In the vast landscapes of the United States, park rangers serve as guardians of some of the nation’s most treasured natural wonders. Among them is Rick Gupman, the deputy superintendent of Big Bend National Park, a place where solitude, desert mountains, and the hum of untamed wilderness create an otherworldly experience. For Rick, who began his career at Virgin Islands National Park and worked across numerous iconic sites—from the volcanic slopes of Haleakalā to the rugged terrain of Denali—each park has brought unique challenges and adventures.
As part of our "Inside the Parks: Conversations with America’s Park Rangers" series, we had the chance to sit down with Rick and learn what it takes to preserve one of America’s most remote and awe-inspiring parks. From unexpected wildlife encounters to personal stories that reveal the heart of a ranger’s work, Rick shares insights into the beauty, challenges, and unforgettable moments that make Big Bend—and the role of a ranger—so unique. Join us as we explore the wilderness through Rick’s eyes and discover what makes Big Bend an essential destination for both adventurers and nature lovers.
Q: Can you tell us about your background and how you became a park ranger?
A: I actually started at Virgin Islands National Park, so Big Bend isn’t my home park, and I'm not from Texas. For me, it was always going to be parks—I worked in parks and rec as a kid, then moved to a state park in high school. After graduating, I joined the NPS and worked in several parks like Haleakalā in Hawaii and Denali before Big Bend, where rangers do it all: law enforcement, EMS—you name it. I applied three times before I got the position here!
Q: What is the essential item you recommend visitors bring when exploring your park?
A: Water! My advice is always, you don’t have enough water, just period, right?. It’s a desert, there's no humidity and even if it’s cold, the desert is sucking the water out of you. That’s the thing most likely to kill you here in this park.
Q: What do you appreciate most about your national park?
A: It’s that you can feel like you’re walking in a place where no other human has ever walked. The park is 801,000 acres of wilderness area. You can literally just park on the side of the road and hike to a mountain peak or find a natural feature, or if you do the lower canyons on the river, you can't do it in less than five days.
So you're on the river for five days, kind of just in your head space, you know, with your with yourself and and you can count on on your fingers the number of times that you see evidence of, you know, human habitation, but you know the area has been inhabited for literally 1000s and 1000s of years, but you don't see it. you don't have to be on the river for three days to experience that really, like, you know, two miles off the road, and all of a sudden there are no sounds except natural sounds. There's no sound. And that truly is, to me, the one thing about this place, there are many, but that is the thing that stands out the most, is that opportunity to be able to do that. Yeah, just wander up to 14 days in a zone and you will not encounter another person as long as you can live off the land.
Q: Outside of your own park, what is your favourite national park, and what makes it special to you?
A: That’s easy for me. Olympic National Park is hands down my favourite. The diversity—from mountain tops to rainforest—is amazing. I took a month off and was just going to explore parks to park, and I didn't really have a plan. There were a couple parts I wanted to hit. And I got to Olympic and I just stayed. I was there for days, and this is terrible to say, but then I got to the Grand Canyon, you know, and I stayed for less than a day, like, wow. Okay, neat. I. And I kept going, you know, the canyon didn't speak to me in the way that that Olympic did.
Olympic National Park. That’s the place.
Q: Can you describe a particularly memorable experience you've had as a park ranger?
A: Just one? That’s terrible. I’ve got 24 years of things and you want me to find just one? I would say, most recently, it was Christmas Day—this little girl finished her Junior Ranger book, but the visitor centre was closed. I unlocked it for her to get her badge, and seeing her excitement was priceless. I would say the funniest, funniest, weirdest, coolest story, in the Virgin Islands, the police needed help retrieving a gun underwater. Our dive team found it, and the whole town was watching. It was surreal. Being underwater, like searching around for a gun when you were, like, just sitting at your desk 30 minutes earlier. Definitely one of the coolest, weirdest, most random things that I've ever done.
Q: What has been the most remarkable wildlife encounter you've experienced while working with the National Park Service?
A: I live in the park, and I have a mastiff. He’s 190 pounds, big dog, right? Human sized dog. I walk into the living room, and my dog is up on a chair, front paws up on the back of the chair, looking out of the window at a bear that's got its paws on the back of the chair. They’re both just sitting there looking at each other. Our bears are Mexican Black Bears too right, so they’re smaller, so my dog and this bear are both a similar size too.
Q: What advice would you give to someone visiting Big Bend for the very first time?
A: Don’t try to do everything. Focus on one or two things that are really fun and really cool, and enjoy those things. Pick a couple of things that you really want to do, but get out of the car, go for a hike. Do something. Immerse yourself in the resource instead of just driving around the park all day, doing as much as much as you can see in a day or two.
Q: When do you believe is the best time to visit your park, and what should visitors expect during that season?
A: April and May are stunning, I think are the best, with the desert in bloom. It's so breathtaking to be driving along, and it's all earth tones, right? It's just variations of greys and browns and greens, prickly pear cactus and mesquite trees, you know? And you're seeing a lot of the same types of plants, which I think are incredibly beautiful.
The creosote have these beautiful, brilliant yellow flowers, and the prickly pear will have this variety of pink and purple and yellow and red, you know, flowers that pop out. And one prickly pear cactus can have, you know, 100 of these flowers. And the flowers are two to three inches, you know, in size. You're driving or walking through this very muted landscape, and then you just have these incredible, amazing flowers that just pop out at you.
Q: Are there any lesser-known spots or trails in your park that you would recommend to visitors?
A: If I tell you the answer to that, then people will go there and know about it! No, it’s a National Park. It's public land there. There are no secrets.
Pine Canyon Trail is fantastic, remote, and you often see bears. It goes up the backside of the Chisos Mountain Range, the only mountain range contained within a national park. Even in the busiest week of the year, which will have several 1000 people here, there's usually only a couple cars, or less than 10 people on that trail.
I also love taking people to Devil’s Den, an off-trail area with total solitude and wilderness. It's just a crack in the mountain, and you hike cross country. So there's, you know, there's, there's, you don't take a trail, you just land navigate, because there's this giant crevice in the mountain, and so you can see where you park, and you just walk across the desert. And it's so fantastic to help people safely experience what it's like to not be on a trail, right?
Q: Are there any local events or ranger programs that visitors should be aware of?
A: I will shamelessly self promote here. Big Bend has the darkest sky out of any national park currently in the United States, measured by the McDonald Observatory. We are actually darker than at the McDonald Observatory. We do night sky programmes, and you can see everything, you can see the milky way with your naked eye. We even saw the aurora the other night. A ranger will kind of explain everything that's happening, and then all of a sudden, all the satellites start popping out at you, because you see movement, because your eyes will pick it up after a couple minutes. So that is something that is absolutely worth viewing.
Most people come here for a different reason, and then they get here and all of a sudden it's like, oh my God, I've never seen stars like that before. No, actually, you literally have never seen stars like this before. You've never had the opportunity to experience a night sky like this if you live in the United States, and especially if you live in a city or a suburb.
I also give coffee with a ranger on friday mornings, which is just informal conversations at the campground, answering questions about the park, and then sunsets with the superintendent, I do on Wednesday nights,and just answer questions about what it's like to manage the park, what kind of issues we deal with at the management level. It's a very strange program, but there seems to be a genuine interest in, you know, what it takes to run a park that's got a couple 100 people living here full time and 1000 square miles.
Q: What keeps you passionate about your work as a park ranger?
A: The people I work with, especially on intense rescue missions. There’s a bond with a team that’s out there to save lives; nothing else matters in those moments. There's, there is truly nothing, nothing like that. And I've been so fortunate to be on, you know, so many of those teams in different parks.
Stay tuned for more conversations with park rangers across America’s national parks.
Comments