(Intro) Yellowstone

“Do you want to wait 15 more minutes and have a 4th of July baby?” the Doctor asked my mom after 23 hours of labor.

“Get. This. Damn. Baby. Out of me!” she responded.

July 3rd, 1987 I was born in Livingston, MT.

We didn’t live there. It was just the closest hospital to Yellowstone National Park, WY where my parents lived and worked as Park Rangers.

I was a stubborn birth (a trait I still have today, both good and bad at times). My head was tucked and my mom tried and tried before it came down to her needing a c-section (a procedure she credits with the reason my head is shaped so nicely). The doctors gave my dad forceps “just in case the baby arrives early on your way to the hospital” which, of course, made him panic. ?But they were able to make the hour long drive from Yellowstone to Livingston without any issues.

Alexander Bruce deGolia, the first-born child to Jack deGolia and Louise Bruce. My dad so lovingly remembers first seeing me saying “you looked like a piece of liver.”

I don’t remember much about living in Yellowstone National Park except taking a bath in a steel sink and being able to sit in it like it was a hot tub.

My parents lived in the Mammoth Hot Springs area of Yellowstone for 5 years and I was there for 1 year and 10 months of that time.

Dad got the job in Yellowstone to be closer to Mom, a love story as old as time, a man moving for a woman.

My dad worked seasonally during the summers for various Park Service entities for 6 of 8 years between 1971 and 1979 and also worked seasonally during the winter for 4 of those years before landing his first full time position at Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, IL which was a miserable 9 months for him. That brought my dad to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Phoenix, AZ where he worked for 3.5 years before deciding to try acting full time in 1982.

After taking the leap, he realized the odds of success were low and that he liked making a steady income. Because of that, my dad jumped back into the Park Service with a summer job at Grand Canyon National Park. This is where he met my mom, who was there on a summer internship for the University of Montana.

When the summer was over and the assignments were up, Dad got a job as close as he could to Missoula, MT where my mom had about a semester’s worth of school to finish up as a Recreation Managment Major and Environmental Science Minor.

They were married in Chico Hot Springs, MT in 1984.

In May of 1989, my dad got a job with the Beaverhead-Deer Lodge National Forest as the Public Affairs Officer in Dillon, MT. A position he would hold running communications for the Local Forest and National Fires until 2009. It also was the entire reason my life and life experiences are the way they are.

Life is about decisions…….

We all make choices in life and it’s amazing to backtrack to see where they take you. It's odd for me to think as an adult that my parents met during a summer, were together for a year, and then married. But those decisions put us on a path and a journey, more specifically, my journey.

You make the best choice for you that you have in that moment in both your career and personal life. Were they right or wrong? Only you can answer that. I’m happy my parents made the decisions they did that lead to me simply existing.

We don’t choose our existence or our initial set up in life. But what we can do is make choices and enjoy the journey all the way through.

To be continued…..

-- Alex deGolia

Al Ki Consultants (al - KAI)