Park.

sourball@gwi.net