New Grand Teton official took worldwide path to Wyoming

Jeremy Barnum formally began his tenure as Grand Teton Nationwide Park’s chief of employees in Might. The northern Utah native’s profession with the U.S. Overseas Service despatched him to Finland and Ecuador earlier than touchdown him again in Washington, D.C., the place he pivoted to communications work with the Nationwide Park Service. | RYAN DORGAN, NEWS & GUIDE

JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) — A Finnish mission journey early on in life didn’t do a lot to tamp down Jeremy Barnum’s starvation to department out and expertise the various cultures, cities and wild locations of Planet Earth.

As a substitute, two years in Scandinavia had the other impact.

“Having that have residing abroad with a unique language and tradition, that actually obtained beneath my pores and skin,” Barnum stated.

The yearnings to journey had been obvious early on rising up in a lower-middle class American household on the Wasatch Entrance, the place Barnum was raised by an outdoorsy supply truck driver and orthodontist’s assistant, the Jackson Gap Information & Information studies.

“I used to be the cliche the place I couldn’t wait to get out and discover the world,” he stated. “I had by no means even seen the ocean.”

Put up-mission and again in Ogden at Weber State College, the 43-year-old who’s now the chief of employees for Grand Teton Nationwide Park steered away from his earlier fisheries and wildlife administration main. He turned in the direction of political science with a world relations emphasis. One professor particularly, Nancy Haanstad, influenced his profession trajectory, exposing him to the mannequin United Nations and having him sit down with a diplomat to speak concerning the U.S. Overseas Service.

Poli-sci diploma in hand, Barnum walked right into a think-tank job in Washington, D.C. with the Center East Coverage Council. That gig sprung rapidly into a chance to once more dwell overseas, this time in Delhi, India, the place he accepted a U.S. Division of State submit working public affairs. There have been “dozens” of tv stations he labored with in a metro space of 16 million folks, which Barnum escaped from when he had the possibility.

“India was an enchanting place,” he stated. “I traveled throughout. I rode camels within the desert in Rajasthan, noticed tigers from the backs of elephants in Jim Corbett Reserve and met the Dalai Lama, who gave me a scarf and I swear appeared straight into my soul.”

By this level in life Barnum was a married man, hitched to his school sweetheart, Melanie, who he’d met whereas on a rock-climbing journey at Southwest Utah’s Crawdad Canyon. For a lot of their 20s and 30s, they bounced around the globe. Subsequent up: Quito, Ecuador.

“We lived at 9,300 toes, and will see three completely different volcanoes from our balcony,” Barnum stated. “There was an rebellion from the police towards the president whereas we had been there, and at one level the president was holed up in a hospital.”

Work was with the consulate, the place Barnum interviewed Ecuadorians fascinated with coming to the USA to go to household or go see Disneyworld. The Barnums managed to chip away at their very own South American bucket listing, immersing themselves in probably the most biodiverse elements of the planet, the Jackson Gap Information & Information reported.

“There’s cloud forest, you’ve obtained the Amazon basin, the Pacific coast, the Galapagos islands,” Barnum stated. “There’s one of many highest densities of fowl species on the earth, and we’d go on fowl watching journeys with the ambassador.”

The subsequent skilled pit cease introduced Barnum’s globetrotting full circle. He headed again for Finland, this time as a political officer in a submit that had him functioning as a go-between for the U.S. and End governments. The 2 democracies weren’t precisely at one another’s throats.

“We weren’t speaking about points that we had with them,” Barnum stated. “It was cooperation — like, I labored with Finland to assist destroy among the effluent that was a results of the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons.”

Jeremy and Melanie had been squarely of their 30s and beloved life within the woodsy Scandinavian nation of 5.5 million folks. He turned an avid cross-country skier and bike toured by way of the Åland Islands. As soon as whereas solo trekking by way of Lapland within the Arctic Circle, he needed to anticipate migrating herds of reindeer to get out of the best way earlier than he may progress down the path.

“I bear in mind one time being out on a frozen lake,” Barnum stated. “We sat on reindeer hides, consuming heat juice simply watching the Northern Lights go over, watching them undulate and shift. It was fairly spectacular.”

Idyllic existence apart, plans had been afoot to return to the USA and its acquainted faces and areas. All of their siblings and oldsters dwelled in Wyoming and Utah, however the draw wasn’t simply household.

“Actually, open area and outside recreation is a giant a part of what makes us tick,” Barnum stated. “There’s nothing just like the American West.”

First, nevertheless, got here a second stint in D.C., the place Barnum initially stayed throughout the U.S. Division of State. He actively pursued a sidestep to the Nationwide Park Service, making use of for a job within the communications workplace. The voicemail detailing a suggestion popped up on his cellphone whereas he was getting back from a backpacking again dwelling, as he drove down a canyon grime street.

“I can nonetheless see that view popping out of the excessive Uintas,” he stated. “It simply felt proper.”

On the Park Service’s communications workplace, Barnum climbed and took a promotion to chief spokesperson for an company of over 20,000 workers and 400-plus items. His job was basically representing the Park Service on the thorniest of points, like the federal government shutdown that dragged for 35 days.

“It will be naïve to suppose that form of job would simply be giving folks good mountain climbing suggestions,” Barnum stated. “A variety of occasions, by the point it obtained to my workplace it was as a result of there was some type of controversy.”

It was a “cool job,” he stated, though there have been inevitable frustrations representing an company amid the frenetic trendy movement of data.

“I noticed it quite a bit in DC with nationwide media: The competitors, the necessity to get eyeballs in your web site,” Barnum stated. “There’s simply a lot info on the market and a lot noise that looking for one thing on the market that’s newsworthy is a real problem. And I feel I skilled that on my aspect of the difficulty, too.”

The transfer to Grand Teton Nationwide Park was alluring due to proximity to household, but additionally as a result of it allowed Barnum to reinvent himself professionally and tackle an all-new problem in nitty-gritty administration. The chief of employees job, a retooled model of retired administration assistant Gary Pollock’s place, started on an interim foundation a few yr in the past, and turned everlasting within the late spring. He labored by way of the 55-day interval when the COVID-19 pandemic closed down Northwest Wyoming’s nationwide parks, after which endured probably the most uncommon summer time seasons ever with a much-reduced employees.

“This isn’t how I’d have envisioned my first yr at Grand Teton Nationwide Park, by any stretch of the creativeness,” Barnum stated. “The whole lot that we’ve achieved since March has been with the backdrop of, ‘What do we have to do to maintain our workers and guests secure?’”

Barnum now spends his workdays as a messenger from the superintendent’s workplace, speaking with tons of of front-line staff. He’s additionally the park’s level individual for participating with outdoors decision-makers, interfacing with everybody from Teton County commissioners to the Park Service’s D.C. headquarters.

In Moose, Jeremy and Melanie Barnum at the moment are joined by a 4-year-old son, Gus, who’s toted alongside nearly in all places. Their first yr within the valley noticed car-camping roadtrips to locations like Buffalo Invoice State Park, Yellowstone and Medication Lodge Archaeological Web site, and canoe-camping on Teton Park’s personal Leigh Lake.

Having a job and life which can be each immersed within the outside again dwelling has been satisfying. Barnum’s a giant believer in Maslow’s hierarchy of wants psychological concept, and he’s discovered himself within the place of constructing progress towards the head: self-fulfillment.

“For me,” Barnum stated, “it’s very easy to rise up within the morning realizing that I can do no matter I can to guard and share a spectacular place like Grand Teton Nationwide Park.”