Jared and I were blessed with the good fortune to be born and raised in the breath taking Manti La Salle National Forest in southern, Utah where our father was the forest ranger. I was born just after my parents arrived in Monteicello and Jared was born two years later.

In 2004, the year that the National Forest Service celebrated 100 years, I received a call from a woman in the Regional Office, which was located in Ogden. She asked me if I was a “Ranger Kid.” I did not know what that was, so I asked her. She said, “Oh, that is a kid that was raised in a ranger station on the National Forest.” That meant that Jared and I were “Ranger Kids.”

Our family consisted of our parents, older brothers Neal and Jay, and a younger brother Clyde that was born six years after Jared. Because we had a family of five children (four boys and me), my mother was pretty busy taking care of the family essentials. My brother Jared — who was just two years younger than I — was my playmate, and life on the edge of the wilderness was one adventure after another.

As I was growing up I had no idea what an incredible childhood we had. (I didn’t realize how lucky we had been until I went to New York and saw the open fire hydrants and the kids playing in the street.) Being raised in such an open, creative environment had a huge impression on my life. If we could dream it up and we got permission from our parents, we did it. This included everything from building two tree houses, making a canvas swimming pool, and catching wild chipmunks and much more. Adventure was our middle name.

Adventures With Animals

Pet Chipmunks

Common animals in the area were chipmunks that ran wild on the property. We designed and created several traps to catch them. We even built a special chipmunk pen by digging a three-foot hole in the ground and then filling a wooden box with wheat and wool for the chipmunks to make a place to hibernate during the winter. We ran a pipe up to the top of the ground and then built a big wire pen around a bicycle wheel. We wrapped a wide screen around it so the chipmunks would have a path to run.

The chipmunks loved to run on the wheel. Then, when it got going too fast, they would jump off. One day when I was in the pen feeding the chipmunks, one ran up my pant leg. I put my hand around my leg so it could not keep going up, and then I let out a scream. It took off and went back down my pant leg.

Chickens

About 100 yards up the hill was the chicken coop. There we had a dozen chickens that kept our family in eggs. It was often Jared’s and my job to go to the chicken coop and gather eggs. We would love to throw out the wheat and watch the chickens flock to us and eat. While they were occupied, I would check their nests to gather the eggs. My favorite was to get a big egg and then rush back to the kitchen to see if it was a double-yolk egg. We learned that brown hens laid brown eggs and white hens laid white eggs, but there is not any difference between a white egg and a brown egg except the color of the shell.

Our chickens were range chickens and our eggs were real organic eggs because we would often feed them table scraps. That just means they were really healthy. We didn’t know about “range chickens” and “organic” eggs back in those days.

Milking the Cow

We had a Jersey cow named Puggy. It took Jared and I a while to get the hang of how to milk a cow, but with a lot a practice we finally succeed in getting some milk in the bucket. Often the one that was milking would turn the cow nipple to the side to see if we could squirt milk in the other one’s mouth. This was great fun, and as we practiced we got better and better.

After milking the cow, we would put the milk through a strainer and put it in a large glass bowl in the fridge. The next morning we could go in and skim off the best part, the cream. What Jared and I loved most was when my mother would make cream puffs and then whip the cream and add a little sugar and put it in the puffs. They were the best.

Shoeing Horses and Fixing Trucks

One of our favorite buildings was the warehouse. When ever the horses needed to have new shoes, Jared and I would run to help the men. In one end of the warehouse was a blacksmith’s fire and bellows. After starting a fire, we would turn the crank, which would add air and make the fire really glow so that the horseshoes would be heated up and then they could be bent to fit the horse’s hoofs.

It seems like what ever we did, we learned so much from each experience. This whole experience was what you might see in a living history museum now, but we saw and learned all about caring for animals first hand at a very early age.

On the other side of the warehouse was a pit where the trucks that needed repair would drive over the pit and then a repairman would jump into the hole and repair the trucks. We were always entertained by the activities that went on in our everyday life living at the Ranger Station.