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Bonus Story from Harlan Kredit: Yellowstone Park Ranger · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Planet Geo.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: So uh we recently interviewed Harlan Credit, who served as a Yellowstone National Park Ranger for 48 years.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, Harlan is one of these just really amazing people.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was so fun to talk to him that we just had tons of material, too much to put into our episode.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: So today for our Geo Short, we're just gonna let Harlan take it away with a really interesting story that frankly has nothing to do with the geosciences.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: But Harlan's an amazing storyteller, and this has a really good ending to it.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: So without any further ado, we're just gonna let Harlan take it away here.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: There have been a couple of rescues I've involved in, involved in quite a few of those, and and it's a fairly lengthy story, but just like a three cents.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: You know, Harlan, I don't know.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if I want you to give the three cent version of okay.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: You can add it as whatever you choose to do this.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: So there's one thing that has really touched the way I view the world every single day, and it goes like this.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: I got a phone call one evening from our district ranger, 10 o'clock at night, that said, as quickly as you can, pick up three other rangers, drive to the southern part of the park.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's a place down there, Lewis Lake Campground, where there's a baby that's lost.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: We drove down there as fast as we could.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was the end of August, and August 20, as I remember, it's very, very cold.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was actually below freezing at the time.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: We got there at 11 o'clock at night, met the ranger there, said what happened?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a young couple from Seattle.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: They have a small child, 15-year-old little boy, and they're visiting with their grandparents.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: And what happened, they put that child down in their tent 50 feet from the campfire.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: They did it at about 8 o'clock.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: At 8 30, they went to check on the baby, and the baby was gone.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: They got the whole campground involved trying to find where the baby they couldn't find the baby, and so they called for help, just kind of shortening this up a little bit.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we started looking.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: We walked past the campfire.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: I saw them standing there and looked like, you know, just lost souls.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: You they thought their child was dead.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: We walked out of the woods, we did a grid search, we went, walked a mile, we moved over, walked a mile back and forth, a group of five of us.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: We were the first rangers there.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: At three o'clock in the morning, I was very convinced this was a futile thing.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was cold.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Either a bear had got the child, or maybe went into the lake there and had drowned, or died of hypothermia, or someone had kidnapped the child.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And about three o'clock in the morning, I remember very, very distinctly, this is indelibly etched in my mind.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: There were three trees, subalpine fir trees, about six feet apart in a triangle.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: They were about, I'd say, eight or nine feet tall, so the branches were really dense to the ground.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I walked past those trees, as I'd walked past thousands of those, because it didn't look like it's worth looking underneath.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: I got past, and one small voice inside me, and I think this is my conscience, and God's telling me, hey, do it right.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I turned around, I took my hands, I had gloves on, and I I had a headlamp on, and I pushed the branches apart, I kicked my foot and looked down, and that baby was laying right in the middle of those three trees looking up at me.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: He was wearing a blue sleeper, just like I my own son had had when he was a baby.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: I I was so dumbfounded I couldn't believe this had happened.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: I picked the child up, it was very cold, and put it inside my coat.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: I immediately called in the park radio.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: I said, uh, I said, uh, this is 630 credit, I have the baby, and and everything just stopped.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: The radio traffic was jammed full of people, bringing people from all over the world to to look for this child all over the area, and and nobody talked.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, this person in charge, this 630 credit repeat your conversation.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I have the baby.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Tell the mother the baby's okay.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end of that story, when I when we eventually came back out and I I walked up to that campfire, and there were a lot of tears there then.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: They knew the baby was alive.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't think of what to say as I handed that baby back to its mother.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Just all I said is, ma'am, here's your baby back, and I just walked away.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Very emotional thing for me, still is for me.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: But the point of that story, what what I've tried to live my life in that way, is that there are shortcuts one can take, often with disastrous results.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Do it right the first time.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Don't cheat.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know what you're supposed to do.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Do it, and if I had not done that, that child would have died of hypothermia.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And and and I just believe that every time we confronted with a question which will nobody really will know, no one can see what we've done, yes, it could have eternal consequences.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll just I'll end it that way.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: That is a powerful story and a powerful lesson.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: Harlan, you are a person of immense wisdom, and we thank you so much for spending part of your day with us.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone, that's a wrap.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: See you next week.