Married to the Park Service--and to the Joys of Life in the Great Outdoors

To see Jean Menning and Ed, her husband of 40 years, paddle a kayak across Beartrack Cove in Alaska is to believe that there is balance and harmony in the world. Their paddles make gracefully synchronized circles; their boat spurts across the water. A bird flies over, and Jean stops paddling for a moment and focuses her binoculars skyward. Then Ed does the same, and they discuss the bird’s markings and settle on an identification.

I got to know the Estes Park, Colo., couple last year on a cruise in southeast Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park. Every morning our ship moored in a different part of the 3.22-million-acre park, where we had breakfast at a communal table and split up into small groups for exploration by kayak. The Mennings were in my group.

Ed, who retired in 1990 after 33 years as a resource management specialist with the National Park Service, is 69 and has a Gary Cooper frame that towers over Jean. She is 65 and has short gray-white hair, radiant skin and a voice with the kind of timbre that makes you listen to what she says. Together, this couple not only raised two children while living in more national parks than I’ve seen but also set off on an around-the-world backpacking trip the year after Ed retired.

Meeting them was, for me, one of the gifts of travel. Recently I checked in with Jean, who was watching a herd of six deer on the lawn.

Question: When I was a kid, my family spent summers in Estes Park. How did you and Ed end up there?

Answer: He worked in Rocky Mountain National Park for about 10 years. For us, it’s a good central location. We walk six days out of seven; in winter we snowshoe, and we do at least two overnight backpacks a year someplace where no one else is and the fishing is great.

Q: Like where?

A: I can’t tell you.

Q: I climbed Longs Peak [a 14,255-foot mountain near Estes Park] when I turned 40.

A: Ed still climbs Longs once a year. The last time, I watched him at the summit through a telescope on the porch.

Q: What’s made your marriage so successful?

A: You need two things: a sense of humor and a sense of wonder. That’s going to see you through a lot.

Also, Ed and I have a marriage motto from John Muir: “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.”

Q: Before you met Ed, did you travel much?

A: I was raised in Washington state and got a Fulbright Scholarship to teach English in Heidelberg, Germany. I was a very naive 21-year-old, and it was my first overseas adventure. I lived in a room with a little hot pot and showered down the hall. It was the late ‘50s; you could still see evidence of World War II.

I spent all my money traveling. I went to London with a friend. We decided to see some theater. I chose Charles Laughton, and she saw something else. We agreed to meet afterward at a street corner, where a man stopped and leered at me, then asked, “How much?” Suddenly I realized I was in the middle of the red light district.

I went to Russia before the Berlin Wall was constructed. The thing I remember is that, even then, there was such a feeling of relief coming away. I’ve never experienced the same thing anywhere.

Q: What happened next?

A: Back in Seattle, I got a job teaching German and English at a public school. I kept the wind in my hair by climbing mountains. I climbed Mt. Rainier when I was 24, then took a bus tour of the area. Ed was [a] naturalist. ... When he heard that someone in the group had made it to the top of Rainier, he said, “I’d like to meet him.”

Later we climbed Mt. Rainier from different directions and met at the top.

Q: You and your family must have been like Army brats. Which parks did you live in?

A: After Rainier, Craters of the Moon in Idaho, where our daughter, Elisabeth, was born; Yosemite, where we had Kurt; Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee; the Omaha, Neb., regional office. Then Rocky Mountain National Park for 10 years and the Seattle regional office for six.

Q: What was it like raising children in the park service?

A: Once, when we’d just moved to the Great Smoky Mountains, I got a call from Kurt’s school. “Your son is an interesting child,” the woman said. “He told us you caught a bear in your backyard.”

I said, “Oh, yes.”

We always had the children out hiking and backpacking.

Q: Are you some kind of a jock?

A: We’re not jocks. We just like to be outside. It’s such a part of my life.

Q: So is travel, I gather.

A: In 1976, I surprised everyone by saving up for a trip to Hawaii on my 40th birthday. After that, we tried to take a trip every year. We like to celebrate birthdays on our travels. I had my 50th birthday on the Milford Track in New Zealand, with balloons tied to my pack, and my 60th in China. If we get to go to Turkey later this month, as we planned, Ed will turn 70 there.

One of my aunts once said, “Don’t try to do everything at once. Save something for the next time.” So instead of seeing Australia in 1986, we spent six months there when we backpacked around the world in 1991. We stayed in hostels and at YMCAs. Every day was such an adventure.

Q: Have you ever wanted to travel by yourself?

A: I like to have someone to talk things over with.

Come to think of it, marriage is very much like travel. When we go somewhere, our goal is to learn and understand and have mutual respect for the people. In marriage you need to have mutual respect too.

Q: And now you’re going to Turkey. Is that wise?

A: It’s a tour with Overseas Adventure Travel to Istanbul, the Turquoise Coast, Cappadocia and the Taurus Mountains. If they go, we’re going.

Q: Even though travel seems so much more dangerous now?

A: You can’t just stop living. Hold on a minute. ... There’s a whole flock of rosy finches outside.