Imagine this: After an hour of off trail navigation through downed trees,
up nearly vertical mountain slopes, across boisterous rivers, and over fresh
bear shit, you arrive and at a lush clearing in the forest where the
groundcover is vibrant with patches of purple and yellow flowers and the
winding brook is babbling back at the bathing songbirds. Three deer beam at you
in the distance, still gnawing in circular rhythmic motions on the forage
they’ve yanked out of the fertile soil. The sunlight comes and goes in waves as
wholesome cotton candy clouds drift by above at a surprisingly impressive speed
considering the light breeze you feel from where you stand in the subalpine
meadow you’ve discovered. You take a few strides forward and your tattered
hiking boots are now toeing the edge of a pool that has diverged from the
stream. A tiny plop three feet down the bank directs your vision to a
copper-colored frog paddling leisurely to the opposite shoreline. It’s just a Pseudacris you say under
your breath. Adorable, yes, but not your aim. A couple more careless strides to
the low side of the pool and your boots are now two inches deluged in muddy
water that the mat of grasses furtively hid. Subtle movements in the mud grasp
your curiosity, so you squat down for a closer look, squinting painfully to see
into the puddle, which only reflects the gray image of the clouds overhead.
Then you see them and gasp: metamorphs!
Awwwww! In your imagination, you couldn’t construct a cuter image than the
one in front of your eyes: the smallest toads you can dream up, freshly morphed
out of the tadpole stage, jet black and kicking lazily through the puddle. More
of them are crawling through the mud and suddenly you feel surrounded, fearing
that your feet may tragically be on top of a few. You’ve had ten quick seconds
to embrace the moment for what it is: the warmth in your chest, the crows feet
of your smiling eyes, positivity pulsing through your veins like when you stare
into a huge cardboard box to find a litter of excited puppies leaping up to
greet you. Suddenly, you hear the hungry grumble of thunder and peer up to see
that the blue is gone and drops of rain are beginning to spot your face. Your biggest enemy in the wilderness is a lightening storm that builds quicker than you can react. With a
jolt, your heart begins to race knowing that you’ll be burnt toast if you don’t
seek lower elevations and heavy tree cover, so you estimate the number of
metamorphs in your vicinity – twenty,
fifty, eh… two hundred-ish – and bound down the mountain toward safety. The
warm feeling from before now originates from the release of adrenaline, and as
you race through the woods you wish the day had blessed you with a
cloudless sky so you could sit down in the saturated meadow and watch the tiny
toads swim laps across the puddles. Yet, that’s just another unpredictable day
on the job, and you’re thankful for both the pleasure and the fear it brought
you, as well as all the emotions in between.
Let’s rewind.
A job hunt from scratch with few applicable credentials can feel like
looking for a needle in a haystack or Sasquatch in your own backyard. Out of
desperation, I applied the shotgun approach toward the situation, and to
emphasize my use of the word desperation,
I thought I ought to annotate by providing the Dictionary.com definition of
shotgun approach.
shotgun
approach: (noun) the hasty use of a wide range of techniques that are nonselective and
haphazard.
If
you know the slightest bit about my personality, you may agree that that ain’t my style. So there I was,
emailing every local field biologist I could think up, offering my free
assistance to the Forest Service and Nature Center, and drafting cover letters
justifying my merit in the form of passion for the outdoors and work ethic. I
came up short all fall and grasped still air with cold and empty hands all
winter.
Applying
for jobs became a game of sorts, without consequence nor reward. I sought out
every job in the Western United States that I fulfilled at least a few of the
minimum requirements for, which amounted to around 150 jobs. I would take a
moment to paint a mental picture of my life in each position, revamp my resume,
draft up a new cover letter, and send it off into the deep abyss of the
Internet, expecting nothing in return. I was at peace with the idea that I was
simply gifting my employers with one more application to shuffle through and
coldly toss aside. I suppose I became numb to the rejection. Yet there was
still that glimmer of hope, like the first star to shimmy through the orange
evening sky, that someone somewhere would give me a chance.
 |
| Driving toward Tuolumne Meadows |
Spring
burst through the frost and in a matter of three weeks, I received ten requests for interviews. Things were looking up! I
created tables weighing pros and cons for each job and studied up for the
interviews. A few were nerve-racking, a few were pleasant, but only one truly
moved me. In fact, it felt less like an interview and more like chatting with
an old friend that I hadn’t seen in years. Everything about the job description
was thrilling, too: backpacking, Yosemite, endangered species, bighorn sheep,
amphibians, physically demanding, $25 per day stipend… wait what? Can I even
live off that income? I decided I’d make that sacrifice for the sake of my
happiness. How could I not when the quote I held most dear during this career
searching voyage was “Look for a situation in which work brings you as much
happiness as your spare time.”
So
I accepted the position, passing up an opportunity to perform small mammal
trapping at a GS-5 level for the Forest Service in Lake Tahoe, another to work
in fisheries in Eureka, and a few others that I could have succeeded in. I was
going to spend my summer as an ecological intern for the USGS in Yosemite
National Park.
