Turner Rowland, Tom Rowland's oldest son, graduated an intensive one-month National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) course to earn his EMT and Wilderness EMT certifications, on his way to a fall job as an elk hunting guide near Bozeman, Montana. Recorded during the long father-son drive across the country, this episode covers Turner's path through Yellowstone National Park and a Whitefish, Montana guest ranch, and what it takes for a young person to break into work in the National Parks and the American West.
NOLS is the National Outdoor Leadership School, which runs an intensive one-month course where Turner Rowland earned his EMT and Wilderness EMT certifications, just before this episode was recorded.
Since graduating high school, Turner has worked in Yellowstone National Park and as a wrangler at a guest ranch in Whitefish, Montana. This fall he begins training as an elk hunting guide in Bozeman, Montana.
Tom began by working as a maid in Yellowstone National Park. Over the last 30 years he has helped more than 50 young people find jobs in the National Parks, including his son Turner and his niece and nephew, Juliette and Finn.
Tom says he has received many questions about this exact path, and this episode is built around answering them, drawing on his own experience placing more than 50 young people, including his own kids, into National Park and Western U.S. jobs.
Turner and I were driving across the country together to Bozeman, where he starts training as an elk hunting guide this fall, and I realized on that drive how much I was learning from him about NOLS and working out West that I had not really heard before. I have helped more than 50 young people get into National Park jobs over 30 years, including Turner and my niece and nephew, so I wanted to record this conversation while it was fresh instead of losing it to just being something we talked about in the truck.
Turner is almost 21, and in the few years since high school he has worked in Yellowstone and as a wrangler at a guest ranch in Whitefish. The NOLS course itself was intensive, one month, and it is where he earned both his EMT and Wilderness EMT certifications right before we hit the road for Bozeman. I wanted him to walk through what that month was actually like, since it is a path a lot of listeners ask me about.
I started this whole road into the outdoor industry as a maid in Yellowstone, and over 30 years I have helped more than 50 young people, including my own kids, find that same kind of start. Each one of them, including Turner, Juliette, and Finn, has come back with a different experience, whether they stayed in the parks or moved on to the specific activity they loved most. That is really the reason this episode exists.
If you or someone you know wants to work in the Western United States or in a National Park, I think this conversation with Turner is a must-listen. It is the clearest answer I have to the question I get asked most often about breaking into this life.
Turner Rowland is Tom Rowland's oldest son. He has worked in Yellowstone National Park and as a wrangler at a guest ranch in Whitefish, Montana, and holds EMT and Wilderness EMT certifications earned through a one-month National Outdoor Leadership School course, ahead of a fall job training as an elk hunting guide in Bozeman, Montana.
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