He Hears the Call of the Wild

The head of outdoor programs may be retiring from his desk job, but not from the great outdoors.

THE DARTMOUTH OUTING CLUB'S accident review committee was meeting a few years ago to determine the driving future—if any—of a student who'd tried to bring a van full of fellow outing club members back to campus from the College Grant on an icy day. He'd made it only a few miles before sliding off into the woods. "Driving too fast for conditions," the State Police report said. The committee was ready to lower the boom.

The driver pleaded his case: He'd been under a lot of pressure to get everyone back for exams, and he'd been driving slower than 20 miles an hour. When he left the room for the committee to deliberate, the student hadn't won much sympathy. The DOC was about to lose a certified driver. Then Earl Jette, director of outdoor programs, offered his opinion. "It's always seemed to me," he said, "that Dartmouth is primarily an educational institution, not a penal institution. So I guess the question is whether this student realizes what he did was wrong, and did he learn something from it?"

Another time—back in 1971, during the early days of Jette's tenure at the DOC—a few playful Dartmouth students were hanging out at Grays Auction Bam in East Thet ford, Vermont. A crate of chickens came up for sale. They bought them for a dollar apiece, took them back to campus and set them loose in Jette s office. Jette always arrives at his office early, before anyone else. He took one look at the chickens, quietly closed his door and went out to breakfast. When he came back later he noticed an unusual number of students hanging around the outer office. He took out his office key, put it into the lock, suddenly seemed to remember something and departed. All day long he made feints toward his office door, but never opened it, while the students slowly went nuts. Late in the day, when everyone had gone, he gathered up the chickens and took them home, where they thrived.

Those are known as "Earl Stories." Everybody who knows Earl Jette has at least one of them. Some are hilarious, as befits life and work in the outdoors, where storms, high water and black flies are no respecters of persons. Others describe a moment when something important appeared suddenly in a new light. And others convey wonder that anybody who looks so nearly normal can accomplish so much in the hours between breakfast and bedtime.

Jette has been moving at that pace for a long time. As a student at Lebanon High School, he was the New Hampshire champion in the high hurdles. And if you stop to look at the athletic records board in the lobby at LHS, you'll see his name on the long jump plaque. It was called the broad jump back in 1957 when he set it, but to this day his leap of more than 22 feet (he remembers it perfectly) has been equaled only once, never bettered. Nor has Jette, who's retiring this fall, lost a step since then. His staff despairs of keeping up with his mountain bike on lunch-hour workouts. And he's been known to break trail on skis in footdeep snow faster than most of the other skiers behind him really wanted to go.

After high school graduation, Jette earned a B.S. in forestry at the University of Maine at Orono. He served in the Army before heading to Liberia, where he spent six years working for Firestone Rubber. Four of his five children were born there—and he was "moving up nicely in the company," he says, with the promise of a good career in the offing. But the most important thing in Jette's life has always been his family, and he wanted a better high school education for his children than what Liberia could offer. So Jette and his family came home. He earned a master's degree in forest resource management at Yale, moved back to New Hampshire and began looking for work.

Then he spotted a newspaper article about his old high school track coach, Al Merrill, who was at that time executive director of the DOC. Jette called. "Have you got anything I can do for a couple of months until I hear from these people I've sent my resumes to?" Jette asked. "Cutting trails, marking trees. I'll take anything."

It turned out Merrill was looking for an assistant director. "It looked like a fun thing to do for a couple of years," says Jette. But he found the job engrossing. "You can't ever relax. You're working with students all the time, and they're not followers, they're leaders. It was a great job!" One of his first assignments, in those days before mechanized crosscountry ski-track setters, was to run ahead on snowshoes, breaking out a trail, while Merrill followed, carefully setting the tracks with skis.

In 1975 Jette took over the director's job when Merrill retired. Jette's first couple of years were tough. Merrill had a charismatic personality, and students, for all their rhetoric, are as upset by change as the crustiest alum. But eventually Jette became the key figure at the center of a great circle of DOC-affiliated clubs. In 1982, during one of the College's periodic administrative shuffles, Jette became director of outdoor programs.

The new job is quite different from the old one. Time was Jette could spend days at a time with students, building log cabins and bridges. He remembers fondly his first, the Agassiz Cabin in North Woodstock,New Hampshire, which he built with a student crew led by Jim "Porkroll" Taylor '74. Now the job involves much more administrative work budgets, personnel and liaison with the College. Jette, who reports to the Dean of the College, supervises 13 employees and a budget that has grown to $1.1 million. "But I still get my biggest kicks," he says, "seeing students succeed at carrying out projects they've planned and organized."

With retirement looming Jettes staff is looking on with great interest to see what he's going to do with what they call "the Earlchives," the massive accumulation of stuff in Jettes office. If, for example, you were chatting with Jette there and happened to need an Allen wrench, a can of chain saw oil or a copy of the 1977 Hanover Town Report, there'd most likely be one somewhere in the room.

They're also nervous that Jette will lapse into his old habit of forgetting to change his car's motor oil. But at least Jette will finally have a chance to spend more time in a canoe. He's never paddled the Allagash River, nor has he taken the Colleges annual Trip to the Sea. He'd like to do both. He also plans to build a house and spend more time with his children and grandchildren. And if he decides to get back into agedivision track and field events, look out: There'll be a new name on the old plaques on the wall.

Back to Nature Jette abhorscomputers and cell phones, preferring instead the natural solitude ofthe Second College Grant.

WILLEM LANGE is an author, radio commentator and remodeling contractor living inEtna, New Hampshire. He is an adopted member of the class of 1957.