By Rachel Wade
I’m an extremely private person, but due to recent events I wanted to give a face to the mass purge of federal employees that has been happening as of late.
I lost my dream job on Friday, Feb. 14th. It was like a punch to the gut and I am honestly still reeling. As you may have heard, there was a mass firing of one thousand probationary National Park Service employees, and I was one of them. After working for four seasons for the National Park Service, primarily in the historical preservation field, I decided to settle down and transition into a full time career.
This year I started my dream position as a preservationist working to stabilize ancestral puebloan structures for the South East Utah group, which includes Hovenweep, Natural Bridges, Arches and Canyonlands. This is a field I am very passionate about, and I wanted to spend the rest of my career preserving our national treasures. I sacrificed a lot for this job being in extremely remote locations without cell service or internet roughly one to two hours away from the closest convenience stores, and traveling between the different parks units as needed.
For four months this past summer, I lived out of a tent on the jobsite in the middle of the desert with no power or luxuries, as there was no available housing at that unit. Later this fall and winter, due to short staffing for several months at the other unit I pulled double duty on my weekends working as an interpreter to keep the Park’s visitor center open for visitors.
I was fired not due to my lack of productivity, or my conduct, or any other factor, but strictly for the fact that I have been at my post for nearly eight months instead of a full year! To know I was let go for such a stupid reason is infuriating and deeply saddening. This situation has me feeling disillusioned and hopeless.
Due to the aforementioned remote nature of my work, I live onsite in my park. Losing my job also means I am losing my home, my livelihood, and my career aspirations. I am lucky to have a home in Texas to go back to, but many others will not and will become homeless because of this.
I now have to figure out how to live my life when I feel like my whole world has suddenly slipped out from under my feet. It is especially devastating when I hear accusations of government corruption and waste, as if my job was somehow not important and not of value to the public. So I just want to put a face to the jobs that are being lost.
This was originally posted by Rachel Wade on Feb. 15, 2025.