Sarah Murrell’s Instagram photos could be advertisements for the Squamish lifestyle. In shot after shot, she is hiking, biking or walking her dog along sun-kissed trails, or popping out of a tent surrounded by snow-dusted mountains. Murrell, 24, is a BC Parks Ranger. She is also a Squamish Search and Rescue member.

The Squamish Chief caught up with Murrell for a chat about her job, public misconceptions and being a female role model. What follows is an edited version of that conversation.

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Q: Let’s start with the basics: What do rangers do?

A: We do a lot of things. We have a really great motto: “We protect the park from the people and the people from the park.” It is a collection of conservation, projects and maintenance in the park. Then there’s the whole customer service side of things that is education and enforcement.

Each day is different, but it usually starts off with doing a patrol in a park and then if something is out of place, we will fix it.

Q: Where exactly do you work?

A: I am out of Alice Lake. We have an office there. My area that I cover is from Brandywine Falls to Duffy Lake. So, Brandywine Falls, Callaghan Valley, Nairn Falls, Birkenhead Lake and Joffre Lakes.

Q: Do you stay out in huts over night?

A: For my area, I am in a tent; I don’t have a ranger station. Two nights a week I will stay either at Joffre or Cerise Creek.

Q: Have you ever felt you weren’t safe due to threats from people or wildlife?

A: It is kind of funny, it is usually people, for sure, because you get such a wide range of personalities and people that don’t totally understand what the point of a ranger is.

Maybe they have never seen one before or they don’t understand that parks do have rules. A lot of people don’t know that we go through a lot of enforcement training and have the same designation as a peace officer and write the same tickets as the RCMP, at least within our scope of authority.

I see bears quite a lot but I don’t have bad encounters with them because they don’t really want to see me.

Q: What are the things you have to talk to people about?

A: It depends on the area. For Joffre, there is such a high volume of visitors and the biggest things we deal with are dogs off leash and lots of illegal camping. We have some delicate areas and people will just set up their tent wherever. For that specific park it is not typically your well-versed backcountry individual; it is more like their first time camping and they bought the 15-man tent. In Callaghan we may find people with firearms that are just shooting targets and that kind of thing or they don’t have licenses for their ATVs. Every park, depending on its access and the image of the park, we will have to write tickets for different things. The most I have written tickets for is fires during fire bans or dogs off leash. But we try to get people to work with us before we write tickets because that is kind of the last thing we want to do. People will respond better in the future if we can do more education than ticketing.

Q: What are the things you wish people knew that they don’t?

A: A lot of people look at us as the person who takes away all their freedom from the park, but that is the exact opposite of what a ranger is. A ranger is, in the first place, about preservation and park safety.

When I get out of my truck and I am in my uniform, the last thing I am thinking about is, “I can’t wait to read the riot act to everybody.” I am going out there thinking, “How can I make this park experience memorable for the people that come?” and “How can I help this area stay preserved and beautiful so people can enjoy it?”

Q: You mentioned you see bears. What other wildlife do you encounter?

A: I see lots of smaller animals like marmots and picas. I have seen coyotes, but mainly bears. In the Callaghan Valley we have about six grizzly bears that we know of. This summer, actually, there was a grizzly bear within five kilometres of the Callaghan campground and he is a little bit fussy because the berry supply there has been less than usual in other years so he has been in places he isn’t usually. So, there has been a lot of educating people up there who have no idea there are grizzly bears.

Q: In addition to being a ranger you are a Squamish Search and Rescue (SSAR) member. How do you manage both?

A: As rangers we have a really cool schedule. We work longer days, but we work four days on and three days off. With those three days off, I get to go to a lot of the search and rescue calls when there aren’t a ton of other [SSAR] volunteers available, so it works out.

Q: Being female and doing both the roles of ranger and SAR member, do you have any insight or advice for young girls who may look up to you as a role model?

A: For me, I was raised with four older brothers and I had to do whatever they were doing so when I was transitioning into the ranger job, it wasn’t like I was breaking down a barrier. I was raised for that to be normal.

Now that I work in the park and have males come up to me and be like “Can I do that for you?” I think, “What are you talking about? Of course you can’t do it for me.”

The advice that I have would be there are no jobs for boys and jobs for girls. If you find a job that you are super passionate about and that you can work toward being good at, I don’t see any barriers as far as your sex goes.

Our rangers’ office is all female, which a lot of people don’t know.

Katy Chambers, [a ranger and SSAR member], as soon as I met her, I thought “I want to be like Katy.” She was chopping wood, so resourceful and so headstrong. This is the kind of female that I want to look up to. Guys don’t look at her like they need to help her. They know she has got it under control. That has been my biggest influence.

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