A trip to the Department of the Interior

All pictures in my blog, period, are taken by me personally or an assistant when I am driving.  Also, feel free to click on any of the green text in the posts, they are links.

Feel free to accept or deny climate change all you want, but its hard to ignore that some place like Washington DC has been seeing sub-zero winters with more snowfall than western New York, or summers hotter than the periphery of the Mojave desert.  Case in point, this past July.  For weeks on end the mercury was sitting around an insane 100-105.  This is with a decent percentage of humidity, seeing as how the city apparently sits in the humid subtropical climate zone.  The term is somewhat flexible, but is generally used to denote regions that do not see daytime freezing temperatures in the winter.  You can grow fun things there like needle palms and southern magnolias.  They do indeed have plenty of magnolias in the metro area there.

They also have big white houses with well manicured lawns.

And to be honest, I could handle living there because the lawn includes a few nice trees I did not expect to find down this way.

Mind you, those are in the public space in front of the White House known as the Ellipse.  I suppose there is a place in the world where an eastern white pine can grow next to a palm tree after all.  Anyway, I digress.  I suppose this is my way of using lovely pictures to complain about a half mile walk in 100 degree heat en route to the most sacred of government buildings, the house of the Department of the Interior.

The building houses multiple agencies, and like all government buildings post 9/11, it has security protocols and checkpoints that must be observed by anyone entering.  Fortunately, I had a reason to be there, and clearance, despite being a foreign nature blogger.  Upon entering, one passes through a rather bland security portico, but then is ushered into an art-deco palace of Vermont and Colorado marbles with brass finishes and more Ansel Adams photographs than one could hope for.

There are seven floors, a basement with an insanely wonderful cafeteria that features regional foods from around the country that also feature on the menus of locally specific national park lodges, and a few public access points.  If you don't have an appointment, you can still get into the building and be escorted to two such points, the Indian craft store and the National Park Service research library.  At the time of the visit, a third point was closed for renovation, the National Park Museum and store.  The store, when finished, will sell every NPS publication.  This is amazing, because formerly you could only purchase them at specific sites (Lincoln books at the four Lincoln sites, or park handbooks specific to their related park).  They will also have a wall restored that will feature, free to take, a brochure for nearly every one of the 398 national park system units.  It's the one agency that makes paperwork look good.

So, anyway, I went to the cafeteria and had a much needed coke, basked in the air conditioning to remove the ocean of sweat I was producing from the jungle heat outside, and then wandered around the building at leisure until I was ready for my meeting with the employment clerks for the service (yep, trying to get a job with these people).  I have to say, I felt like I was in a temple to natural preservation efforts.

After strolling by all the photographs for a good twenty minutes, I was getting a bit lost.  The NPS had recently changed floors with the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the renovations downstairs had temporarily moved the publications office to where the NPS was supposed to go.  Finally, a woman up in Indian Affairs was able to track down another person who could actually get me to where I needed to go.  We found her at the right place.

I figured I would get to see some human resources person about an interview, but instead...

The main man himself!?  Actually, he was away at some distant park.  I did, however, get the second in command, the deputy director, Mickey Fearn, who I was so excited to meet that I forgot to take a picture of.  We had a meeting that was more like a friendly chat, and he noticed that I did not like heat.  He also said that he was personally interested in having me work for the park service.  As if that was not enough, I was then led on a tour of the entire place.

At the end of the tour, I was left at the publications office in front of the sacred brochure racks, and was invited to take one of each brochure they had available.  I missed about ten park brochures, but was told I could write to the individual units to receive one if I needed to.

I will most likely treasure these forever.  Most of them have some lovely pictures and excellent artwork in them, and decent maps.

Sadly, it was time to go.  I was given a capitol parks map with air conditioning stops clearly circled for me.  My trip through the Mall I will highlight later in another post, but basically my search for cold and shelter from the insane torrential rain that blew through led me to the Vietnam Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, up the under re-construction reflecting pool, past the world war II memorial (where I had to wait in the ranger kiosk to avoid getting soaked) and the Washington monument, and finally to a place that seemed an excellent conclusion to the death march in the heat, the US Forest Service building.  They had a nice park at that corner, with some lovely white pines.

Again, a nice surprise.  The Mall is far more tree-covered than I expected.  Expect more shots when I do that blog post.