Baby Boomer Ranger

Tomorrow is my Going Away Party.
My party for leaving the Sierra National Forest.
And I am sad.

I keep thinking about divorce. I am very fortunate to not know first hand about divorce, and I hope that this is a close as I will ever get.
It is a friendly divorce, but papers are now final.

I also keep thinking about a bad joke. You know it, it goes like this:
A man goes to his doctor “Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I hit my head against the wall!”
The Doctor tells the man, “then stop it…”
There comes a time to listen to one’s doctor.

And

“GOD, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and the Wisdom to know the difference.”

Several of my friends should be very sick of hearing me say “I need to move on.”
I do, and I am.

“Is this what you want?” I was asked.
DAMN Right it is!

I ready to get back to managing the National Forests of this country.
I want to start a project and finish a project, and really know it starts and when it is done.
I want to make agreements, keep agreements and be held accountable for my agreements.
I will know what I am going to work on for that day, week, and month.
I am going to be on time and prepared.
I will be technically challenged to apply what I know and learn what I don’t know.
And if someone else doesn’t want to keep up their part of the agreement, I know my choices.
Stop, or move on. That is all there is.

My first week is developing contracts and arranging work as a Natural Resource Planner. I have a large, forest-wide plantation thinning/fuels reduction project on the Shasta-Trinity Forest. I will be working on a gas pipeline that goes across three National Forests in Southern Oregon, and I will be picking up a City of Los Angeles transmission line project across the Angeles National Forest. It feels great to do what I was trained in doing – planning large-scale, multi-forest, multi-agency, resource management projects! Caring for the Land and Serving People, that’s what I’m talking about.

What will become of “Cindy Blogs the Sierra?”
I have a plan.
After all, “I blog for good, not evil!”
There will be more to come.

I am writing this on my last Cindy Blogs the Sierra day. My last day as an employee of the Sierra National Forest.
Starting on Monday, June 23, 2008, I will be a Forest Service employee working virtually for an Enterprise Team. I am going to be a “Forestry Ranger” without a Forest. I will be part of AMSET; Adaptive Management Services Enterprise Team.

I now work for a new Forest Service, a Forest Service without trees.
I can’t just jump into a green rig and drive out to the field to “check-it-out.”
I won’t see my supervisor on my first day of work.

I won’t be ushered around to see the location of the mailroom, the restroom, the snack area or the back door.
I will be entirely responsible my own work space and find my own supplies and materials, my own files and my own time schedule.
I will not walk around the office and meet my fellow team members, because they don’t work here.
I am unfunded.
I do not supervise anyone, and
I start off with no projects, no management areas, no administrative responsibilities, no program oversight, no Program Work Plans and no targets.
I have no authority.

Here I am signing my last Cost Recovery Agreement as a Cost Reviewer for the Sierra National Forest.
And all those Special Use Permits… they will be dumped on some other GS-9.

Who would have imagined a Journey Level GS-12 460 Forester with the US Forest Service without a District, without a Forest or a Region?

But… this is a very, very good thing for me to do.

to be continued…. because now I need to get to work… Resource Management Work…