The Retirement Cure

Making the most of retirement with a 40-foot RV, a patch of dirt and full-time seasonal volunteer work in the national parks.

A pop of static. Reg Wofford instinctively reaches down and adjusts the volume of his radio. Beside him his wife of 54 years, Laurie, speaks smoothly into hers: “We’re first on a jam at Willow Flats. There’s a griz on a carcass with her cubs.”

As Laurie signs off and reclips her radio, the Woffords return their focus to the dynamic scene playing out before them under the unflinching blue of a Western sky. Willows, profuse and tangled, trace a creek bank in the distance and sea-glass-tinted sagebrush smudges the air like so much incense. In the middle of this wild Eden, surrounded by twiggy clumps of bitterbrush, a mama grizzly bear — broad of forehead and tawny of coat — teaches two cubs to scavenge for meat.

The moment is captivating and raw, and something that few have the good fortune to see. It’s those few who bring the Woffords to this particular corner of Grand Teton National Park today. The spectators, lining the roadside and jockeying for pictures, buzz with faintly contained energy. “People get so excited,” says Laurie, “That’s one of the fun things that we do — get to see the excitement of people who are seeing a bear for the first time or a moose.”

It’s just another day in paradise for the Woffords, full-time seasonal volunteers with Grand Tetons National Park’s wildlife brigade. From late May through September, they work side by side in the shadow of the mountain range armed with name badges, volunteer patches and cans of bear spray. Their goal as members of the brigade is to keep people safe and animals wild.

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