Island Solitaire : Loneliness Is Not a Problem for the Only Ranger at National Park Outpost

Beth Fulsom is the only human being on tiny, exotic Santa Barbara Island, 47 miles off Ventura.

But she isn’t alone.

She shares one-square-mile, wind-swept, treeless island with 160,000 beady-eyed deer mice, thousands of sea gulls, pelicans and other sea birds and more than 1,000 sea lions.

Fulsom, 33, has one of the most remote outposts of any ranger in the National Park Service.

“I’m here by choice,” the 12-year Park Service veteran said. “I love the island. Santa Barbara is the crown jewel of the five islands that make up the Channel Islands National Park.”

Fulsom, whose tour of duty on the island will last two years, has been the sole ranger here since April 10. Rangers are also stationed on the four other islands--Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and San Miguel.

She is on the island 10 days at a stretch, then off for five. During the summer, seasonal rangers fill in for her. In winter, the ranger station is not staffed when she is off the island. When she is here in winter, she sometimes spends her 10-day stints alone because few mariners risk fierce storms and treacherous seas to sail out here.

“The sea gets so rough,” Fulsom said. “Sometimes it breaks over the second pier of the dock, 25 feet out of water. There is no place for a boat to hide, no safe anchorage for boats to go to during winter storms.”

When the waters are calm, Fulsom makes the three-hour sea journey to Santa Barbara Island from Ventura aboard a National Park Service boat. When seas are too rough, she is flown by helicopter.

Santa Barbara Island is a world apart from eastern Pennsylvania, where Fulsom grew up. She graduated in 1982 from East Stroudsburg State College in the Poconos, where she majored in parks and recreation. Since graduating, she has been a ranger in five parks in Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania and California.

Her current assignment agrees with her.

“One of my main reasons why I requested to be assigned to Santa Barbara Island is because of the outstanding diving here,” Fulsom said. “Fish everywhere. Lobster. Diving with whales passing through and hanging around the island for a few days and with sea lions that swim up to your mask.”

“Often, I will put a line in the water and fish for dinner--sheepshead, opaleye, perch or calico bass, my favorite,” she said. “If I’m in the mood for lobster, I dive for one. Pretty good life, huh?”

Fulsom lives in a yellow stucco structure looming over the sea at Landing Cove. The building contains the ranger’s four-room residence, a visitor’s center and a small museum.

She begins her workday by raising the flag and opening the visitor’s center. Then she radios park headquarters in Ventura about weather and sea conditions, the number of boats in the anchorage, any citations issued and any unusual wildlife activity, “like pods of whales swimming by,” Fulsom said.

Fulsom wears many hats. She is a park ranger, a Santa Barbara County sheriff’s deputy, a California Fish and Game warden and an emergency management technician who treats visitors with minor injuries. If there is a serious accident, she radios for help.

Because she is a law enforcement officer, she carries a .357 magnum. “I’ve never had to use it, but being alone in this out-of-the-way place, you never know what you might encounter,” she said.

She patrols the water in a 60-horsepower inflatable boat. It takes her 20 minutes to circle the island.

The fewer than 3,500 visitors to the island each year are commercial fishermen who harvest lobsters, swordfish and sea urchins, pleasure boaters who anchor along its east coast beneath steep cliffs and tourists who arrive aboard Island Packers commercial tour boats out of Ventura.

Permits are issued by the park service for the eight island campsites, for a maximum of 30 campers. Visitors must bring their own water and food, along with tents if they are staying overnight. The ranger leads nature walks along the 5 1/2 miles of trails that crisscross the saddle-shaped island, which rises 635 feet out of the water at Signal Peak, its high point, and 562 feet at North Peak.

The island is covered with low-lying vegetation such as Australian saltbush, ice plant, prickly pear cactus, cholla and giant coreopsis plants that resemble dwarf trees, their thick, woody stems growing as high as five feet. In spring, the hills are ablaze with golden coreopsis blooms.

“Sometimes, groups come out in good weather from schools up and down the coast from Santa Barbara to San Diego,” Fulsom said. “I lead them and all visitors on guided tours to sea lion rookeries, to view the spectacular sea elephants. I describe the flora and fauna, island history. We visit kitchen middens where prehistoric Indians camped.” Kitchen middens are centuries-old Indian refuse dumps piled with abalone and mussel shells.

Sea lions bear their young in spring. Also in the spring, island cliffs are alive with thousands of small, chubby, Xantus murrelets, sea birds who instinctively tumble into the sea 48 hours after birth to meet their parents and swim away. Santa Barbara Island is the largest-known breeding colony of Xantus murrelets in the world.

The 160,000 endemic Santa Barbara Island deer mice add to the rough-and-tumble atmosphere. So far, the new ranger house is mouseproof, although the mice frequently chew through campers’ tents in search of food. “One camper awakened to find three baby deer mice born during the night in one of his shoes,” Fulsom said.

For exercise, the ranger daily either runs 10 laps up and down the 300 steep steps leading from the landing to the top of the cliff or jogs four miles around the perimeter of the island.

“I never get lonely when I’m alone on the island,” said Fulsom, whose electricity is provided by solar panels mounted on the battery building next to the ranger station. “I have a television set but rarely turn it on. I’m a voracious reader with two or three novels going at the same time, and I love working crossword puzzles.”