North Bay Ranger Training

We are having a Ranger training for anyone interested in becoming a North Bay Ranger on April 15th at Samuel P. Taylor near Pt. Reyes.  We have reserved site GDE3 in the Devil’s Gulch Group Camp, so anyone who wants to stay over Sunday night is welcome.  We have the site reserved until noon on Monday.

We’ll do the training in the early afternoon on Sunday, and then have a little bbq in the evening to celebrate afterwards.  This is a ranger training based loosely on the ROM’s done by the Black Rock Rangers, with our own local flavor thrown in for good measure.  Bring a dish to share or something for the grill and your best ghost stories.  If they aren’t entertaining I will sing campfire songs, and no one wants that.  So come prepared, we will make s’mores.

We will talk about what it means to take on the role of a Ranger at a local event, learn about the history of the Regional Rangers, and run some scenarios to practice mediating possible conflicts that can arise.  We break up and take turns being Rangers and Participants, and practice responding the way you would on shift if you were a Ranger.  It’s really fun, and very interesting doing the role playing with your partner.  I guarantee you will learn something, probably about yourself!

Here is a quote from the Black Rock Rangers website about the role of Regional Rangers:

Who are the Rangers?
1. Rangers are participants in their regional community, and in some cases more than one community.

How does one become a Ranger?
2. Rangers attend a training, wear a visual RANGER designation and while volunteering agree that “It is not about the Ranger, it’s about the participant.”

What is the focus of any Ranger Organization?
3. Rangers are primarily concerned with life safety issues, maintaining the community’s standards, and resolving conflicts.

With whom do Rangers interact?
4. Rangers spend most of their time interacting with participants, but also act as a liaison between the community, event organizers and external agencies.
What is the Ranger’s first response to a non-emergency situation?
5. The default action of a Ranger is to do nothing.

What is a primary Ranger skill?
6. One of the Ranger’s greatest skills is being a generous listener.
What is a positive outcome of a Ranger interaction?
7. Rangers help participants solve their own problems using non-confrontational mediation.

How do Rangers uniformly deal with situations throughout “Burn” communities?
8. Rangers F.L.A.M.E. situations: Find Out, Listen, Analyze, Mediate (or move along), and Explain.

What do Rangers not do?
9. Rangers are neither cops, enforcers, nor security guards, they are participants who have agreed to help as participants in the community.

What do Rangers do?
10. Rangers rise out of the dust/forest/shadows/crowd when needed and recede when things can be left to ride the edge of chaos on their own.

What is the Spirit of Rangering?
11. Rangers ride the edge of chaos.

To be clear – this training does not qualify you to serve as a Black Rock Ranger.  That is a totally different process, which starts here.  This is a training for North Bay Rangers who worked the decompression event last fall, and anyone else interested in Rangering future Northbay events.

If you are interested in finding out more about our regional ranger training please join our North Bay Rangers discussion list at http://groups.google.com/group/northbayrangers and get into the conversation.  xoxo RLL )””( Ranger Duct Tape Diva