In the hope chest beside my bed, I keep a small gift given to me by a National Park ranger. The gift box is ordinary, just a battered cardboard shipping box, but its contents are priceless. Inside that box are the items a ranger salvaged from my husband’s backpack on the day he died.
Since the day police chaplains arrived at my campsite to tell me that my husband, former CT editor Rob Moll, was dead, I’ve benefited from the care of the National Park Service. After Rob fell to his death in the backcountry of Mount Rainier National Park, a ranger hiked almost three hours into the wilderness to meet Rob’s climbing partner at the accident scene. From there, rangers and staff coordinated to have Rob’s body airlifted out of the mountains back to the trailhead.
A ranger collected Rob’s belongings, separating out the crushed and bloodstained, and painstakingly compiled the report of his accident, describing every heartbreaking detail. Rangers collaborated with local law enforcement to locate me and, seven hours later, deliver the news—and that box—to me and to my four children.
The National Park Service (NPS) reports that the year Rob died, 382 other people also died in US national parks—382 ranger responses to car crashes, drownings, falls, and other accidents. In a park system that boasts millions of visitors per year, these numbers might seem negligible, an unlikely work assignment in an otherwise bureaucratic governmental agency that desperately needs downsizing. But when it is your loved one who needs that kind of care, a ranger means the whole world.
In the years since Rob’s death, park employees have continued their ministry in my life. A few months after Rob’s death, Shelton Johnson, the Yosemite National Park ranger made famous for his appearance in Ken Burns’s documentary The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, reached out to express his condolences. He’d only met Rob in passing when we visited the park in 2018, but that kind gesture made me feel seen after the casseroles and sympathy cards had petered out. When I needed help with postmortem paperwork, a staff member from Mount Rainier National Park talked me through my survivor rights under the Freedom of Information Act in a way I can only describe as tender.
And the list could go on. Three years later, a former interpretive ranger at Great Smoky Mountain National Park volunteered to help me chart out hiking options there that a mom with four kids could handle with both the weight of trauma and a longing to redeem the relationship with nature that death had marred. Five years later, a ranger at Glacier National Park swore in my youngest as a Junior Ranger—encouraging her to explore, protect, and preserve our nation’s resources—returning a sense of agency and purpose within a landscape that had stolen her childlike trust and previously had meant only grief.
I can only imagine that President Donald Trump does not understand these complex gifts that our National Park staff offer, as he has tasked Elon Musk and DOGE with reducing the federal employee headcount, including the 20,000 of national park employees.
Republicans and Democrats have, for many years, disagreed about land use within the Department of the Interior, from conflicts about oil extraction in the Alaskan wilderness to the controversial designations of national monuments like Bears Ears in Utah. Good Christians, too, disagree on how public lands should be managed. The National Park Service is certainly not immune from poor administration; its difficulties are well documented. Trimming the fat is warranted.
And yet, when Elon Musk and DOGE fired 1,000 full-time NPS workers and forced resignations from more than 700 more earlier this month—around 9 percent of the workforce—they did not respond to these larger concerns. Instead, Musk removed those who clean bathrooms and maintain trails. He dismissed interpretive rangers who run educational programs. DOGE fired staff who conduct administrative tasks at ranger stations, entry points, and visitor centers. They let go of rangers who help families find their way back when they become lost on trails. Musk and DOGE fired precisely the sort of people who tended to my family in the days we needed them most—and do the same for countless others every year.
But to fire a National Park ranger is to fire a first line of defense, a first line of care. To fire a park ranger is to fire a woman like ranger Margaret Anderson, who died stopping a potential shooter from accessing crowds at Mount Rainier National Park in 2012. To fire a park ranger is to fire a man like ranger Nick Hall, who died as he attempted to rescue hikers on the Emmons Glacier in the park just a few months later. To fire a park ranger is to fire the person who answered the phone on July 19, 2019, at the White River Ranger Station—a call from the backcountry pleading for help because a man, my beloved husband, had fallen down a 100-foot scree field on Barrier Peak.
Though I’m the producer and moderator of CT’s flagship news podcast, The Bulletin, you’ll rarely hear me talk about politics. I like my moderator role at the show because it affords me a neutrality that I prefer when it comes to topics that raise the blood pressure and cause division.
However, my children know there’s one department of the government that will always be precious to me—the Department of the Interior, and within it, the National Park Service. Like a community of mourners, members of the NPS surrounded me in my darkest hour and cared for me simply by completing the tasks in their job descriptions. And in the years since, their ordinary acts of service have restored a love for our nation’s wild places that could have died on that rocky peak five and a half years ago.
God instructed Israel to place three items inside the ark of the covenant: a jar of manna, Aaron’s staff, and the two stone tablets holding his commandments to his people (Heb. 9:4). Each of these items symbolized God’s enduring presence with his people—his provision in their time of need, his desire for relationship with them beyond their sin, and his Word that would guide them in holiness as they loved him with their whole hearts. None of these items made the ark holy. Instead, it was God’s presence resting above these memories that made the box precious.
My cardboard shipping box is filled with seemingly ordinary items as well—a trail map, a compass, a battered metal tin of ten essentials, a bag of expired, unopened beef jerky. None of these items are holy either. Yet thanks to a National Park ranger who was just doing his job that day, I am brought near to God’s power and love in the presence of this simple box.
Jesus told his followers, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matt. 25:40). National Park employees work for the federal government; they aid the public. But in their routine tasks on the day Rob died, rangers engaged a higher calling—whether or not they realized it. Airlifting, report filing, and box filling were all acts of worship, reminders that even in the shadow of death God will never abandon his beloved (Ps. 16:10).
That kind of love doesn’t deserve a pink slip. It deserves commendation and always will.
Clarissa Moll is producer and moderator of The Bulletin at Christianity Today.
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