Parks and Trails Summer Recruitment

We are a very tight-knit, cohesive group. We start each summer as individuals and we end each summer as a well-bonded team. I'm Hugh Leslie, the Operations Branch Manager for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. I started in 2012 on trail crew, came back the winter of '15 and never left. A lot of the problems that we face at the Mat-Su Borough Parks Department is primarily upkeep and maintenance on equipment around the parks, playgrounds, and at the trailheads, everything from picnic tables to trash cans, things of that nature.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] So one of the things that happens when you work for us in the summer, you get to learn skill building, whether that's working in the campground where you'll learn bookwork and registrations and commuter operation through our reservation system. And if you're on the trail crew, you'll learn how to build sustainable trails throughout the valley and maintain those trails.

In the summers, I oversee a crew of about 12 people who help to build and maintain the trails here in the Maniscusett Borough. We're outside almost the entire season in the summer, working in all kinds of weather—wind, rain, sometimes snow. We're climbing up mountains, we're carrying heavy stuff.

¡Ah! It could be very physically taxing.

What I'm looking at for the Matsuura Parks Department is somebody who wants to join a team that we can have fun, we can get a lot of things done, and we can give back to the community. If you want a comfortable work environment where everybody cares about you outside of the field as well as in the shop, in the office, then this is the place for you. It's a lot of being outside and enjoying nature. If that's what you're into, it's a great job.