WEST GLACIER – It had been more than 25 years since they last spoke, but Gary Dunsworth recognized Glacier National Park Ranger Doug Follett last week as he regaled another visitor with tales of the past at the Apgar Transit Center.
Back in the 1960s, the Dunsworths would make the long trek from Sioux City, Iowa to Glacier every summer. Each adventure featured the same memorable staples – campfires, hiking and Ranger Doug.
“You’re such a memorable guy and we hoped we’d run into you,” said Nancy Augustine, Dunsworth’s sister.
Follett, 86, says this is fairly common. Visitors approach him and tell him that they have hiked with him or attended one of his evening talks. After working as a seasonal park ranger for more than 50 years, he has met thousands of people.
But Follett’s time in Glacier extends beyond the half century he has worn a badge. His first visit to the park was in 1927, when he was a 1-year-old. His father had taken a seasonal job on the Great Northern Railway at East Glacier Park and the family joined him.
After that summer, the family moved to Whitefish where Follett grew up and still lives today. In 1942, he began his first summer job in the park, hiking trails, pulling weeds and cutting brush. For many a job in Glacier would be a dream come true, but Follett has never looked at it that way. “I came here to work, not play,” he likes to remind people.
In 1952, Follett began teaching history at Columbia Falls High School, making about $3,200 a year. To make ends meet, he worked as a summer tour guide at the Hungry Horse Dam until 1961 when he returned to the park to become a seasonal ranger. He’s worked in that role for 51 years and has met a number of interesting visitors along the way, including former President George H.W. Bush when he was vice president and came to the park in the 1980s.
“It was the only time I ever gave the evening program with 13 secret service agents carrying machine guns,” he said. “I do hope they enjoyed themselves.”
Follett is often asked what he likes best about working in Glacier and most are surprised the answer is not the mountains or the wildlife, but rather the people who visit.
“I was never rich enough to travel the world,” he said. “But in Glacier Park the world came to me.”
Still, in the 70 years he has been in the park, Follett has had plenty of opportunities to enjoy the place. He has made hundreds of trips into the park’s remote interior and seen plenty of wildlife. During his first few years as a park ranger, he was staying at a remote chalet and heard that some bears were feeding on a dead mule nearby. In hopes of catching a glimpse of the park’s largest residents, he hiked out to an overlook and found himself face to face with two full-grown grizzlies. He paused and then quickly turned around, running about 100 yards before climbing atop of a boulder. From his perch, he watched the bears for nearly an hour as they rolled to the bottom of a snowfield, where they got up, ran to the top and went down again.
Follett still occasionally sees a bear when it wanders into the parking lot at Apgar, where he is usually stationed during the summer months, greeting visitors and telling them about his favorite spots in the park. Choosing one isn’t easy, but Two Medicine Lake, where he worked in the summer of 1942, is on his short list.
“You can get a jug of what suits you and sit on the beach there and drink ‘till you die,” he said. “Then you know you’ve lived a good life.”
But for Follett, it all comes back to the people of Glacier Park, the visitors and workers who come and go every year. Visitors like Dunsworth, who stopped by to say hello after many years. For some, Glacier Park is just a destination, be it for a few days or even a few years. For Follett, it’s been home.
“For other people this is a step to somewhere else, but for me this was the end,” he said. “This is where I was always going.”