by Alan Leftridge
We were skimming the treetops, searching for an updraft to lift the Cessna 172 to a better altitude for viewing the surroundings. Joe had offered me a ride in his airplane and I was excited to get an airborne view of my home and immediate valley. I was watching the treetops pass just below my feet when I was attracted to the sound of wind rushing by Joe’s open window, and of Joe swatting at a small bee with a folded map. A few moments passed and he forced the bee out. Closing the window, he handed me the map and exclaimed, “I don’t want to be distracted at a critical moment.” Startled, I shot back, “There’s going to be a critical moment?”
Joe shrugged and instructed me to open the map. It was an aviation map with unfamiliar lines and circles. “I’m leaving for Minneapolis in the morning,” I heard him say through my headphones. “I need to get fuel before I leave. Look on the map and tell me how to get to St. Ignatius.”
I looked at him with bewilderment, and then motioned, “It’s… on the other side of that mountain range!”
“Yeah, I thought so. Tell me the route to get over the range.”
Joe had just appointed me navigator.
We tried to cross over the mountains three times before we gained enough altitude to skim through a pass. I glanced at the fuel gage, shuddered, and then spotted St. Ignatius on the horizon.
My condition appeared like the story line of Gilligan’s Island. I thought I was on a tour, but I ended up in a different state of affairs. My mistake was that I misidentified why Joe was willing to take me on a flight. I wanted sightseeing, whereas he expected a navigator.
As interpreters, we often misidentify what people are looking for. Working day in and day out at our sites, we develop assumptions based on patterns of visitors’ behavior and what we believe the purpose of our site to be. The assumptions may be old or totally out of line with visitors’ changing interests.
I recall visiting a new nature center and asking the interpreter at the information desk about their attendance record. She related the short history of their facility and surrounding grounds this way:
“The center was built three years ago. We thought that visitors would flock to us because the center was new, and an addition to local educational and outdoor leisure opportunities. It didn’t happen. So, we advertised on the radio and used other communications venues with public service announcements; still no interest. Then, someone from the parks department said they wanted to store their excess picnic tables behind the nature center. Instead of storing them, we responded by arranging them on the grassy area in front of the center. To our surprise, we had whole groups of people coming for family outings, picnicking and enjoying the grassy open space. Some of the people would wander into the center out of curiosity. That’s when we began to get ‘visitors.’”
She continued, “We realized that the demographic was different than we thought. We knew that our community was family oriented, but we didn’t understand its multi-generational composition. Grandparents, parents, and young children were coming into the center in family groups. This provided the challenge of developing interpretation in which older family members taught younger, and younger taught older. It has provided a richness in our interpretation that we didn’t anticipate three years ago.”
I think it is sensible to consider what our intuition tells us about our visitors and what they want. Our instincts into what visitors are seeking are easy to come by; just think of what we look for during our leisure time away from home.
For the most part, we seek for relaxing experiences that involve quality recreational activities in places that are not over-run with other visitors. We like places that offer a wide variety of activities that are enjoyable to get to by car, by way of good roads. Once we get to a destination, we expect a safe experience at clean, well-maintained, accessible facilities. We want convenient and easy-to-find resources and, when necessary, information about lodging and good food. Weather is a constant interest. An accurate weather forecast helps us make last minute decisions. After all, our holiday time is limited; we want to know if the weather is going to cooperate as we seek adventurous fun, scenic views, or favorable conditions for our activities of choice.
We also desire learning through personal or nonpersonal interpretation. Quite possibly, it is the opportunities for the unexpected that affect us the most, whether it is viewing wildlife uncommon to us, happening upon rare natural wonders, or being enlightened by a new perspective of a culture or historical event.
Every tourist season presents us with new visitors’ interests and needs, ones that evolve due to societal events. By imagining ourselves as visitors and considering contemporary social pressures, we can anticipate what people are seeking. This helps us prepare our messages to meet our visitors’ needs.
I made a false assumption on the day of the airplane flight, that Joe was going to take me sightseeing. If I had anticipated the possibilities before we taxied, I might have asked the right questions and learned that he wanted to refuel, leading to my unexpected adventure. The knowledge would have given me the opportunity to prepare.
Alan Leftridge is a contract interpretive trainer, visitor services trainer, and interpretive writer based out of the Swan Valley of Montana. Contact him at www.leftridge.com.
