Behind the Parks: Meet Mike at Scioto Grove

Mike Bosworth
Maintenance Technician, Scioto Grove Metro Park

Hometown and Background

I’m born and bred in Columbus. All my life I’ve been called by my nickname of Boz, and I’m happy with that. I have a brother, Carl, about a year and half younger than me, and a sister, Cathy, about four years younger than me.  I grew up in the East side of Columbus and went to Independence High School. About two years into my high school years we moved to Berwick, near Bexley, so I transferred to Bishop Hartley Catholic High School.

I went to Hocking College in Nelsonville and left with a degree in Forestry in 1981. I was interested in the idea of working for the Forestry Division of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, but all their positions were full and openings never seemed to arrive. I began to think I’d graduated with a major in Unemployment!

I did some tree trimming for people in and around my neighborhood. For one job, I took down a big willow tree in a neighbor’s yard, and was actually paid for my work with a car. It was a bit of a hooptie, to be honest, a 1969 Pontiac Catalina, and not worth near enough the work I did. But it kept me mobile for a couple of years.

I went to work for Osmose, a company that is subcontracted by power and telephone companies across the United States and Canada to support their grids and networks. I became a crew manager and worked mostly in Kentucky and West Virginia. We checked wooden power poles and telephone poles for rot and decay and mapped them on our reports with details of their condition. My forestry background did come in handy, as one of our contracts was to monitor transmission line poles in the Daniel Boone National Forest, in Kentucky. These poles were usually located at the top of ridges, and quite far apart. There was no way of getting to them using vehicles, so we used a mule to transport our equipment. It would take us around about three hours just to get to a couple of poles. Those pack mules are incredibly hardy animals, and real sure-footed on steep terrain. We called our guy John Mule!

As part of our work, we would dig about 18 inches down around each pole, paint them with Osmose’s patented wood preservative, then wrap the pole in a tar paper and backfill it. The preservative protected the wood against fungal or insect damage. The poles were usually cedar or Douglas fir. So you could say, in a roundabout way, that I actually was working with trees, they just weren’t living trees any longer. I lived in a rented trailer, which I shared with another crew manager. We were always on the go, moving from one place to another.

I was ready to settle down and start a family, and working out in the wilds wasn’t a good fit for that. My dad worked in the printing industry and helped me get my start in printing. I ran a printing press for many years for a number of different printing companies in and around Columbus. I worked for more than 20 years at Old Trail Printing, but the industry began to fall into decline, with the rise of computers and the internet. Companies communicated more often by electronic rather than paper transmission. There were fewer print jobs to go round and printing became a cut-throat industry. Many print companies went under, and unfortunately the same happened to my company. In 2010 I became unemployed and for a couple of years I was out of work. I did a lot of hunting and fishing, which was great, but I was desperate to get back into work, and I found the perfect opportunity. A seasonal maintenance technician position came available at Battelle Darby Creek Metro Park, and that gave me my foot in the door for my employment at Metro Parks. This was in 2012. I returned as a seasonal the following year, and having established my ability and reputation for hard work, I was taken on as a maintenance technician at Glacier Ridge in August 2013. I then moved to Prairie Oaks in 2015, and finally to my present position, here at Scioto Grove Metro Park, in 2022. I live in Circleville, so each of my moves to different parks has brought me a little closer to home each time. It used to take me an hour to get to Glacier Ridge, but just 30 or 40 minutes to get to Prairie Oaks, and a swift 15 minutes to get to Scioto Grove.

What I do at Metro Parks and what I love most about it

We’re kept pretty busy maintaining the parks, and that’s the way we like it. I’m one of two full-time technicians here at Scioto Grove, and we also have three part-timers. One of the things I especially enjoy doing is trail maintenance. The trails here at Scioto Grove go through some beautiful terrain, but we’re in a floodplain, and floods tend to wash away parts of our natural surface trails. We keep on top of it, monitoring the trails carefully after heavy rains. We replace washed out areas by applying limestone screening. Over the past year or so, more than half of our trails have been almost completely resurfaced with a new top dressing. That’s hundreds of tons of material. The limestone screening has a consistency between sand and gravel. We roll it flat after applying. This year, we created a new trail, to give easier access to our Fire Tower. The trail is only a couple of hundred yards in length, but we used four 20-ton truck loads of material to fill it. The trail is 10-feet wide. We used a mechanical digger to excavate the trail to a depth of 8 inches, and filled it with a layer of gravel and then a layer of the limestone screening as a top dressing. We borrowed a steel-roller from our Metro Parks Roving Crew team and used a couple of passes across every section of the trail in order to create a good and stable level surface.

Another major activity that I enjoy working on is controlling invasive plants. We get best results by treating invasive plants with herbicides during the growing season, but for larger shrubs and bushes, we’ll spray the leaves in fall. The herbicide is pulled down into the root system to kill the plant, and then we cut it back the following spring. I have a spray license, which authorizes me to use herbicides and pesticides. The major invasives here at Scioto Grove include Japanese honeysuckle, Canadian thistle, poison hemlock and callery pear. Our wetlands are also plagued by phragmites, which are invasive reed grasses.

We monitor our prairie areas constantly for the presence of invasives. Another task, very much up my alley, given my forestry degree, is the need to cut down and remove hazard trees, which are trees in danger of falling, with the potential to cause harm to visitors. We also maintain the park’s vehicles, including ranger trucks and our kubotas, which are trail and off-road vehicles.

I also serve on the Metro Parks burn team. In very early spring and late fall, outside of animal nesting seasons, we use prescribed burns to clear prairie areas and stimulate new growth. As part of my forestry degree, I acquired a “red card,” which qualifies me as a forest fire fighter, although that isn’t needed to serve on the burn team. I thought it was great when we got the fire tower here at Scioto Grove about 18 months back. In its original setting it was used to monitor for forest fires. Now its purpose is one of surveying the beauty of the park from a very high vantage point. I go to the top of the tower frequently, to inspect for safety purposes. The tower has wooden steps, so I’m keen to make sure they’re always in good repair and to fix any minor issues before they become troublesome. Unfortunately, I also find a need to remove graffiti from the steps, and from the steel superstructure, as a very small number of our visitors fail to behave themselves and treat this exciting new feature with the respect it deserves. There are some very low-clearance areas at the very top of the tower, especially at the access point to the house at the top. I’ve installed warning signs here for people to watch their heads. There is daily public access to the top of the fire tower steps, but the house itself is only opened up for programs.

My favorite Metro Parks activity

I love to go belly boating in the lakes at Prairie Oaks. I have my own belly boat, which is great for fly fishing. They’re also known as float tubes or kick boats. It’s an inflatable boat, with two pontoons and a raised seat in the middle. Your legs dangle in the water. You wear fins on your feet, which helps you to manipulate and move your boat. I’ve caught my limit of blue gills numerous times while belly boating at Prairie Oaks. I’ve also caught a number of largemouth bass and catfish.

I also just love being out in the parks with the opportunity to see wildlife. I see lots of deer, eagles, owls and waterfowl. But sometimes you get a surprise, and one day last winter, here at Scioto Grove, I saw a river otter on the river. I’ve never seen one before, so that was a real joy.

My favorite Metro Parks story that includes a positive visitor interaction

A lot of friendly visitors thank me for how nice the parks or the trails look. This is always rewarding, as it is to see smiles on so many visitors’ faces. One particular interaction that stands out for me involves a meeting I had with a gentleman who had just had a deer strike with his vehicle. I had gone to open up the north canoe access point here at Scioto Grove. This gentleman struck a deer and managed to stop his vehicle in a pull-off area. The deer ran away. I don’t know how badly injured it might have been, and we never found it. The gentleman was in a state of great distress and I stayed with him as we waited for a tow-truck to come and take his vehicle away. It wasn’t in any condition to drive after the deer strike. The man was very shaken and upset and I talked to him about deer strikes, and how they are a lot more common than you might think. I told him about my own experiences, as I have had eight, yes eight deer strikes in my time while on my way to work at Prairie Oaks. I tried to reassure him that these are very sad accidents, and that he shouldn’t pour too much blame on himself, which he was in danger of doing. I’m happy that I managed to calm him down and raise his spirits a little, before the tow-truck finally arrived to take him and his vehicle away. He was very thankful for the time I spent with him, and for sharing my own experiences.

Traveling – places I’ve been, places I’d love to go

I’ve been on a few trips that created lasting memories, including a fishing trip to Maine, a beach vacation to Fort Myers in Florida, and nature adventures in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Perhaps our best vacation, however, coincided with my son’s wedding in Hawaii in January 2024.

My son Jeff lives in Circleville, but his wife Alana wanted them to get married in Hawaii. I went along with my wife Tina and we took my grandsons Max, who is Jeff’s son, and Brysen, who is my daughter Jennifer’s son. We stayed there for a week, on the island of Maui, and had a great time. We chartered a fishing boat, and I caught the oddest-looking fish, very long and extremely thin, and almost translucent-looking. I still don’t know what it is. We also caught a small tuna and I was amazed by its very striking, metallic appearance. We also did some whale watching and I tried snorkeling. The water was a little rougher than usual and I managed to catch myself one too many deep draughts of sea water, so it wasn’t the most rewarding of experiences.

But my favorite vacation spot is our Bosworth summer retreat. It’s a house on a 25-acre plot of land in Malta, Ohio and it’s been in the Bosworth family for generations. It’s on the Muskingum River in Morgan County and has belonged to our family since 1963. It’s a great spot for fishing and all the different branches of the family spend time there, especially in spring and summer.

My wife Tina and I have talked about taking a trip out west, but not until after we retire, as we’d both love to visit Yellowstone National Park and also see the giant redwoods and sequoias in other parks.

Fun facts about me and my family

1. My family BDC connection! I met my wife Tina at Battelle Darby Creek Metro Park. I was working there as a seasonal maintenance technician, and Tina worked there as a part-time ranger. This was in 2012, and we got married on May 12, 2016. That was on a Thursday. We had initially wanted our wedding on a Friday, but there was no way I was going to get married on Friday the 13th! Tina now works at the James Cancer Hospital in Columbus, as a medical equipment supervisor. The family connection with our largest Metro Park goes farther, as my son Jeff also worked there as a maintenance technician. He was there for a couple of years and is still at Metro Parks, but is now a technician at Bank Run Metro Park. I also have a daughter, Jennifer, although she has no Metro Parks connection.

2. Bird dogs! As a family, we always enjoyed hunting together, and from a young age I became used to working with bird dogs such as English springer spaniels and labrador retrievers. We trained them to retrieve our hunted birds and bring them back to us. The spaniels were great when we went hunting grouse, pheasant, quail and other upland birds, and the labrador retrievers did the business when we went duck hunting on rivers. They’d retrieve the shot birds from the water. I don’t have any bird dogs at the moment, nor any dogs at all. But I do have a cat, called Slick. He used to be a farm cat. Tina saw a sign outside a farm about free cats being available, and she came home with Slick. He’s quite a character, but he’s definitely more of an outdoor cat than a home cat, especially come summertime. But if he’s hungry, or it’s cold out, he loves being indoors with us. He’s about five years old now and definitely preferring indoors at the moment.

3. I was there! In my younger days I frequented certain areas before they later became a Metro Park. Me and my family went grouse hunting in an area that later became part of Clear Creek Metro Park. I also went ice skating and played ice hockey on frozen ponds which later became part of Pickerington Ponds Metro Park, and I often canoed the creeks where Three Creeks is now. I also went target shooting and duck hunting along the Scioto River where Scioto Grove is now. As kids, our mom used to take us to Sharon Woods to fish on the docks at Schrock Lake. We’d love it, while mom sat there reading a book.

My favorite food and dessert

I really love Tina’s fried chicken. It’s batter coated and served with mashed potatoes and corn. Her barbecued and spicy chicken wings are great too. I do some cooking myself, but often on our outdoor smoker. We have a pellet grill smoker at home and a big charcoal smoker at our summer retreat in Malta. Chicken and salmon are incredibly tasty done on the smoker. I add my own hickory or applewood to our charcoal smoker. I also like to cook the fish that I catch, especially blue gill. It makes a great pan fish and doesn’t get mushy. I often fry it with a beer batter or cajun batter.

For dessert, there’s nothing I like more than Tina’s banana split cake, from an old time recipe. It has a cracker-crumb crust as the base, with layers of bananas and pineapple, topped with whipped cream and pecan nuts. I also like my chocolate. I bring a nutty bar to work with me every day, to finish off my lunch.

My favorite entertainment

I enjoy reading outdoor magazines. My favorites are Field and Stream, Guns and Ammo, and Outdoor Life. They have lots of great hunting and fishing stories. I used to buy the printed magazines every month, but these days I mostly read the electronic versions. Eating out is also something Tina and I enjoy together. We prefer Mexican restaurants and Chinese buffets, although sometimes we’ll go Italian too. There’s a Chinese buffet in Washington Court House that is really good. I nearly always get their sweet and sour chicken with fried rice.

I played football from age 8 all through high school. These days I like to watch football on TV. If it’s a really good game, I don’t mind which teams are playing. My dad was a fan of the Chicago Bears, and I root for them too, although in my younger days I was more a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers. I also love watching baseball’s Cincinnati Reds. I became a fan in the 70s, during the days of the Big Red Machine. I really enjoyed watching the Olympics on TV this past summer. The tennis final was especially epic, with Novak Djokovic beating the young gun, Carlos Alcaraz. But all the Olympic sports were fun to watch and the US Team did great in the medals.

Some of my favorite TV shows include the Chicago Fire series, and war documentaries on the History Channel. Just now, I’m really enjoying a show called The Last Woodsman, on Discovery Channel. It’s a documentary about the people doing timber harvesting or logging in the Pacific North West.

I like war movies and spy movies. Fury, about tank battles and starring Brad Pitt, has been a recent favorite. Other favorites include Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, and some of the Vietnam War films, such as We Were Soldiers and The Deer Hunter. The James Bond films and the Mission Impossible films are my favorite spy movies. Sometimes, I also get a taste for Sci-Fi, such as the trilogy of Riddick movies with Vin Diesel.

But my favorite entertainment overall is to be outdoors, hunting or fishing. Our dad took us hunting when we were kids, from about the age of nine or ten. These days I’m usually joined on our hunting trips by my brother Carl, my son Jeff, plus my nephews and a few good high school buddies. Mostly we hunt for pheasant or deer. We do butchering in my garage and make our own jerky, trail bologna and summer sausage.

Mike Bosworth was talking to Communications Coordinator, Virginia Gordon

What Scioto Grove Park Manager Kurt Fortman says about Mike

“Boz continues to be a great asset to Metro Parks and Scioto Grove. He is passionate about and takes pride in his work. He oversees our Resource Management operations, leads projects, and with his knowledge, lends a hand in training new employees on equipment and park maintenance. We are fortunate to have Boz at Scioto Grove.”