For many people working in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the pay is not great but the working hours are long. Here are some of the reasons why they still decide to devote their lives to the park.

Paul Hadala

Paul Hadala started volunteering at the park for a simple reason: He is alone and needs something to do.

He’d spent 32 years with the US Army as an engineer; then another seven years teaching at Louisiana Tech University. He is retired and has time on his hands. “So I spend 30 hours a week here to keep myself busy,” he says.

Bill Gober

Gober started coming here after losing his job four years ago. “I spent a lot of time hiking in the park since then,”he says. “It was an escape from reality.”

It was during one of those visits one year later that he had his heart attack. After calling for help, he was carried out by park employees and airlifted to a nearby hospital. The doctors agreed that if it hadn’t been for the quick response, Gober would have died.

“I have to give something back to the park,” Gober says. “I signed up as a volunteer shortly after the accident.”

Jessica Tezak

Before working in the park, Tezak was connected all the time. She studied journalism in college and then worked as a photojournalist. Neither allowed her to ignore her phone.

“I couldn’t escape it,” she says. “And that’s not the life that I want. I feel a lot less anxious here.”

Now, she is working at a hotel here. It’s not a dream job, she says. Someday she’d like to go back to full-time photography.

Heidi Brill

Heidi Brill is a full-time fire spotter. Early in the morning, she’s out, cutting new roads and clearing old ones. As the sun comes down and hits the forest floor, she will come back to her watch tower.

“Everything’s so quiet and amazing,” she says.“Especially, I feel paid with the beautiful sunsets and sunrises.”

When Jenny Streete began caring for older people more than 50 years ago, prejudice was part of her everyday working life. Streete, who grew up in Jamaica and came to England in 1967, had a way of dealing with it: “Just put a smile on your face,” she says. “If you let bad words into your brain, it will only cause you more harm.”

The 81-year-old remembers one instance of abuse.

Streete says: “The sister who was managing the ward (病房) tried to calm a woman down. But I told the sister to let her say what she has to say. I don’t mind.”

The next night, Streete noticed the woman’s blanket had fallen off. She replaced it, telling the patient in a low voice exactly what she was doing and why. The same thing happened the next night, and the next. “But then, the night that I was off duty, that same woman asked the sister: ‘Where is that black lady? I don’t want anyone else to look after me while she is on duty. She was so kind.’”

Brought up by her grandparents, Streete found her vocation after a mystery illness that nearly killed her, and left her with permanently damaged vision. She got better, she says, because of “loving care and tenderness”. When she came to England, she was determined to give that care to others.

And Streete hopes to carry on caring for older people as long as possible — although, she says, her children are urging her to retire. She currently works two nights a week in an end-of-life ward which provides specialist nursing. Many of the people she looks after are now a similar age to her.

Her preference for night shifts hasn’t changed, either. She frequently stays on after her shift is finished, to spend time with residents.

She urges those considering a career in care to think hard about why they’re choosing it. “Sometimes, people are not happy because they don’t want to do the job — they have to do it, because there is no other way. Wanting to do it is very different from having to do it.”

But the key quality a care worker needs, she says, is patience, “Some people like to do everything quick-quick-quick, but you have to take your time with residents. I just try to treat everybody the way I would like to be treated.”