5 Questions and a Secret: Brian Booth State Park ranger Jordan Fernandez’ love of the outdoors

By KATHLEEN O’CONNOR/YachatsNews

William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, John Keats are some of Jordan Fernandez’ favorite poets. His favorite poem is “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” by William Wordsworth. The subject of the poem, one of Wordsworth’s most famous, is his delight in nature.

Fernandez, the lead park ranger at Brian Booth State Park, is familiar with the poets because he graduated from college in New Jersey with a degree in Romantic English Literature. But as he studied the poems he realized he wanted to pursue a career that got him outside, into the natural world of poets.

It was a matter of connecting the dots in his life that involved the outdoors. One was the epic camping trips his father took him and his brothers on as children, loading all their gear high on a flatbed trailer behind their 1963 Chevrolet Impala. At the time he lived in Pacifica, Calif. Another dot was the time he spent with his friends flying down the hills on skateboards toward the ocean. He says he feels lucky to have had a childhood free of cell phones and hovering parents.

The family moved to Hoboken, N.J. when he was in middle school. There were dots in New Jersey, too — the nearby woods were perfect for paintball wars. And when Fernandez took college friends hiking they always relied on him to get out of the woods using his natural sense of direction.

Fernandez has been an Oregon State Park ranger for three years.

Question: How much background did you need to have before you were hired as a ranger?

Answer: I started by joining AmeriCorps for two years, working on the Appalachian Trail in New York. The most memorable thing I did there was to help build granite steps in Bear Valley. The stones were huge, each one weighed 800 to 1,400 pounds. After that I spent a few seasons with the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry’s outdoor school. Fifth-graders come to the outdoor school from all over Oregon and in the summer there are camps for children of all ages. I was a teacher, a bus driver, a lifeguard, a cook. All of us did everything.

A stint at the science museum in Missoula, Mont. followed and then I finally got a seasonal park ranger position here on the Oregon coast. I was very lucky to get a full-time job after just three months.

Q: What are the various parts of Brian Booth State Park?

A: Brian Booth is unique in that it is an umbrella park that includes Ona Beach State Park and Beaver Creek State Recreation Area. It’s named for the man who was the first chair of the Oregon State Parks Commission.

Altogether the park is 1,320 acres, 303 in Ona Beach and the rest in Beaver Creek, not all contiguous. It’s more diverse than most parks, extending from the beach across sand dunes, a salt marsh, a floodplain, and ends in a dense forest. Native American tribes found abundant food here for centuries. There was a resort here in the early 1900s, right where the Ona Beach parking lot is now and a sawmill from 1950 to 1971 at the intersection of North Beaver Creek Road and Highway 101. The original piece of land, which was the start of Ona Beach State Park, was acquired by the state in 1938, and many additional pieces have been added over the years, most recently in 2024. Ona is a native American word for razor clam.

The strategic plan for the park includes building a campground, which will be called the Chester Armstrong Campground. Mr. Armstrong was the second superintendent of Oregon State Parks. We don’t know when funding will be available. Our shorter-term goal is to extend the boardwalk that currently starts at the visitor center all the way across the marsh to the small bridge that goes over the creek.

Q: What animals do people see at Brian Booth State Park?

A: We have one or two cougar sitings each year and one or two bear sitings. I once had quite a confrontation with three bull elk. I was headed up to Elk Meadow on a mower and came across a herd of elk. The females wandered off quickly, but the bulls started pawing their feet and lowering their heads. It was clearly in my best interest to leave. I came back a bit later and found they were still there, still just as assertive. I decided I didn’t need to mow that day.

We often see river otters in the creek and sometimes beaver. There is one beaver hut on the creek right now. There are also a lot of nutria, which are invasive and destructive. There are 76 birds on the list of birds that have been seen in the park, and I’m sure that’s not all that live there. The screech of a red-tailed hawk always gets my attention.

Q: How do you spend your days as a ranger?

A: I don’t get to spend all my time at Brian Booth State Park. The park is in the South Beach management unit, which extends from South Beach State Park to the Yachats Ocean Road State Park. I’m one of 13 rangers who cover the area, monitoring the campgrounds and the restrooms, and working on maintenance projects. In the summer we have help from 18 seasonal workers.

Brian Booth requires a lot of maintenance when the weather is warmer. There are four meadows in Beaver Creek, and they all must be mowed, especially around the edges so that the blackberries can be kept at bay. There are seven miles of trails and three miles of the creek itself that need to be maintained.

There is a great boat launch for kayaks, paddle boards and small boats onto Beaver Creek just east of Highway 101, but we often have people launching their vessels from the parking lot at Ona Beach, which tears up the vegetation. We can’t erect any warning signs there because Ona is a sensitive archeological area. It’s a part of the park that needs constant attention and public education.

Q: What do you like to do when you’re not working?

A: I like to write songs, both the lyrics and the music, and play them on my acoustic guitar. I am often the evening entertainment when I am camping with friends and family.

My partner, Emily McCauley, and I just purchased a home in Toledo. We’ll both be spending a lot more time soon learning how to be homeowners. She and I both had to jump from job to job to get our current positions; it was adventurous and frustrating at the same time. And now, although we look forward to settling into the community it’s also a little bittersweet to leave that somewhat wild time of life behind.

Tell us a secret:

On a clear day you can see the ocean from Snaggy Point in Beaver Creek State Recreation Area. Exactly how to get there isn’t a secret, but it takes a little exploring to find it.

• Kathleen O’Connor is a Waldport freelance writer who can be reached via email at kmoc8916@gmail.com