Park Ranger-Turned-Tour Director Navigates the National Parks and a Pandemic

Kent Taylor is a man who knows America's national parks better than most. Asking him which one is his favorite, though, "is a little bit like asking which of my children I love the most." (When pressed, he'll tell you that it's Zion National Park in Utah.) As a tour director who runs a business called My Private Ranger, it is Taylor's job to create an end-to-end travel experience for the small private tour groups he leads. That includes being on top of flights and the accommodations to the time of day the group sets out to see wildlife — which he advises needs to be very early, way before breakfast. The coronavirus pandemic has brought an entirely new dimension to Taylor's job — and a lot of new demand for small group tours. He's almost entirely booked up for 2021, something that's never happened this far in advance before. Before his work as a professional guide, he worked for the National Park Service for decades, starting as a pa