DOING WHAT EVERYONE EXPECTED

Has never been my forté.

Janice Anne Wheeler Jul 19

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I was raised in and around the public, protected lands of the United States. Our homes were within the 6,000,000 acre Adirondack Park in Upstate New York; National Parks far and wide were always our destinations. We ogled the Grand Canyon with our grandparents, camped in National Forests, explored Wilderness Areas, climbed Monuments in Utah, saw vast tracts of California, wandered seashores of the Southeast, always appreciating the unique and often endangered creatures each contains.

My father achieved his Doctorate in education, but throughout his life told us he should have been a Forest Ranger instead. Less money, more life. He did what was expected of him, a high-ranking job in education, or at least that’s how I look at it now that I can no longer ask him.

What follows must be one of the first stories I ever wrote and kept, perhaps two dozen years ago and in the third person, which I rarely use now. Predictably, it’s about a National Park and is presented here largely un-edited. I stumbled across a print copy and typed it in as a powerful reminisce of my transformational summer job three dozen years ago…. hard to believe it’s been that long. ~J

THE DECISION

She had repacked the car, taken her last exam, filled the gas tank, had the oil changed. It was late, early morning, in fact, when she pulled up to her boyfriend’s house to say goodbye. His sciatic nerve had acted up and he could not move from the bed. It was an awkward, weird conversation. He thought she was making a ridiculous mistake and told her as much. They parted, she knowing it was for the last time but not saying that out loud.

After leaving him she sat at the curb, both hands on the steering wheel, making sure she was ready. It wasn’t her first solo road trip, all those to and from Arizona were longer, but this one takes her far from everything she has known. The ivy covered walls loomed above the residence as they are supposed to at these old, renowned colleges. She had spent the winter of her Junior year interviewing with Corporate Recruiters, just as her classmates had, receiving an offer from Hilton and Marriott for a Summer Internship in big hotels in big cities, all expenses paid. Great resumé material; it’s what her counselor recommended she do. In fact, it’s what everyone recommended she do, and what everyone expected her to do.

But back in March, she had come across an unlabeled folder in the placement office that contained a flimsy three-fold brochure. The pictures were fantastic, too good to be true, she thought as she dialed the number. An elderly gentleman on the other end of the phone seemed surprised that she had found him, took her information and mailed her an uncomplicated two-page application which she promptly returned, applying to be a bartender, her favorite, most lucrative job in the industry. No high heels, no nylons or business suits, no internship to write about, no rotation through the various departments of some anonymous hotel. Probably not great resumé material. Her friends told her she was crazy, throwing her career away, putting herself another year farther from making the big bucks. Big, big, big. Big business, big careers, big hotels with thousands of rooms, dozens of restaurants and hundreds of employees. Big decisions, or so they seemed at the time.

She put the car in gear and drove west; the toll booths were lit but empty. Exhausted from making a decision no one agreed with, she pulled over at dawn somewhere on New York’s Southern Tier Expressway until an officer rapped on the window. Suddenly wide awake and ready to get gone, she continued the 2,700 mile, thirty-five hour drive, spending the night in Fargo, North Dakota. One gentleman at a gas station commented that he had never seen a car like hers before; it was an aging Mazda RX-7 and she was rendered speechless. She smiled at him, thinking of her classmates at Cornell. “Where in the hell is Glacier National Park?” they had asked her incredulously when she turned down the internships.

At the Montana border she still had hundreds of miles to go, and the first exit, honestly, is called Home On The Range. She laughed out loud, stopped and photographed the sign; she was a tourist, after all. The sun was shining and she pulled over on State Route 200 for a bite of lunch. Tremendous Black Angus cattle grazed nearby and gentle breezes blew the prairie grasses just as they did in all the stories she had loved as a child. When she started the engine, it dawned on her that no vehicle had passed in either direction for the thirty minutes or so she had been eating and strolling. The speed limit was 75. That was a lot of miles between her and the next person in either direction. A lot of miles. If you ever want to feel small, go to Eastern Montana and pull over wherever you wish. It’s pretty much just you and God, no matter what form of religion you do or don’t believe in.

The tiny hotel in Great Falls was the least expensive place she had ever stayed in her twenty-one years of life and one of the cleanest; the phone, rotary dial. Nervous because tomorrow she was to meet the elderly gentleman who had answered her call, sleep was elusive.

May 25, 1990 dawned clear and fabulous, a chilly frost lay on the car. Wondering if she had packed the right wardrobe, she headed Northwest. The longest and most colorful train she had ever seen was running along the north side of the narrow two-lane highway, and in the distance the Rockies appeared, white with winter snow. When those Burlington Northern cars crossed an overpass and framed the bottom of the mountain range, the tourist stopped. She would never forget that sight, and the enlarged photograph has been with her ever since.

She entered the park at Babb, Montana, and headed up a thirteen-mile long dead end road, an hour and a half from any services except a tiny convenience store on the Blackfoot Reservation. She turned left into the hotel, crossed a bridge splashed by roaring rapids and surrounded by graying snowbanks. Many Glacier Hotel, with two hundred rooms, one place to eat and one place to drink took three years to construct in 1915 by The Great Northern Railway. Instead of bartending, she was in charge of the one place to eat, a football-field sized dining room serving 700 meals daily with fifty-five employees. None of that mattered. Her pay was $214 for a six-day work week, and that didn’t matter either.

The restaurant manager’s room was in the “Crow’s Nest” above the atrium. Five flights up, her view and the one she remembered so well in the brochure matched perfectly. Swiftcurrent Lake was below, Grinnell Glacier to her left, fantastic peaks and valleys in every direction. The snow melted after a final blizzard brought snow in around the windows on June 11^th. Grizzlies showed themselves every day, flowers bloomed, waterfalls ran.

It was, indeed, too good to be true. Not another doubt ever crossed her mind about that summer job decision. It wasn’t big. It was perfect.

All of the photographs I tell you about here are inaccessible right now, 35mm, print only, tucked into a storage unit as my old wooden sailing yacht rocks along in a life far, far different from the time I spent out West. After graduating from Cornell Hotel School, spring of ‘91, I became Beverage Manager at Yellowstone National Park’s flagship Lake Hotel, then moved to Colorado, spending twenty-six years there, Catering from a little organic farm on the stunning Western Slope after an I-just-have-to-make-sure-this-is-not-for-me stint at a corporate skirts-required Hilton in the Denver Tech Center and a beloved adventure working Food and Beverage at Copper Mountain Resort where my skis hung in my office.

If you have not experienced Glacier, as those familiar call it, GO. Drive Going To The Sun Road. Hike amongst the Beargrass. Watch the Mountain Goats play on vertical granite. GO. It’s officially Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, a unique cooperation with Canadian National Park Waterton Lakes, which is stunning, too. GO. But don’t tell everyone!

What were you doing the summer of 1990? Or were you just a gleam?? ~J

If you believe other people will enjoy my stories, please take a quick sec to tap that heart and the little recycle symbol which sends these words out to the world somehow, which is how I get subscribers and fans. Even better, leave me your own reminisce! I answer every one and always enjoy the engagement. Thanks!

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Someone asked me, “Why do you always take the harder road?”

And I replied, “What makes you think I see more than one road?”

—unknown—if you know, please lemme know. J

© 2026 Janice Anne Wheeler
Living aboard Sailing Yacht STEADFAST again soon!