GULF SHORES, AL. — For 34 years, Gulf State Park employee Milton Rittelmeyer has lived at a house isolated in the middle of the park’s woods.

And it all started by coincidence.

“I really wasn’t supposed to be here,” he says.

While finishing up his degree in Parks and Recreation Administrion at South Alabama, he wandered over for a visit to the park and met with long-time park supervisor, Hugh S. Branyon.

“I had come down there without any premonition I was going to do this and stopped in here and got to talk to Mr. Branyon about an internship,” Rittelmeyer said. “What I didn’t know was that a friend of mine that was in the same program at South Alabama had already called and made an appointment to talk with him about an internship and he thought I was that person.

“Through a fluke and luck, I was able to get the internship.”

And he’s been working in the state park ever since. A year after doing his internship, he was hired to be the campground manager and with that job came the house on Little Lake.

There have been lots of changes to the area in those 34 years, but Rittelmeyer is still pretty much isolated in his enclave.

“The natural part of it living out there has been incredible,” he said. “It’s being encroached upon now by condos above the tree line and also the sewage treatment plant is just right across the swamp from me.”

Before the park fire in late June, early July, Rittelmeyer couldn’t even see the new Orange Beach sewage treatment plant. But with all the underbrush gone, that has changed.

“That fire, it opened up a lot more of that visual pollution from it and also the noise of the pumps grinding all the time,” he said. “The privacy part of it is not as nice as it was back in the early part of the time.”

The wildfire raged just feet from his house, just across the paved bike path from his front yard.

“I didn’t feel very good,” he said. “We put a sprinkler on the house and left it running. I didn’t really think it was going to be there.”

Favorable winds blew the fire and smoke away from his home during a huge back burn to get the fire under control. By the time it shifted, those areas were already safely burned.

Rittelmeyer almost glows himself as he talks about the 34 years of living with and interacting with wildlife. And he has taken stacks of wildlife photos during that time.

“The incredible amount of wildlife I get to see, just enjoy and observe,” he said. “Lots of raccoons, deer, gray fox, alligators, birds. It’s just a wide variety. I’ve hand encounters with wild hogs. There’s not as many now as there used to be. The serenity, the beautiful sunrises that I get to witness every morning. You can sit out there and fish and enjoy nature at its best.”

Most of the area around his house is usually a swamp. But the spring-summer drought that made conditions so ripe for a wildfire had almost completely dried it up.

“It’s completely full of water now with all this recent rain,” he said. “It dries up periodically but that’s a dry as I’ve seen it in the 34 years I’ve been there.”

That drought caused more alligators to take up residence in the lake by his house.

“There’s quite a few,” he said. “There’s nice 10-, 12-footers and a lot of six- to eight-footers. It varies from season to season. With that swamp drying up and throughout the whole park system there’s more alligators in the lake because they’ll go wherever they can find water.”

Raccoons just about have the run of the place and have been a source of fascination for years for Rittelmeyer.

“Right now I’ve got so many baby raccoons coming up with their mothers,” he said. “I think I could do a Phd study on raccoons. They’re such interesting animals and so smart.”

Others are no so cute.

“You have to be leery of what’s there and I have to keep one eye on the ground because of reptiles that inhabit the area,” he said. “You never when you’re going to walk out on a snake. Cottonmouths, diamondback rattlesnakes. Pigmy rattlesnakes are the ones that are really hard to locate because they’re so small. They’re pretty aggressive.

“I’ve seen Bobcats chasing squirrels, you seen a lot of encounters like hawks. I feed a lot of birds and of course hawks are going to come through there. I’ve seen lots of collisions with hawks and doves.

“I’ve seen a coyote catch a raccoon in the yard. You never know what you’re going to see when it comes to nature. It’s a really neat learning experience just to be able to see it up close and personal.”

A new encroachment on this natural retreat looms on the horizon. Gov. Robert Bentley wants to build a new convention center where the State Park’s hotel stood before Ivan blew it away.

A major part of that plan is a new north-south corridor through the state park to the new convention center complex.

“I’m totally against it,” he said. “The noise factor, the environmental issue of people throwing the litter out. That swamp is so beautiful and I can just picture it so completely full of litter, beer bottles and everything else people throw out.”

He also feels the road is unnecessary.

“They use hurricane evacuation as the reason for it,” he said. “I think if they widen 180 to four lanes to where 161 could have both lanes of traffic turning (left). But you still end up with a two-lane bridge.

“There’s no problem getting people off the island, it’s getting people up to the interstate that’s the problem. That north-south road, I don’t think it’s needed.”

Now considering retirement, Rittelmeyer is not looking forward to the day he has move fron the sanctuary he has called home for 34 years.

“I’m taking it a year at a time and see how my health goes and how things are with budgets and stuff like that,” he said. “They’re getting lean and mean right now. We depend on volunteers quite a lot now.

“Once I give up my position, I’m sure I’ll have to move out. It’s been a big part of my life living down there. It’s been great. I don’t regret any of it. It’s gone by too fast really.”

When that does happen, he’ll pack up a lifetime of memories from the old place to bring with him.

“The place just closed up after Labor Day,” he said. “Then they invented the Shrimp Festival. I never thought I’d see all the stuff that’s here now as far as The Wharf and all that, music venues and stuff.

“It’s just unbelievable.”