What is Andy Doing at His New Job?

“An answer to a question at least one person asked.”

As I alluded to last week, and perhaps on several other occasions, I have a new job. And like I said last week, it is a job that requires historical research, but it also includes programming preparation, some geographic information systems, and a little bit of creative writing. What is this mystery job, then? A university researcher? Classroom aide? Historical website developer? Library goblin?

No, it’s Historical Interpreter! A job that seems to be made up of grab-bag words, both in title and description, it’s one of those rare jobs that allows me to define my own work (under certain structures, anyway) and produce new materials for a public-facing organization without having to pander to a minimum search-engine optimization rating or some sort of commercialization scaling. It is a job that I didn’t really think existed, or at least not in a way that I would want to have. I mean, sure, obviously this kind of job exists. You know those people who work at the museums and run the tables with random historical artifacts, or the people who take you on tours at the local historic site? I’m the guy who develops the tables and writes the tours! I didn’t know this was a kind of thing I wanted to do, yet here I am. As it turns out, it very much is a job that exists, it very much is a job that I want to have, and it very much is a job that I love, much to my initial surprise. And it’s working for the same group that I worked with last winter!

I work for a place called The Landing – Minnesota River Heritage Park, part of the Three Rivers Park District, which, if you’ve ever been to one of those living history farms or living history towns, you’ve got a good idea of what this kind of place is. Except we aren’t living history anymore, technically. We did away with that in 2019, long before I got here, so now instead of a living history museum, imagine one of those kinds of places but… with no people. And all the buildings are closed. But you can ride your bike through it, and take your dog up to the windows of the buildings! It’s admittedly kind of odd, because the site was a living history place for, like, almost fifty years, but it makes it a lot easier on staff members at the site (i.e. me) to not have to be John McGoodman from 1889 Who Lives On A Farm for 90% of our working hours. And because of that, we get to spend our time working on other things instead.

I think I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit, though. When I worked at Baker Park this past winter, I ran programs for school field trips, scout groups, and families at a dedicated outdoor learning center in the woods out west of Minneapolis. I taught stuff like fire making, shelter building, and snowshoeing. But one of the classes I taught there was a history-based activity called Voyageur Life, where I pretended to be a French-Canadian voyageur (I put on the accent and everything; not sure if that’s kosher or not, to be honest) and taught the kids about Minnesota history and also gave them a chance to feel a bunch of the animal pelts that we had. When my time at Baker was up, it was right around a point when a slot for a Historical Interpreter opened up at The Landing. The job was billed to me as significantly more living history stuff (like putting on an accent and funny clothes), and since I loved teaching Voyageurs so much, I came to the interview prepared with a short reenactment of me teaching Voyageur Life, complete with hokey accent and exaggerated body movements. This, against all odds, got me the job. And I became a permanent member of the Three Rivers Park District interpretive team.

I throw that word around a lot, “interpretive.” Or “interpreter.” Or “Interpretation.” But the way I’m using it is distinct from the general commonplace definition; I’m using it as a National Parks Word(tm). If you’ve ever spent time with any government entity (especially at the federal level) or a major corporation, chances are good you’ve run into some sort of upper-case Proper Noun that wormed its way into becoming ubiquitous in a work space, despite having no proper definition or traction outside of said bureaucracy. Some sort of phrase of acronym that got thrown around, and everyone throwing it around knows what it means, but absolutely no one else does. Like company shorthand for a commonplace task or when you need the boss to chew someone out for shitting in the printer again. You know, basic bedrock stuff that gets compartmentalized into its own unique abstract concept. Interpretation is kind of one of those words, but instead of being limited to just the National Parks, “Interpretation” has been lucky enough to extend its reach into any space that even remotely resembles a national park. Not that this is a bad thing, of course; I love interpretation, and what it stands for, and knowing interpretive skills and definitions has widened my communications base and deepened my appreciation for both national parks and things like museums or art galleries. You’ve almost definitely come into contact with interpretive material, probably as recently as within the last year. But if you aren’t “plugged in” to what’s new and hip in the world of Public Education(tm), chances are good you’d never have thought to put the word interpretation to whatever the hell it is you’re seeing.

In short, interpretation is any way of transmitting knowledge of a space, artifact, or discipline to the public in a way that is engaging, and usually carries some deeper theme, message, or purpose to it. Those signs that hiking trails have to talk about whatever tree happens to be nearby? Interpretive signs. Park rangers who give a program explaining why owls are crucial to an ecosystem and why Hedwig deserved so much more? They’re interpreters. A museum exhibit that travels through the history of the industrial revolution to explain modern-day climate change? That’s interpreting history. The most condensed (and obscenely abstract) definition of interpretation that I can give is that “interpretation is revelation based on information,” which is another bunch of grab-bag words trying to say that “interpretation tries to make people appreciate something more.” While the act of interpretation itself is something that people have done for thousands of years in the form of speeches, plays, art, interpretive dance, etc., the National Parks system and the wider world of public education owes this formalization of “interpretation” as a discipline to Gordon Freeman Freeman Tilden.

This is all just a really roundabout way of saying that interpretation is a really broad word, and as a historical interpreter, my job is really, really vague. Interpretation is about making something accessible and interesting to the public. It’s about encouraging the public to make a space their own, to be comfortable learning about something, to get excited about a given subject. And good interpretation generally hides some sort of secret, too. In the case of my job and our historical site, our interpretation is generally guided by two underlying themes; history is cool and we want people to appreciate the history in everyday life, and the promotion of natural conservation and an appreciation of nature. I’ll let you in on a little insider secret; that second one is technically the interpretive guideline for the entire Three Rivers Park District. As someone concerned with public education and communication at Three Rivers, I am also concerned with encouraging the public to appreciate nature. So if you ever see me at work out in the wild, you now know my ace up my sleeve and therefore hold power over me through the ancient and secret Rites of Naming: Public Education edition.

“Yes, well, this is all well and good, but it doesn’t tell me a shitting thing about what you actually do at work!” I hear someone shouting from the back. And you’re right! I haven’t told you what I actually even do! Well, in short, I interpret the history of the Minnesota River valley and the land within the Three Rivers Park District parks. That is, more or less, my job. And now that you know what I mean by interpretation, you can probably imagine what I do! If you can think it, it’s probably within the realm of possibility. Teach kids about the history of farming while having them weed a garden? Check. Give a history hike of a local park that no one ever shows up to? Been there, done that. Talk about spearpoints from 10,000 years ago while helping people shoot modern bows and arrows? Hey, that one’s coming up in October! Catch ghosts in our open-air museum because the banker’s house is very clearly haunted by someone who hates closing doors? Well, now, we aren’t going quite that far yet. But if I could make a ghost-catching program related to natural history, then we’re talking…

Admittedly, most of what I do is run programs for kids and school groups. This summer, 75% of my time at work was spent either helping out my coworkers manage summer day camps or running those summer day camps myself. And I had a ton of fun doing it! I’ve been on the other side of summer camp before, at Philmont, sure, but this is a very different experience from working in the mountains of New Mexico. For one, everyone smells better here. For two, our summer camps are only three days long, from 9 to 3, and the kids range in ages from six to sixteen. Not at the same camp, of course, we have different ages for camps, but you get the idea. I ran a summer camp that was all about survival skills, so we had the kids building fires, building shelters, fishing, finding wild edible plants, stealing a metal bell from each other, and throwing sharp projectiles. So, you know, pretty much everything I did this last winter. It was great. I had a blast. I think the kids had a blast. We stole apples from a tree. And it was pretty representative of the experience for other camps this summer, too. I mean, the activities changed. One week was voyageurs camp, so we had the kids canoeing on a lake. Another week was pirate camp, and I got to give a blacksmithing demonstration. And there was also steampunk camp, little house on the prairie camp, count as many birds as you can camp, the list goes on.

If you want a general idea of both the park and the summer camps, I suggest you watch this video. I, uh, haven’t actually watched the video, because I’m in the video, and therefore do not feel like I need to watch it again to make sure it’s ok. Hey, story of my life. But it’s a video of the place where I work! And I’m in it! I mean, I’m not in a lot of it. You can see the back of my head for, like, thirty seconds in a B-reel shot, and you probably won’t even be able to pick me out without me telling you where, but I’m in the show! I got to be on the news for a regional Minneapolis broadcast news show. That’s kind of cool!

When I’m not leading children on a wild goose chase through a bunch of stinging nettles that will definitely make one of them cry, though, that’s when I’m doing the research part of my job that I talked about last week. And in the off-season (or “not summer”), that’s apparently going to be most of my job! Yes, since I started this job in may, I started at kind of a weird time as far as scheduling goes, because I started just in time to learn the ropes before being thrown headlong into summer camps for the next twelve weeks straight. I had some off-days here and there where I could learn about the other parts of my job, but so far, it has largely been summer camps. But now that camps are over, I’m going to be transitioning to other things.

Like mapping! I get so much freedom at this job, honestly, it’s really amazing. So, for example, one of my first non-summer camp assignments was preparing a history hike for park a few miles away from where I work. So not only do I get to work outside, I also get to work off-site, which is pretty cool. I was basically told to do whatever I want as long as this hike tells the history of the park in an interpretive way, and that meant I got to that with maps. I got to use ArcMap again! For the first time since I graduated! So that was absolutely thrilling. My second assignment besides summer camps was also to write a blog. No, I am not kidding. I got paid to write a blog on the history of a different park. As a matter of fact, I was paid (hourly) to write about Silverwood, the park that is literally across the street from my apartment. The park that I ran at today, just like I do probably once a week. That is wild to me. Although the blog hasn’t posted to the official Three Rivers website, and it isn’t going to until next year because it got lost in the shuffle between my park and the marketing department, I’m still in a bit of disbelief that I got to write a blog for my job. Which, considering that I got paid by the hour to write it and it took considerable research (and even an official site visit, with a special behind-the-scenes tour of the park), makes it the most money I’ve ever made writing a blog. That Silverwood blog, which doesn’t even exist yet, has already made me more money than nearly four years of this stupid bullshit. Why the hell do I still write this thing?

And the projects that I’m currently working on are all kind of similar themes. History programs with outdoor activities that are definitely not based on Over the Garden Wall, writing up the information for interpretive signs that are gonna hang on the park bathroom, researching the history of this land surveyor who was also maybe really into maps so that I can run educational programming about his life, it’s all super cool stuff. I’m basically developing educational program materials but I’m doing it about stuff that I like and in a way that I’m interested in. I get to do historical research, creative and information writing, and work with maps (if I want to) as part of my job. Plus I get to be outside half of the time and lead people for hikes in the woods. I would say that this is a pretty sweet gig, if I might say so myself. I really, really like this job, and although I have no idea if I’m any good at it or not, I’d like to think I’m decently competent. It is like one of those perfect jobs, because even when things get rough at work, I get to tell myself “I work for a park district and I get paid to be outside” and it really puts things into perspective. I didn’t know jobs like this even existed. But hot damn, am I glad they do, because I am thrilled to have this new job. I love working for the park district, and I love working for The Landing, and I am excited to work here for as long as they’ll let me.

And that, dear reader, is What Andy is Doing at His New Job.