Les Joslin (author)

Leslie Allen Joslin (born April 15, 1943) is an American retired naval officer, natural resource manager, educator, and author.

After serving twenty-two years in the United States Navy, Joslin retired in Oregon where he worked for the United States Forest Service.

He also taught college courses at Central Oregon Community College and Oregon State University.

Joslin has written or edited eleven books, most of them related in some way to the Forest Service or the state of Oregon.

He is also a well-known lecturer on forest resources and central Oregon history topics.

Joslin was born on April 15, 1943, in the United States naval hospital at Chelsea, Massachusetts.

His parents were Leslie H. Joslin and Emma (Mogford) Joslin.

His father was a career navy officer who served in both World War II and the Korean War.

Because of his father's military career, Joslin attended a number of grade schools and then four different high schools in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and California.

During the summers from 1962 through 1966, he worked for the United States Forest Service as a seasonal firefighter and fire prevention office assigned to the Toiyabe National Forest's Bridgeport Ranger District in eastern California and western Nevada.

During his first year on the district, Joslin work from a small one-room office at the Bridgeport ranger station.

This was the same ranger's cabin that Joslin worked from in 1962.

Joslin attended San Jose College, graduating in 1966 with a bachelor's degree in geography and a minor in natural resources conservation.

In 1967, Joslin was commissioned as a United States Navy officer after completing Aviation Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida.

Following additional training at Pensacola, the Navy sent him to the military's joint air intelligence officer school at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado.

After he finished his training in 1968, Joslin was assigned as an air intelligence officer in an A-6 Intruder squadron at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia.

He was then deployed aboard the USS Saratoga.

In 1970, Joslin married Patricia King.

Together, they had two daughters.

In addition, Joslin earned two advanced degrees while serving in the Navy.

In 1974, he received a Master of Arts in political science from the University of Colorado in Boulder.

He was awarded a Master of Philosophy degree in geography from the University of London in 1984.

Joslin served as a navy intelligence officer for 22 years.

Over the course of his career, his assignments included an extended tour at sea on the USS Kitty Hawk and multiple shore postings around the world.

These included assignments as an intelligence analyst in Washington and an intelligence liaison officer in London.

Joslin also served a tour on the faculty of the Defense Intelligence College (now the National Intelligence University) and was an intelligence officer at the Center for Naval Analyses.

His duties as an intelligence analyst, especially his three-year tour in Washington, helped him develop a clear and concise writing style.

Joslin retired from the navy in 1988 as a commander.

After retiring from the Navy, Joslin moved to Sunriver in Central Oregon.

In 1989, he began teaching geography courses at Central Oregon Community College.

He later taught political science classes there as well.

In 1990, Joslin resumed working with the Forest Service.

He performed seasonal patrols in the Three Sisters Wilderness and worked in public information and education capacities for the Deschutes National Forest for 14 years.

He then took a full-time position leading the recreation, heritage, and wilderness resources team for the forest's Bend-Fort Rock Ranger District.

In 2001, he became an adjunct instructor at Oregon State University, teaching a wilderness management course on-line and at Oregon State's central Oregon campus.

He left the community college faculty in 2005, but continued teaching at the university through 2011.

Joslin left the Forest Service in 2005.

Working with central Oregon's High Desert Museum, Joslin helped develop a Forest Service centennial exhibit for that museum in 2005.

After that project, he worked with the museum to relocate the old one-room Bridgeport ranger station office which had been moved to Nevada and then abandoned by the Forest Service.

The cabin was successfully moved to the High Desert Museum in 2008.