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A winter evening shift in Zion National Park is relatively quiet. I check overnight campers in the campground, late-night travelers, and climbers on the cliffs. Along the main canyon's scenic drive, the full moon is coming up in the east, shining on the cliffs to the west of me. The cliffs are especially bright tonight because of the recent snow we have had.Every flat surface, shelf, and small crevice on the wall hangs on to the new snow. The moonlight brings the canyon alive. It is a different world out here in the quiet cold moonlight. Looming in the shadows, untouched by the moonlight, are canyon walls 2000 feet tall, large monoliths in the dark. You could lose yourself in these shadows.

I am reminded of a backcountry ski trip I took during the last full moon, along the East Rim Trial. It's unusual to get enough snow for good cross-country skiing in this area, so I was taking advantage of some of the best conditions I had ever experienced. As I followed the tracks of several mule deer in the snow, I noticed a sudden change in the prints, suggesting turmoil and confusion with tracks leading in every direction. A new set of tracks appeared. They were cougar tracks measuring almost 5 inches across. This was a big cat! I found where the cougar had been waiting for the deer above the trail and then where she had pounced. As I skied on, I followed the deer and cougar tracks together and then I noticed the drops of blood. The tracks eventually left the trail and climbed up toward the plateau and I was left with only my imagination to finish the story of how the cougar got her kill.

My evening patrol takes me past some of the world-class climbing areas in Zion. There are two climbers on Moonlight Buttress tonight. I can see their lights about 1000 feet up on the wall. That's where they will spend the night, tied in to a portable ledge. Imagine a campsite where you have a solid rock wall on one side and over 1000 feet to drop on the other three sides. The climbers view from this ledge must be astonishing. I’ll bet they were watching the moonrise over mesa tops and the high plateaus.

The rest of my evening patrol consists of picking up the fees from three entrance stations, checking trailhead parking lots for cars with overnight backcountry permits, and making sure we don’t have any out-of-bounds campers. Camping is only permitted in established campgrounds. If I find someone out-of-bounds, I'll have to wake them up and direct them to the campground our out of the Park.

With my evening chores done, I return to the headquarters/office to secure the building. The alarms are set, the emergency call night phone is forwarded to a co-worker's residence, and I head home around 11pm. Nighttime emergencies could be anything from a building alarm to a medical emergency, or a deer hit by a car. That's the nature of this business. You really never know what will happen from one day to the next.

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