Happy Friday — we’re back with more Hot Bones on free Slurpee day.

For some reason I had in my mind that 7/11 was also the day you could bring in any reusable vessel and fill ’er up (✅mug, ✅Stanley cup, ✅football helmet, ❌trashcan), but apparently that sustainability stunt only happens during Earth Month. Today all you get is a free time capsule to summer brain freezes in the way way back of your best friend’s parents’ station wagon.

Last edition was all about another beverage — “beanless” coffee — and what would happen if I brewed it for my family without them knowing. This week, we’re changing gears to get the inside scoop on how to enjoy our national parks despite recent cuts to funding, staffing, and probably toilet paper. Plus, ways to give back.

Like anyone obsessed with tennis, I’ve already slipped tennis into a previous conversation with you at least once — and in this newsletter probably half a dozen times by now, usually unrelated to whatever the actual topic was. Sorry.

I do like to keep my tennis friends separate at least. They’re all in my phone as “[Name] + Tennis.” So there’s Julie Tennis and Maddy Tennis and Eric Tennis.

It’s nothing against my tennis friends — it’s just a helpful way to compartmentalize life groups. Plus, when we’re together, we’re either playing tennis, talking about tennis, or complaining about tennis-induced injuries. Of my 10-15 tennis friends, I probably know what 2 people do for work and maybe the names of 3 people’s spouses.

This works for everyone I play with except a man named Jim Northup. I met Jim hitting at a friend’s court a few years ago, and by a stroke of luck he emailed me to keep in touch instead of texting. So I had no chance of adding “Jim Tennis” to my roster.

Instead, Jim and I will hit when I’m out in Rappahannock County where he’s based, and we’ll catch up on life beyond tennis as well.

Jim is my parents’ age and he crushes me on the court. He always comes prepared with an orange Gatorade — which I covet even before the first set is done — and a single banana. He’s also recently retired from the National Park Service, with his last stint working as superintendent of Shenandoah National Park.

So when I was out visiting my folks a few weeks back, I had lunch with Jim and asked him a bunch of questions about his park experience. We did not talk about tennis the whole time, although we did play doubles a few hours later.

As you know, I like to do things in threes in this newsletter, so this conversation is broken out into:

Jim bookended his career in Shenandoah National Park — starting as a seasonal ranger and ending as superintendent — which is essentially the intern to CEO storyline. In between, he spent 36 years working for the park service around the country.

Get ready for a long list: Big Bend, Grand Canyon, Great Smoky Mountains, Grand Teton, Guadalupe Mountains, Cape Hatteras and Fire Island national seashores, the Buffalo National River in Arkansas, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan, etc etc etc.

I had low expectations for Jim admitting his favorite and least favorite park while on the record — “that's like asking about your favorite child” he told me — but he did have a few under-appreciated parks to highlight:

First, Big Bend in Texas.

“It's the most remote park in the Lower 48. My kids love to joke about how it was 110 miles to the nearest grocery store. Big Bend is a park that you have to really work to get to. And so it wasn't nearly as heavily visited as Grand Teton or certainly the Grand Canyon — and it’s a big, spectacular mountain desert park.”

Same for Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which is best known for its spectacular sandstone cliffs right on Lake Superior.

“There's world-class sea kayaking, there's great hiking, and that was really thrilling for us,” Jim said. “That was my first superintendency in the national park system, and my wife and I had never lived or worked in the Great Lakes region. We went there sight unseen — which is not uncommon to accept an assignment to a place you've never even laid eyes on before — and we just fell in love with it. We ended up staying there eight years.”

By this point in the questioning, I had just about finished my sandwich, eaten my fruit cup, and gotten to the ice dregs in my drink. Jim had had maybe three bites. It was all part of my plan to drain him of energy before tennis later.

I did give him a brief moment to refuel because the talk of moving somewhere sight unseen sounded a lot like my wife’s childhood moving around as a preacher’s kid.

“Most people don't appreciate the challenges associated with uprooting your family every couple of years and moving to an entirely new place,” Jim admitted. Thankfully, the park service is a relatively small government agency full of dedicated workers, and so “people within the agency know each other pretty well, and when you go to a park where you've never worked before, you may actually get an opportunity to work with somebody that you've worked with in another park. But even if that's not the case, there's a very strong sense of community.”

“Families would take you under their wing and help your kids get settled. They would give you recommendations for doctors and schools and all those things that you have to change when you move to a new place.”

“The transition was sometimes hard for our kids, because they would have to leave their friends behind and move to a new place. But I think as they look back on their childhood, they recognize they had the opportunity to be exposed to a lot of different cultures that most kids who grow up in one place do not, and even though not all those moves were easy, I think they really cherish the experiences they have.”

“Not very many kids get to grow up in national parks.”

Jim should expect at least one memoir per daughter coming out of Penguin Random House in the next 5-10 years.

Jim gets to take two more bites of lunch and sip his water while I list some terrible stats for context:

“There are several things I'd like to say about these budget cuts,” Jim told me. “My entire career we've been dealing with budget cuts. So nobody would fault an administration for saying ‘We can't afford everybody we have now — let's give some thoughtful process to which positions we're going to eliminate or which positions we're not going to fill.’”

“That's not what was done here.”

“The other context that I think is important is that even prior to this administration, the national park system has always been woefully underfunded. I can tell you that in a 36-year career here, I saw very little, if any, waste, fraud, or abuse. Park service employees were incredibly conscientious, incredibly hard working, and there was not much, if any, money being wasted by any of the individual parks where I worked, simply because the workload always greatly exceeded the staff's capacity to keep up.”

“And so when we talk about budget cuts, I think there are two things that are really important for the public to be thinking about: One is the people who've lost their jobs and the positions that haven't been filled. The second are the people left behind. We don't talk about those people very much, but the workload has not diminished at all.”

“I can tell you that everybody I talk to is demoralized and scared right now. It's my understanding that there are over 100 superintendent vacancies in the service. Many park service employees with many, many years of experience have just chosen to retire rather than endure this turmoil.”

Jim’s estimate is correct: Nearly a quarter of the park system’s 433 sites don’t have a superintendent right now. And the superintendent is like the general manager of each park, who essentially unites everything and keeps the place operating.

Or as Jim put it: “Parks are very much like municipalities. They have a wastewater treatment plant, they have a police force. Most parks have a staff that specializes in natural and cultural resources — one person might be a biologist, another person might be an air quality specialist, another might be a botanist dealing with invasive species. And then each park has a small administrative staff.”

There's also rangers, as well as maintenance staff keeping the trails hikable and dealing with all the crap that ends up in those wastewater treatment plants (there are 4 in Shenandoah, all hidden down fire roads, Jim tells me).

“When people really oversimplify the complexity of operating a national park, or they say ‘these budget cuts are no big deal, we can do with a few less rangers,’ what they don't realize is that, because a place like Shenandoah has a significant amount of infrastructure behind the scenes” that still needs to be kept up. And add to that the roughly 30 positions that Shenandoah has not been able to fund or fill for years prior to this administration, and this round of cuts really starts to hit deep.

“It's truly impactful. I don't want to say devastating, that sounds like an overstatement, but it is truly impactful.”

“My response is going to sound overly simplistic, but allow me to explain myself,” Jim said.

I love an oversimplification. Let me pile on with some emojis and subheadings.

1️⃣ Set low expectations.

Jim: “Anticipate that whatever park you're visiting is going to be significantly understaffed — so don't have the same expectation of service that you maybe had in the past.”

2️⃣ Say thank you.

Jim: “If you’re fortunate enough to have an interaction with a park service employee while you're there, thank that person for what they're doing — whether they're cleaning the bathroom or emptying the trash or collecting the fee at the front gate. Just know that those people are overwhelmed, overworked, under-appreciated.”

Another idea: Bring cookies when you visit. Cookies solve problems, not all problems, but some problems.

3️⃣ Come prepared.

Jim: “When I say be overly prepared, it sounds like a Boy Scout answer, but I'm really sincere about that. If folks would take a little extra time on the park website, really do your homework about where you're visiting, what the conditions are, what the safety hazards are, it will make it less likely that you have a problem and need assistance from the park staff.”

“For example, a lot of people don't realize that if you simply sprain your ankle or break your leg in the backcountry of a national park, it often takes 20 to 30 people to affect your rescue.”

“And there's not 20 or 30 people sitting at the ranger station waiting for that call. They’re getting pulled away from their normal duties. So if you can be more prepared, be more cautious, make sure you're not one of those people who causes an increased workload for the ranger staff, that's a big help.”

4️⃣ Drive the speed limit.

Jim: “This also sounds very parental. I don't mean it to sound that way, but another simple tip is to drive the speed limit [35 mph on Skyline Drive]. The park has dozens and dozens of vehicle wildlife accidents every year, cars running into deer and occasionally cars running into bears. Every one of those motor vehicle accidents requires a response from the ranger staff and maybe an EMT and maybe an ambulance.”

“If you can be one of those folks who doesn't have a human-wildlife accident on Skyline Drive, you're doing the park a big favor.”

The bears say thank you too.

5️⃣ Be a great steward.

Jim: “That's something as simple as picking up litter.”

“There are also lots and lots of opportunities for people to volunteer in the park for trail maintenance through the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, and doing invasive species removal through the park's invasive species crew.” Here are a few more ideas.

Plus, if the concept of calling someone on the phone doesn’t fill you with Millenial dread, you can also contact your elected reps and let them know you want your parks fully funded.

And if you want to send a check somewhere?

“Giving generously to the Shenandoah National Park Trust [the park’s philanthropic partner] is a great way to support the park financially.”

Huge thanks to Jim for chatting with me! I owe him a proper lunch, and my hope is that an orange Gatorade and banana at our next tennis match will suffice.

Frannie goes to doggie day care and naps for two days straight.

🍦 Meal of the week: Vegan soft serve has officially launched at Botanical. Starting with vanilla and strawberry, and they’re taking flavor requests next.

🚴 Hey, here’s $1,000 dollars. Go buy a bike. A friendly reminder that the third drawing for Cville’s e-bike voucher program is open until July 31. 

🐶 Pet of the week: Webelo! Literally no information has been uploaded about this guy – except for the cutest intake photo you may ever see (male, 11 months, 35 lbs).

🚰 What’s the status of our water supply? A super interesting read on the local agencies working to protect our long-term water resources. 

🍷 The godmother of Virginia wine: Joy Ting will be at Ethos on Saturday, July 12. Get there at 5 (parking in the Amtrak lot). 

🚌 It’s not a popularity contest, it’s art: Voting is now open for the Cville sustainable bus wrap contest. Big fan of the one with the owl.

💼 Job of the week: Communications Associate at the Southern Environmental Law Center ($68k - $77k, based in Cville or other SELC locations).