Page 119 of Famous for a Living

Happy with the last round of edits, I screenshot it and send it off to Serena with the caption. By tomorrow night, she’ll have taken a look, made sure my caption meets the legal requirements (and answer the question: Should I pull the contrast up a few degrees?), and sent it off to the brand for final review.

There’s a new email from Mina and I take a minute to slip back onto the page for Kannery Park and check on its progress: 220,000 followers strong.

A startlingly healthy rise of 16 percent since this time last week, and the engagement rate nearly doubling in the past two days. The latest shot is a picture of Brody on top of Cades Peak, standing in a squirrel suit with a group of others.

No he didn’t.

He told me he had something special planned, but surely he didn’t mean this.

He didn’t jump off that mountain in a squirrel suit.

It’s a carousel post and sure enough, as the next eight pictures show in terrifying detail, he did.

I smile to myself as I tap a heart on the picture and then share it on my personal feed. One of the best things to have happened the past six weeks is finally being able to use any pull I have to draw people into the park, and into the park they’ve come.

Eleven of a dozen influencers I bargained with in the beginning made the trek down to the park. All show pictures of themselves standing beside the big brown sign, wandering along walking trails lined with fairy slippers and glacier lilies, and, if they were brave enough, camping out in those peak-top cabins at the end of their hiking journeys.

Sure enough, Zaiah was right about those cabins. As influencers posted about their experiences, the idea caught on about roughing it, and people began to race to the reservations pages, trying to get their “in” on the schedule so they, too, could make the 14.2-mile hike up the mountain and spend a night in the unheated, salt-of-the-earth cabins in the sky. Pictures are making their way around the internet of grinning groups trading false lashes for flashlights, lofty captions full of the beauty of slowing down, and often the poem, occasionally correctly attributed to the author, from above the door. Followed the next day with a pose in a bright-pink crop top beside a Ferrari with the caption, Miami, here I come. But I digress.

Between the efforts of those initial influencers and the continuous plug I made for the park in my own feed and stories, change was happening. More and more people were beginning to visit the park. More and more moms out there saw pictures on Instagram of the beautiful waterfalls and jaw-dropping mountains, more of them went on Pinterest only to hear about how Kannery Park was “one of the nation’s best-kept secrets” and “the best place to vacation with young children,” and sure enough, when it came time to decide on a family vacation, the words that popped out of their mouths were, “You know, I saw this gorgeous little park out in Montana . . .”

And that is how a trend was born.

That is how, for good or bad in this bizarre little world of screens in the twenty-first century, a culture was created.

And with such power came great responsibility.

I bought the cabins new heaters.

Mina told me one day an HVAC crew pulled up to the office, hauling split-system heat pumps and telling Terry to “Sign here.”

And along with a monetary donation covering a few other odds and ends (like new desk chairs, for one thing), the park got both an allegorical and literal fresh coat of paint. With this, stats showing the rising number of visitors, and the bizarre but very real number of people purchasing Kannery Park official propaganda online (including, unbelievably enough, the terrible trash can T-shirts with their terrible taglines), the decision was made not to assimilate the park into Glacier after all.

I’m not certain—I only have my suspicions—but there’s also a very real chance Serena called somebody in the government threatening to pull my support if they pulled the plug on the people I loved.

And I do love them.

I think about them every single day.

I smile wistfully as I scroll through the latest pictures from the park’s page. With a little instruction Mina took over the page, and her eager personality and excitement to share all about the beauty of wildlife shines through. The pictures are not always the most professional, but they’re improving. She’s learning.

I skim past the ones of mountains, trails, and birds and pause at a recent group photo of the staff members. Mina, the first, has been promoted. She proudly holds her new badge, “Mina Marsero, Junior Park Ranger.”

An alarm sounds from my purse, crisp and clear in its ding.

Ding.

Ding.

I ignore it for a moment to make a congratulatory comment, then run my finger to the side button. Power it down.

I slide the work phone into my bag.

Reach for my personal phone inside. Turn the alarm off.

My neck is taut from looking down so long, and I stretch it to one side, then the other, reminding myself to really make a habit to follow my chiropractor’s instructions and raise the phone more to ease the neck pain.

I take a moment to check for any calls from Serena on my personal phone—not work Serena but friend Serena.