Paul Hawkins, a Mansfield Senior High special needs intervention specialist, has worked this summer as a National Park Service interpretive ranger in Arizona.
In a typical summer Paul Hawkins doesn’t have a close encounter with a bear, rescue a pregnant hiker from the onset of heat exhaustion or lead raft tours on the Colorado River.
The past three months have been anything but typical for Hawkins, a special needs intervention specialist at Mansfield Senior High School. Since May he has worked as a seasonal interpretive ranger at the National Park Service’s Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Page, Ariz.
“I chose to serve in this job and I have taken it very seriously. It has been everything I had hoped it would be, and more,” Hawkins said in a telephone interview before preparing for a canyon hike.
When he returns to his Senior High classroom on Oct. 5 he will bring a dozen educational videos he has created about Glen Canyon’s native animals, plants and landscapes and the nearby Navajo culture.
“I will have a wealth of knowledge to share with our special needs students, some of whom have never been past the city limits,” Hawkins said. “Most can’t read well; they are visual learners. I will make the learning interactive on their iPads.”
Superintendent Brian Garverick said Hawkins’ summer experiences will be a valuable learning tool for his students.
“I know Paul’s enthusiasm for teaching. His students will benefit greatly from all that he has seen and done with the National Park Service,” Garverick said.
Hawkins’ duties as an interpretive ranger – a job he got after applying to the National Park Service last winter – are based out of Glen Canyon’s visitor center. Sometimes he uses the center’s huge three-dimensional map to explain features of the park’s 1.2 million acres and adjacent Lake Powell, which extends 186 miles from Arizona into Utah. On other days he leads the river raft tours or patrols the canyon’s many hiking trails.
Heat exhaustion is a frequent threat to tourists not accustomed to searing temperatures and steep canyon trails. In July Hawkins came to the aid of a French family whose young daughter was doubled over, suffering from heat along the Horseshoe Bend trail. Using cool packs from his backpack, Hawkins placed one under each of the girl’s armpits and a third on the back of her neck. After checking her pulse and conducting a pupil dilation response test, he poured cool water down her neck, back and chest to quickly lower her body temperature, then relocated the cool packs to her chest and legs.
The girl recovered, then rested a few minutes before Hawkins and her father helped her back up the trail to a shaded shelter.
On Aug. 1 the onset of heat exhaustion could have proven tragic for a young woman from Dallas, Tex., who was 22 weeks pregnant. While her husband was sightseeing on the canyon rim, the woman had opted to descend several hundred yards down the Horseshoe Bend trail.
“I was talking to a family from Los Angeles when I noticed a young woman in distress at the side of the trail,” Hawkins said in a blog posting. “She was entering the beginning stages of heat exhaustion. This time I was dealing with a first-time mother and I knew the stress could be dangerous to the fetus. I had to work quickly, maintain a calm demeanor and get her hydrated and cooled down as quickly as possible.”
Hawkins applied cool packs to her neck and stomach, allowed sips of water and talked reassuringly until the woman’s breathing became less labored.
“When mom was ready we took a slow, assisted hike up the trail while I supported her back and held her hand until we could reach a bench,” he said. “When she was ready to conquer the remaining 150 yards of a rather steep incline, I resumed my support position, held her hand and offered words of encouragement until we reached the summit.”
The episode with a bear occurred one afternoon when Hawkins was hiking on his own near Flagstaff, Ariz., down a path “green and lush and very unlike the preconceived notion of Arizona I had in my mind.” He recounted the episode on his blog.
“All of a sudden I heard a loud snapping of dried timber,” he said. “Startled and hoping it wasn’t what I thought it might be, I looked up only to see a large brownish figure moving away from me in the brush. ‘Oh cool, a bear,’ was my initial thought, followed by, ‘Oh, a BEAR!”
The bear stopped and looked back at Hawkins, who had begun retreating in the opposite direction.
“Pulling out my ACME siren whistle, which I confiscated from a former student, I blew on it every few hundred yards to alert the bear that he needn’t come investigate the goofy-looking, two-legged being that had rousted him from his afternoon nap,” Hawkins said. “Luckily, he wasn’t interested in me anymore. I quickly hiked down the trail and back to the safety of my car.”
Perhaps Hawkins’ most rewarding moment came not on a trail but in a parking lot. As he climbed out of his NPS vehicle one morning, he overheard a young girl, a second-grader, reacting to being called “retarded” by her teenage brother.
“I’m not retarded, I’m dyslexic!” the girl shouted.
Hawkins reacted immediately. In the presence of the girl’s mother and brother, he explained that he too is dyslexic but has dealt positively with it throughout his life. As they talked Hawkins and the girl shared their difficulties with spelling and math but discovered that each has unique creative talents.
Within minutes the girl’s spirits were uplifted by this enthusiastic man with a badge and the familiar park ranger flat hat. She and her mother smiled broadly. After Hawkins secured the girl’s promise that she would believe in herself, study hard and go to college someday, he knelt down and pinned a Junior Park Ranger plastic badge on her.
“Some lives you save on the trail, others with a well placed smile and a badge,” Hawkins said. “That day, I’m quite sure I saved a sinking soul from the mundane routine that accompanies low expectations associated with disabilities like dyslexia.”