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Texas grown ranger falls for Grand Canyon scenery
Interpretive ranger with a knack for travel lands job at Grand Canyon National Park

Grand Canyon National Park Interpretive Ranger Ty Karlovitz has worked the last four years at the park. Loretta Yerian/WGCN

Grand Canyon National Park Interpretive Ranger Ty Karlovitz has worked the last four years at the park. Loretta Yerian/WGCN

GRAND CANYON, Ariz. - Grand Canyon National Park Guide Ty Karlovitz loves his life on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Although Arizona may hold certain siliarities to Texas, there is a vast difference between where he grew up and where he lives now.

"Tyler, Texas had about 60,000 people when I grew up and we would go and visit Dallas and Houston. These big cities with lots of traffic and people and so many amenities but so much other stuff you had to deal with. I don't miss that at all," Karlovitz said. "I like having the small community here with the friends and co-workers and other local folks. I enjoy the fact that I have to drive an hour and a half to be in civilization.

Originally from east Texas ,Karlovitz has lived and worked within the interpretation division at Grand Canyon National Park for the last four years.

"(I) always grew up with science and that kind of thing," Karlovitz said. "I loved all my science classes but I never really knew growing up what I wanted to do in terms of a career or job."

All that changed for Karlovitz the summer of his senior year of high school.

"I had some friends, my junior/senior summer who were going to go on this big five day backpacking trip," Karlovitz said. "They were all Boy Scouts and campers and somehow I convinced them to let me tag along."

They hiked for five days in a national forest in the Arkansas Ozarks.

"We drove up and parked our car and piled into some crazy lady's truck and went flying down these dirt roads, over giant logs and fallen trees," Karlovitz remembered. "She dropped us in the middle of nowhere and we hiked for five days back to our car."

Karlovitz's experience in the woods gave him several epiphanies, including what he wanted to do in the future.

"(I wanted) to work in the outdoor conservation field and sciences," he said. "Then as I went through college and (had) mentors and teachers and folks come to the school - one of the folks that came in was a representative of the Student Conservation Association, it peaked my interest."

A branch of AmeriCorp, which helps place students and recent graduates in conservation based agencies, the Student Conservation Corp works in state and national parks, forests service areas and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land.

"They ended up placing me in a Forest Service site in California doing interpretation and I fell in love with it," Karlovitz said.

A new world of interpretation, conservation and the opportunity to work in some of the nation's most beautiful places had just opened for Karlovitz

He would spend four months at Mammoth Lake in the eastern Sierra Nevada's before volunteering to go to Haleakala, Hawaii to work in interpretation. It was at this point that Karlovitz knew he wanted to stay in the National Park Service.

"It was such a blast and so much fun working with the Park Service that I decided to try and make that my career," he said.

He obtained his first paid position with the Park Service at the Badlands National Park in South Dakota.

After a season in the Badlands, he was introduced to the Grand Canyon and had his first taste of life on the rim as a fee collector at Grand Canyon National Park.

Several years later Karlovitz left the South Rim to pursue law enforcement training for the national park in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina.

Before he entered the park service he had been interested in law enforcement. Working within the park's law enforcement division gave him the opportunity to explore that interest.

"I had seen a lot of different aspects of the Park Service and was kind of curious how the law enforcement thing would potentially work out," he said.

However, the law enforcement field was not for him and after spending several months going through the program he decided he wanted to return to the interpretation division.

"I learned a lot of really great stuff but I learned it (law enforcement) is also not my greatest strength," Karlovitz said. "There's definitely a certain mindset and mentality behind doing law enforcement."

He decided to go to the Redwoods National Park in northern California for a season before returning to the Grand Canyon in February 2011.

Karlovitz has now been working within the interpretation division of the Park Service for nine years.

He is also currently pursuing a master's in resource interpretation through the park's Pathways program.

"It's basically like a student intern," he said. "Because I'm doing my graduate studies right now, I'm working at the same time I'm going to school."

After graduation Karlovitz said he hopes to become a full time employee at the Canyon in its interpretation division.

Having a masters degree will help make him eligible for other jobs within the park.

"The Pathways program is also designed to help students get into careers in the National Park Service," Karlovitz said. "It helps my resume and it's also getting me a job here at the park."

Eventually Karlovitz would like to use his education to help others get jobs and training within the Park Service.

"Ideally I would love to move up just a little bit higher in the National Park Service so that I can also help to get other folks into the service as well," he said. "Help to bring in seasonals and help guide them through their career as well. If I could also help out with the next generation of park rangers that would be ideal."

Right now Karlovitz staffs the visitor centers and gives scheduled ranger programs at the park's primary visitor center, Mather Point. He also helps with maintenance of the buildings and exhibits and helps with search and rescue operations when needed.

"If I'm not doing that (those duties) then I'm out roving - walking along the edge of the Canyon, chatting with visitors along the rim and helping out as much as we can," Karlovitz said.

While many of his ranger programs cover the history and geology, Karlovitz especially enjoys talking about the astronomy and night skies of the Canyon.

"As much as I can, I like to get out and talk about the stars and the stories behind the constellations," he said. "Being in the Southwest with so many great stories and cultures, as much as I can I like to weave in the cultural ties to the night skies. The Grand Canyon is an amazing place, it's a park unlike any other. I mean the tallest trees in the world would be toothpicks at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The Canyons unique, there's nothing else I've seen like it."

Karlovitz is also hopeful that he will continue to travel to other national parks.

"I still hope to do interpretation with the National Park Service, do the programs and interact with the visitors is pretty fantastic," he said. "Getting to work here at the Grand Canyon for a few more years, eventually I would like to move on to the Pacific Northwest, which has always been a really fond place in my heart."

For anyone interested in working in the National Park Service Karlovitz said there is one key piece of advice that has taken him a long way in his career.

"My advice is to be flexible, just to see where the Park Service takes you," Karlovitz said. "Getting out there and experiencing the less known sites is a great way to get that experience with the Park Service and get a feeling for what we do. I knew that anywhere my career took me after that (Badlands National Park) it was going to be fun, it was going to be awesome. I think all the parks are there for a good reason."


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