Old Man Walks Among Giants--as a Volunteer

They call him “the old man of the woods.”

Lawson Brainerd was chief ranger in this 500-acre stand of redwoods for 23 years, from February, 1942, until March, 1965, when he retired. He never left.

He is still here after 45 years, wearing his old stiff-brimmed Stetson hat and his ranger’s outfit, leading visitors on trail hikes, as a volunteer.

“Most of us my age are dead or should be by now,” says Brainerd, 86, with a twinkle in his bright eyes. “When you get to be my age, it gets awful tough to justify your existence.”

Brainerd has been a U.S. Forest Service or National Park Service ranger since 1918, when he was 17, discharged from the Navy at the end of World War I.

“One of the few times in my life I lied. I was 16 when I was in the Navy. I lied about my age,” he says.

Sturdy and straight, the old man leads visitors six to eight miles a day through the woods. “These giant redwoods belong to an ancient family of trees called the swamp cypresses. They first appeared when dinosaurs walked the earth,” he relates. “Damn impressive, aren’t they?” he adds.

He picks a leaf from a California laurel and says to Dood Grace, 62, from Pittsford, Vt.: “Take a whiff. It’s pungent.” Grace, in the woods with her husband, Art, 64; a daughter, Rhonda, 39, and son, Jim, 42, smells the leaf and agrees: “Takes the top of your head off.”

Two teen-age girls walk by on the trail. Brainerd to the girls: “If you get lost, let me know.” They look at the ranger quizzically. One asks: “What do you mean by that?” The ranger laughs.

Brainerd worked in Inyo National Forest in the High Sierra for years as a horseback ranger. “Sometimes I was out in the wilderness as long as 51 days straight on patrol. There were only four rangers in the forest in those days. We were scattered all over the mountains,” he recalls.

One of the lakes in the forest, at 11,500 feet on the south fork of Big Pine Creek, is Brainerd Lake, named in his honor. He stocked it with golden trout in 1925.

Brainerd and his wife, Helen, searched for adventure throughout the world every opportunity they had during their 65 years together. She died three years ago. They rode the Tran-Siberian railway. They visited the Arctic and the tropics and circled the Earth three times.

His grandparents crossed the plains in ox-drawn wagons and arrived in California in the 1850s. The old ranger’s love for the woods began when he was a small boy: “When I was 10 and 11, I would take my tomahawk and my dogs and go out in the woods by myself for two or three days. My mother knew I was all right as long as the dogs didn’t come back without me.”

Brainerd reluctantly admits that he has slowed somewhat over the years. “I don’t think I could get on a buck’s trail anymore and track him down. One of my lifelong sports until a few years ago was to spot a buck’s trail and track him. If I could see him before he saw me, my day was made.”

I’ll . . . Be Here’

While sitting on the bench at the visitors center under the flagpole in Muir Woods, 17 miles north of San Francisco, the old ranger was reminded of one of his most embarrassing moments:

“One Sunday about closing time I went out to take the flag down. I walked up to the flagpole and gave it a stiff military salute. There were a lot of people standing around watching me. I started to pull the line down. I pulled and pulled. No flag.

“I had not looked up to see if the flag was there. Somebody else had taken it down. . . .”

As a recent visitor prepared to leave Muir Woods, Lawson Brainerd’s parting words were: “Come back in 10 years. I’ll still be here. Somebody has to hang around and take care of these trees. . . .”