🐻Ranger Brian Rides Again🐻

🤠After a 7-year hiatus, I’m excited to be back in the flathat working for our National Park Service. As an Education Park Ranger for Effigy Mounds National Monument, I’ll oversee the development and presentation of the park’s education programs and provide outreach in the region.

💨It’s been a whirlwind year from being a care-taker for mom/stay at home dad for Oliver- to now a uniformed federal government employee- luckily this park is a safe spot for me to heal and grow again.

😊I’m deeply grateful to be back in a place where some of my naturalist elders have taught about nature since the 1990's. This place also holds many memories for me including being the first place I told Emily I loved her.❤️

📝A bit about the park :

🌎Located in Northeast Iowa’s bluff country, at the confluence of the Yellow and Mississippi Rivers, Effigy Mounds is a significant place where natural and cultural resources join together to create a sacred cultural landscape. The monument protects and preserves diverse archeology sites and their features including the largest known concentration of American Indian ceremonial and burial mounds in the U.S.

🌳Mound building culture in the park dates to nearly 2,800 years ago and continued here for another 2,000 years. Some of the mounds in the monument are in the likeness of animal shapes such as bears and birds. Today, the park has 20 different culturally associated American Indian Tribes; the Ho-Chunk tribe claiming to be the direct descendants of the mound builders.

🥾The park is 2500 acres of wonderment and has over 12 miles of hiking trails to explore. Hikes offer views of the mounds and scenic overlooks of the Mississippi River.

🐦 As a bird nerd, I’m jazzed to be in a park that is recognized as a globally Important Bird Area; there’s peregrine falcons nesting on the cliffs here!

👋If you’re ever in the area stop in the visitor center and say hi. Local teachers have a school group that would enjoy a program from a whimsical park ranger dressed in a funny outfit? Now you know where to send them!😁