One of the things that comes with living in not just a small town, but a small town that is a gateway community to a National Park is learning to accept the concept of seasonal relationships. As another season in Yellowstone winds down, and Gardiner settles into a nice little mud season before the summer traffic arrives, thoughts go to this dynamic and how we all choose to deal with it.
With a year-round population of about 850(as of 2000 census, and including outer-laying areas), a large portion of those you interact with are seasonal staff from both the park and local business who pump up their hours and staff during the busy summer season. A significant portion of these jobs, however, disappear along with the throngs of summer visitors, so as a quickly as these people showed up they are gone again. This was a very tough thing for me my first summer working in Yellowstone...I left Old Faithful with a friend(love you Brent Simon!), bound for our common home state of Oregon, and were both a sobbing mess at the thought of leaving our new-found "family". As the years went by though, this seemed easier each time. Sometimes I attribute this to already having a group of close, established friends so I just didn't meet as many new people; other times I seem to know, deep down, that I probably didn't go out of my way to make new friends, in the name of saving the inevitable, heart wrenching goodbye that comes about more often than not. Surely a bit of each of these is true to a point but, regardless of which, it makes me a bit sad to think of both the countless good-byes and the missed opportunities at wonderful friendships that I may have passed by.
This winter marks my 10th season of working in Yellowstone(not to confuse "season" with "year"...I have worked in the park for about 5 1/2 years) and the passing into the world of double-digit seasons is somewhat bittersweet. Seasonal folks are making plans for their "break", a concept that us with regular day jobs and houses to take care of find a foreign one, at best. "Fun-employment" is a thing of the past; notebook pages filled with addresses of new friends are replaced with trips to the post office to retrieve the electric bill; the countdown begins to the summer days when the grocery store will stay open past 7pm(!) and we all anxiously await the sunshine. But with the sunshine comes the influx of raft guides, housekeepers, servers and of course, the visitors. But, best of all, the seasonal friends will return with pictures and tales of fun adventures....and us regular, full time town folks will start dreaming up ways to get two weeks of vacation at one time :o)
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