In 2023, Philadelphia lawyer Andrew Coval left legal work for $16.14-an-hour seasonal ranger work, sharing a FEMA trailer while working in Yosemite

In 2023, Andrew Coval made an unusual career change. The Philadelphia lawyer left his legal work behind, drove a 2000 Toyota Camry across the United States and arrived in California to work as a seasonal ranger at Yosemite National Park. The job came with a very different lifestyle: long days outdoors, shared accommodation in an old FEMA trailer and an hourly wage of $16.14. For Coval, however, the attraction was not the pay or the comfort. It was the opportunity to work inside one of America’s most recognisable national parks.A very different life in YosemiteThe San Francisco Chronicle notes that Coval said his first year was a total contrast to his previous professional career. In place of the Philadelphia office, he worked among campgrounds, roads, forests, and visitor centres. He resided in park housing in an old FEMA trailer along with two other seasonal workers. His job was equally varied. According to Coval, he was required to check campers, answer questions, address bear-related food-storage issues, put out campfires, and solve campsite-related problems. Sometimes, he had to do some rather unpleasant things as well.That wide range of responsibilities was part of what made seasonal work important at Yosemite. The National Park Service describes seasonal jobs as an important part of its workforce. The work can vary widely, from talking to visitors and maintaining park facilities to helping with resource management and law enforcement. Many of these positions are available during the summer, when more visitors arrive in the parks.For Coval, the seasonal job was also a chance to get closer to the career he had always wanted. He said in his article that he was comfortable earning $16.14 an hour because the opportunity to work as a ranger mattered more to him than the pay. The following year, he returned to Yosemite as an interpreter, leading educational programmes and answering visitors’ questions at the Big Oak Flat Visitor Centre.What seasonal rangers actually doThe job of a park ranger can be seen as just giving maps or directions to park visitors. The role involves far more than that. The people working at Yosemite have to manage a park that spans about 759,620 acres, with approximately 800 miles of trails and hundreds of facilities. The National Park Service has also documented hundreds of automobile accidents and multiple search and rescue missions every year.That workload becomes more complicated when millions of visitors arrive within a relatively short period. Yosemite’s visitor-access planning documents identify congestion, long entrance queues, pressure on facilities, human waste and insufficient staffing during periods of heavy use among the challenges created by intense visitation. Research published in Environment Systems and Decisions examined the working conditions of rangers across protected areas and found that many face hazardous environments alongside employment insecurity, inadequate income and limited workplace protections.When a dream job meets a difficult systemCoval’s experience also showed how uncertain seasonal work can become when the hiring system changes. In an account published in 2025, he wrote about thousands of seasonal employees being caught up in new federal hiring procedures, leaving some appointments in limbo. Some workers, he noted, might decide not to return, while others could find themselves waiting longer for their paperwork to be processed. It was a reminder that behind the scenery and outdoor work, seasonal jobs at national parks can also come with plenty of uncertainty.For Coval, though, the attraction of Yosemite was never difficult to explain. He had swapped the familiar path of a legal career for long days outside, shared accommodation and a much smaller pay cheque. Yet the experience gave him something his previous job could not: the chance to work in a place he had long wanted to be. His move from a Philadelphia law office to a FEMA trailer in Yosemite may sound like an unlikely career change, but for Coval, it was a way of turning an old ambition into everyday life.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.