Bill Lee slowed his truck by the spot where a sign should have stood, warning drivers on the mountain road about the sharp curve ahead.

He remembered erecting it five years earlier, one morning out in the forest alongside Del Nelson, who had become his best friend during a half-century working together for the U.S. Forest Service, even though they disagreed on politics. Now he and Del were retired, President Donald Trump’s cuts to government meant there was no one to cover their old jobs, and the sign lay askew in the dirt.

On that sunny Friday in late August, Bill felt like the only one left in the 2.5-million-acre Shoshone National Forest to stand the sign back up again. He still had his tools, tucked in the back of the truck. He gripped the steering wheel and fought the impulse to get out.

It won’t help, he told himself.

Since the start of the year, the Forest Service has lost nearly 6,000 staffers through firings, resignations and retirements encouraged by the Trump administration, according to internal figures obtained by The Washington Post. By summer, some of the agency’s regions were missing three-quarters of their trail and recreation staff — and some forests and districts had none at all.

From Wyoming, Bill watched it unfold with growing worry: The firings, then the departures, then the slow degradation of his forest. Things were breaking, but in ways others might not notice until a child fell off a sagging dock and drowned, or a teenager flipped an all-terrain vehicle on a rutted road and broke his neck.

His woods, Bill knew, were a sliver of America’s nearly 200 million acres of Forest Service land — wild, beautiful country where people died all the time. Where, under Trump, there were fewer and fewer experienced staffers like him to keep watch.

It was why Bill had cut short his few brief months of real retirement. It was why, at 73, he climbed into his truck at 7:30 a.m. twice a week and drove slowly down the mountain road, dreading the sight of anything broken — and the internal struggle that followed.

If Bill made repairs, it might seem like the Forest Service was getting along fine with a smaller staff, justifying Trump’s cuts to government. But if he didn’t, people might get hurt. Even die.

He would only fix problems that were truly life-threatening, he told himself. And the sign didn’t qualify: This was a curvy mountain road. People could guess they needed to slow down.

Bill forced himself to keep driving toward Louis Lake, juddering over potholes etched deeper than ever. He passed the bathrooms, where the walls needed power cleaning. Looking toward the water, he spotted a man finishing a fishing trip — and shifted his truck into park. Here, Bill told himself, was another way to save his forest.

Bill walked over to the man, offering to help pull his boat from the water. Joe Forschler, 67, grunted in recognition: He knew Bill. Del, too. Both men had assisted him years before, Joe said, once providing water bottles when he ran out on a woodcutting trip. Joe was glad, he said, to see them still working.

Bill corrected him: “They don’t have our jobs anymore.” He handed Joe a card he’d printed, bearing phone numbers for members of Congress. Call, he urged: “Say, ‘Hey, we’re having a bad experience. How come you don’t have these people working anymore?’” With enough calls, Bill said, the message might even reach Trump: You have to hire more staff.

Joe tilted his head back. “Oh, he don’t care.”

“It’s all about money,” Bill said.

“Sure it is,” Joe said. “This whole world’s money.”

Bill looked from the road to the lake. The day, which had begun cloudy, was starting to clear. Shafts of sunlight slid across the water, striking the pine trees. One ray burned a golden path through a cluster of branches where, Bill knew, a family of bald eagles liked to perch and fish.

“I know,” he said. “But there’s a resource that’s above money, that we have to protect.”

Bill drove away, six wood screws rattling in his center console. They clinked and jumped whenever the car bumped down a ditch or over a hole.

Bill carried the screws just in case — because these days, almost every turn in the mountain road revealed something that needed repair. Another broken sign or weedy campsite or listing cattle gate. Any time Bill saw something wrong, he wrote it down with a blue pen in his small white notebook, which he kept tucked in his cargo pants pocket.

“Cable repair Louis Lake Dock.”

“Fence South Pass.”

“Picnic Worthen Broken Table.” “Graffiti.” “Road Patching.”

Reading the list felt like a series of precise, tiny punches in the chest.

For as long as he’d been with the Forest Service, he had volunteered on search-and-rescue teams. Over four decades, he’d fished dead bodies out of rivers, found torsos crumpled on rocks, collected campers whose hearts couldn’t handle the altitude and the exertion.

The risk was what Bill loved most about the forest. It forced you to live on Mother Nature’s terms — to accept her power and your human insignificance. Beauty and death were the work of random moments: A sunrise. A hungry bear. A rainbow. A rockslide.

There were so many ways to die in the wilderness — and now fewer staffers to stand guard.

The Forest Service is responsible for 193 million acres of forests and grasslands, visited each year by 160 million people who cut timber, fish, graze cattle, conduct research, hike and hunt — almost anything you can do outdoors. In July, a private Forest Service report concluded each of the agency’s nine regions were missing between 25 and 80 percent of their trail and recreation workers. Nationwide, Forest Service staff were prioritizing the most visible tasks like keeping bathrooms clean, which meant other chores were not getting done, such as clearing downed trees, reestablishing trail tread or replacing trail signs, according to the document, obtained by The Post.

In response to questions from The Post, the Forest Service wrote in a statement that “volunteers are integral to how the [agency] accomplishes its work, particularly in trails and recreation programs.” The statement, which was unsigned, noted that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is committed to “preserving essential positions” so “critical services remain uninterrupted” — and that she “will make it a priority to allocate personnel resources as needed … going forward.”

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly likewise wrote in a statement that volunteers “play a significant role in forest management.” Kelly wrote that Trump’s changes to government are keeping “our nation’s landscape safe and beautiful for all to enjoy.”

Now, as he approached a bridge, Bill slowed his truck. Four posts marked the bridge’s corners, striped with black-and-yellow reflective metal — a vital heads-up for anyone driving the mountain at night. But one marker leaned drunkenly, almost toppling into the river.

That, he decided, could kill someone.

He was affixing the metal marker to a fresh wooden post when a gray truck rumbled over the bridge. “Wait a minute,” Bill called through the driver’s seat window. “You show up when the work is almost done?” Del, grinning, swung his truck around to park.

Pulling on creased leather work gloves, Del steadied the post as Bill drilled in the screws, then held the refashioned marker upright as Bill checked it with a level.

“That good?”

“Looking pretty good, Bill.”

Bill looked from the sign to Del, wondering how many thousands of repair jobs they must have done together. They had raised families, seen their children have children. Del divorced one wife and buried a second. Bill bid farewell to seven dogs. Del’s hair turned white, Bill’s gray. Their work for the Forest Service aged, too. Roads they’d helped carve into the mountain collapsed inward from years of rainstorms and snowmelts. Grass took over tire treads they’d put down to show visitors where to drive. Weeds reclaimed picnic areas they’d cleared.

The men first signed up with the Forest Service in the 1970s. They were both 30-something schoolteachers, looking to earn a buck and spend time outside in the summers. Neither could remember how, but they soon became a duo, their names a mantra around the office: “Bill-and-Del-will-fix-it.” Most jobs they did together. It never mattered that Bill was liberal and Del conservative. Their only fights were about how to fix things, and those never lasted long.

They had grown old with their forest, and felt ready to retire. But now, it seemed they were the only ones left to care. The remaining Forest Service staff wanted to help, Bill knew, but — after Trump’s cuts — they had no time or workers to spare.

“I saw another sign down,” Del told Bill now, wiping his forehead with one gloved hand. “Back by Fiddler.”

Bill bit his lip.

“We just can’t fix everything,” he said. “Otherwise they’ll never hire back for our jobs.”

It was long after lunchtime when Bill finished the last repair he couldn’t resist — rehanging the sagging “Middle Fork Popo Agie River” sign — and drove off the mountain toward downtown Lander. He pulled into the circular driveway of a squat brown building with a large American flag out front: the Forest Service office.

“Barb,” Bill said, walking inside and waving to the bespectacled, gray-haired woman behind the desk — the only person in Lander who knew more about the forest than he and Del did.

“Bill,” she said, nodding back.

Barb Gustin wasn’t supposed to be working either. She had spent nearly two decades with the Forest Service: sitting at this exact desk, doling out woodcutting permits, park passes and answers to probably millions of questions.

She’d retired in October of last year, at 68, ready to spend lazy mornings sitting in her backyard, staring up at the Wind River mountains with her corgi, Jazzy. Then on Valentine’s Day, the Trump administration fired all probationary workers, leaving no one to cover for Barb’s old job.

The first time she drove past and saw the sign saying “closed until further notice,” she pulled the car over, walked into the office and up to her old boss. She asked if she could come back as a volunteer — like Bill and Del. Now it was mid-August, the height of the summer season, and Barb was working 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Unpaid.

Bill disappeared into the back office and Barb looked out the window. Two men with long beards, ripped clothing and leathery skin were walking up, bent beneath backpacks. “CDT,” she muttered to herself — and sure enough, they were hikers traversing the roughly 3,000-mile Continental Divide Trail.

She told the men where they could refill their water and stash their recycling. The phone rang. Barb explained to the woman on the line that campgrounds were first-come, first-serve. She suggested a less-popular site. As she put down the phone, a man drove up in a large camper.

“As far as any type of gold prospecting?” he asked in a low voice.

Barb directed him to South Pass City, an old mining town. “But I haven’t heard of anybody hitting it big down here,” she said. “Or if they have, they haven’t come here to tell me about it.”

Barb figured she must have faced every possible query over the years. She had her favorites: The man who arrived with a ball of yarn, asking if it was really the best defense against mountain lions like his sister said. (Barb decided his sister must not like him much.) The hiker who showed up irate that she couldn’t find the dots on the ground. (It turned out she mistakenly believed the map legends for campgrounds would appear as large yellow circles in the dirt.)

A half-dozen Forest Service firefighters wandered in. They wanted to use the laminator to print fire danger warnings, but didn’t know how. “Press the button that looks like a snowflake,” Barb said.

She explained to a woman with a service dog that she could look at the maps and woodcutting permits on display, but not actually buy one. As a volunteer, Barb wasn’t allowed to sell things. She pushed a piece of paper with a QR code across the counter and told the woman to place her order through the Forest Service website.

“Until they get someone permanently hired here, then everything’s got to be done online,” Barb said. “I’m volunteering until the end of this month. And then …”

It was the one question she felt unable to answer. Because when she retired a second time in September, Barb wouldn’t be coming back. She wondered if they’d find someone to take over her job, keep the office open.

But she knew they could never replace Bill and Del, who would have to stop volunteering eventually, too. Nobody, Barb was sure, would ever know the forest like those two.

Del’s legs still ached from a hunting accident 10 years before, so he moved slowly as he began his 6 a.m. walk around Louis Lake, trailed by his Yorkshire terrier, Raspberry. The moment he felt the rising sun touch his skin, Del stopped and closed his eyes.

“Thank you, God, for letting me be alive,” he prayed silently. “Thank you, God, for letting me be up here in the mountains. Thank you, God, for the birds.”

Hours later, he pulled on blue plastic gloves and started cleaning the first of five bathrooms.

This summer marked Del’s 50th living in a Forest Service cabin by Louis Lake — tracking campers, collecting their fees and cleaning their messes. For the first 49 years, he’d been a salaried federal employee earning about $11,000 over three months. This summer, he would collect $50 a day, five days a week — double the usual rate for volunteer campground hosts, because he had to clean extra bathrooms.

Del propped the door and swept out the ladies’ restroom, then the men’s. He grabbed a bottle of Power Green and tore one rectangle from a paper towel roll. He used one side of the sheet to wipe down the women’s toilet, and the reverse side to swab the men’s.

Trump had frozen most federal spending, so money for things like cleaning supplies was short. Best, Del figured, to make things last as long as possible.

Still, Del felt sure the president, whom he supported, had a master plan: All these cuts would ultimately make government better.

Plus, this morning at least, the bathrooms weren’t bad, Del thought as he drove around the lake to the second outhouse. There was no telltale splatter from “squatters” — people who, for reasons Del couldn’t fully fathom, liked to perch on the toilet rim while doing their business.

As he drove between his third and fourth sets of toilets, Del saw the familiar mountain skyline rise in his rearview mirror. At a tender 35 million years, these peaks were pretty young: They replaced a far older mountain range, which eroded away eons ago. Eventually, Del liked to tell himself, the mountains he was looking at would disappear, too. It made him feel small, but cared for. Like a tiny part of God’s vast plan.

Casting his gaze to Earth again, he noticed several vehicles he didn’t remember seeing the day before. Gripping his clipboard and a pen, he walked over.

“Hello, kids. You having fun?” he asked a family from Evanston, Illinois, before recording their license plate number and asking whether they’d paid the $15 nightly fee.

He approached a couple from Ohio, who’d brought their dog. “She’s friendly,” he said, pointing to Raspberry. “So am I, I promise.”

Two other men were accompanied by a young girl, who was alternately petting and trying to ride two massive Belgian shepherds. “You can’t have a fire there,” he warned them. The shorter man, wearing a white buckaroo hat, nodded and said he understood.

“I worked for the Forest Service for 17 years,” said the man, who introduced himself as Jeffrey Evans of Laramie, Wyoming. The second man came forward, too, introducing himself as Scott Bruce, from Casper.

“Yeah, I’ve done this job — this is my 50th year,” Del said, explaining he was retired now, back as a volunteer.

Scott smiled at Del.

“I think they’re doing a better job with campground maintenance than they did 30 years ago,” he said.

Jeffrey interrupted, shaking his head. Any improvements to campgrounds, he said, came from money the Biden administration gave to the Forest Service. “But all the staff’s getting laid off now,” he added. “You’re only going to be able to offset that for so long with volunteers.”

He looked at Del. “How much longer are you willing to do this?”

“I don’t know,” Del said. “I’m 81 right now.”

Scott said he hated to see people out of work, but guessed there was probably room to trim the Forest Service. He’d been a federal contractor, he said, and seen a lot of wasteful spending across the government. “They’ve got to cut enough to figure out where it hurts,” Scott said, “and then they can rehire.”

Jeffrey was shaking his head again. “I do not think there was bloat in the Forest Service,” he said.

But Del was nodding. “They’ve got to find out how to cut the waste,” he said. “There’s got to be a better way.”

Waving goodbye to the men, Del headed to bathroom number five.

The sun was just starting to drop when Bill joined Del on his cabin porch. The two old friends looked out at Louis Lake, its still surface displaying a crystal reflection of the surrounding tree-lined mountains. The only sounds were the chirr of insects and distant splashing from a string of canoes.

Bill asked Del if he remembered the summer of 1981 — or was it 1983?

“Sure,” Del said. “We had three people in my position!”

Bill laughed as Raspberry leaped into his lap. “There was even a woman, her job was just, she drove down the road and picked up trash. Remember?”

So much had changed. All-terrain vehicles had taken over. A tangle of environmental laws had come along. Politicians in Washington had overloaded the Forest Service with administrators, giving far too much power to D.C. bureaucrats who never set foot in the forests.

“When it comes to deciding what to do on the forest now, they’ve got to go up the line,” Del said. “Sometimes it takes years for things to get done.”

Bill nodded. “It’s way too many people up above, not enough people on the ground. They need more worker bees and less queens.”

Raspberry stretched and switched laps. Scratching under her chin, Del pursed his lips. “On our level, the staffing has never been this low,” he said.

Bill paused. As an unspoken rule, the two never talked politics, but Bill knew Del well enough to guess he liked the president. His truck radio was always tuned to country music, Glenn Beck or one of three Fox News talk shows.

Still, Bill also knew the decline of their forest must be causing Del pain. Maybe, he thought, it was time to talk about Trump.

He asked Del to imagine firing half the staff at Mar-a-Lago, then demanding that waiters, cleaners and concierges provide the same high quality service. “Ain’t going to happen,” Bill said, noting this was exactly what Trump had done to the Forest Service, and the government writ large.

Del leaned back in his chair. “I’m more patient, looking beyond,” he said. “I’m thinking that, maybe, this is going to work.”

The administration was figuring out what “absolutely needs to be funded,” Del said.

Once they did, he said, the money — and the staffers — would come back to the forest. People to fill his and Bill’s jobs, too.

Bill looked at him, trying to understand his certainty. “I don’t think it’s going to get better right away.”

There, Del said, they agreed. It would take time.

Sometimes, he confided, he worried Trump’s improvements would come too late. “It’s a scary feeling, because I’m not planning on coming back next year,” Del said. He had decided: This summer would be his last. He had devoted so much of his life to this patch of earth. He wanted to see other places before he died — like Arizona’s Madera Canyon, where he hoped to spot a flame-colored tanager or a red-faced warbler.

He touched his right hand to his heart, then swept it out, tracing an invisible line through the lake, the sky, the mountains. Both men’s eyes followed, traveling over their forest.

“What,” Del asked, “is going to happen to this?”