Post your "ideal" outdoors job

milani74 said:
Thanks for the input. I thought that foresters would be managing older growth forests instead of newer ones. I doubt it would be different out here as they clear cut entire areas that have been planted.
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I'm sure there are foresters employed by USFS, BLM, or state agencies that do go work in the mature forests, but I'd bet those positions are hard to get and somewhat rare. I think the vast majority of forestry work would be in the timber and paper industry. Also, aside from sporadic surveys/assessments, I can't think of any other reason they would need to go into the wilder places. Maybe research, but again those positions would be rare.

Corporations within the timber industry own more private land in the US than anyone else. Much of it is managed/logged, but there is probably a small bit that is allowed to mature.

There are different methods of harvest - all with pros and cons. Unfortunately the option often chosen by industry has pros of efficiency and profit and cons of not providing great habitat.
 
kvaughn said:
I work for the local Public Health District.Most of my time is taken up with land use issues-i.e-Soil tests to prove feasability for septic systems/potable water wells for residences/subdivisions.Plan review/permitting/construction supervision of same.Oil and chemical spills,complaints. Some food service establishment inspections. Some lead,asbestos,hazardous materials issues with older homes and demolitions.Food borne outbreak investigations occassionally. Just about anything that is covered by the Public Health Code. My A.O. is 4 small rural towns with a total population of about 15,000 so there is no public water or sewer. Every building has its own well and septic system and everything that goes along with it. If I worked in the larger towns I would be doing public housing inspections[Hate 'em],restaurant inspections,complaints etc. I probably would not do this if I had to work in a large city and put up with all the crap that goes on there. My job title is "Registered Sanitarian" in some states and "Registered Environmental Health Specialist" in others. Same job though.Enforcing the Public Health Code.--KV
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That's really neat. I like how broad your duties are. I'm in school now, in a water resources major. I hope to get into hazardous material cleanups, inspections, testing, etc.
 
Jack Kerouac did this job, and it seems about perfect:thumbup:.....................


A Fire Lookout on Solitude (and Lots of Time to Read)
The New York Times

Philip Connors spends his summers looking for fires in the Gila National Forest of New Mexico.
By STEVEN KURUTZ
Published: June 1, 2011



In addition to an incredible view and a few months of monklike solitude, one of the perks of Philip Connors’s job as a fire lookout in the New Mexico wilderness is a summer house.

He works in the tower and lives in (and maintains) the metal house, which was built in the 1960s.

Around this time of year for the last eight years, Mr. Connors has left his home in Silver City, N.M., and his wife, and moved into a two-room cabin on a mountaintop in the Gila National Forest, where he spends several hours a day in a 45-foot tower surveying his surroundings through binoculars, ready to radio in the location of any suspicious-looking billows of smoke.

The salary is nothing to retire on, but the job offers ample downtime, which Mr. Connors fills by hiking with his dog, Alice; fishing; reading; and playing robust one-man games of Frisbee golf. He also makes repairs to the cabin. “It’s a place more than 10,000 feet above sea level that sees extreme weather and is unattended seven or eight months a year,” he said.

Although Mr. Connors eagerly anticipates the beginning of his stay every April, this year he’s getting a late start; he’s been on the road promoting “Fire Season: Field Notes From a Wilderness Lookout” (Ecco), his new book that muses on his years as a fire lookout and the job’s literary tradition (Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder also worked as lookouts). One afternoon in mid-May, before leaving for the cabin (which he traveled to on horseback), he spoke about his summer retreat.

How do you decide what to take with you to the cabin?

It all comes down to extensive and thorough list-making. You think of things like sunscreen, ibuprofen, allergy medicine, extra typewriter ribbon. I take a bunch of canned food, pasta, rice, beans — any kind of food that won’t spoil. I take a bunch of double-A batteries to operate my two-way radio, which is my link to the outside. I have no telephone, no Internet connection. I bring boxes of books.

I’m envious of all the time you have to read.

I’ve amassed a library that I inspect as I ponder a summer’s worth of reading and try to anticipate what I’ll want to read over the course of a season. This year, I’m bringing some Virginia Woolf — “To the Lighthouse,” which I’ve never read — half a dozen issues of the London Review of Books and New York Review of Books, a collection of Balzac novellas, “Mating” by Norman Rush, Terry Castle’s new collection of essays, “The Professor.”

After spending so many years there, do the cabin and tower feel like a second home?

By now it does. It’s only occupied by me and the relief lookout each summer, and we lock it up when we leave. I move out in August and the rodents move in. It’s like we have a time share, me and the deer mice.

Do you decorate it?

The bed was there when I got there. It’s the same bed. The table was there when I got there — same table. I have not upgraded in any way, shape or form. I tend to be pretty ascetic about these things. Also, to get anything big there, it has to be flown in by helicopter. The one thing I’ve done is hang a few maps of the area.

You also have an old stove. Is that for cooking or heating?

It’s a little pot-bellied wood stove for heating, which, if you fill it to the brim, will burn for two hours. Getting firewood is one of the major manual projects every summer. I like to get it done at the beginning of the season and establish a good pile while the weather is dry.

What about cooking? Are you stuck eating out of a can or can you whip up more gourmet meals?

I get a base of dry and canned food, and then that gets packed in on mules. I supplement that with fresh food on my every-other-week hike back to town; I’ll hike in with fresh vegetables. I have a propane stove and a propane refrigerator, so I can have meat, too.

What do you miss most about your house in town?

Nothing, really, except my wife.

Does she visit?

Yes, she does. At least for a few days. She doesn’t have the deep tolerance for sitting around all day like I do. And I have a legitimate purpose: I’m paid to keep watch. For Martha, it’s sort of a vacation, so she does enjoy it. But maybe by day three or four she gets anxious for something more exciting.

Do you find it liberating to live so far away from other people?

You can bathe or not bathe as you see fit. You can wander around shirtless if you feel like it. There’s a certain amount of freedom and liberation involved in detaching yourself, at least temporarily, from anyone’s expectations of you.

Do you think readers of your book will hike up to visit you this summer?

I hope not. I hope the book is its own self-contained world and it won’t need ratification with a visit. My joy in solitude should be self-evident, and the book is not a cry for visitors. Plus, I changed the name of the mountain to at least attempt to confuse the curious.
 
I'd love to be a ranch hand. I had a job in West Texas one summer while I was in high-school that was similar to a ranch hand where I just had less responsibilities as I was young. To be honest though, I was pretty lazy and didn't make the most of it. I would love to do it again but this time not be as lazy. I enjoy the outdoors much more now and realize how important the seemingly menial tasks I was doing actually were. I doubt I will ever get the opportunity again but I think it would be a great job, most of the time.
 
I'm not sure what outdoor job I would consider perfect. I do know one outdoor job that I would not want to do again. Fence mender. I worked on a ranch in Montana one summer when I was younger mending fences on a large ranch. Looking back it was a great experience but would not want to do it again. Hot, dirty, lonely and didn't pay too much.
 
LastXJ said:
Alaska Wildlife Trooper. ... work alone in a large wilderness full of people with guns.
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^^^ The only requirement that gives me great pause. ^^^

I've given up on wanting to become any kind of game warden or other law enforcement related capacity in the out of doors.

I would, however, like to:

1.) Open a plant nursery

2.) Work on a ranch

3.) Be a tour guide of some kind


All legitimately within the realm of possibility for me.

-Matthew
 
Other options have come and gone, especially with arthritis dictating my life, but the two very realistic ones right now are a job at Whitefish Resort (family friends own the place) and an Anthropologist doing field research. I wouldn't say no to an offer for a whitewater or flyfishing guide either. I think the whitewater guide would be the most skill-intensive, running rivers in hundreds of thousands of dollars in other peoples' gear with 4-5 lives in your hands...
 
HI milani74 -

My ideal job is/was when I was just out of high school - I worked on a country club golf course as a greensman. That was awesome work.

I also worked at the Peoria Park District on a team called Small Parks. My job was to take a truck, trailer, two ride-mowers, some push mowers and weed wackers and mow the smaller parks in the city and surrounding area. That was a great job too, as I was out and about, yet still got to enjoy the parks and scenery.

Sure beats being tied to a desk / laptop. However, the pay was exponetially less.

best regards -

mqqn
 
In my earlier post (#24) I nominated Fire watcher for the perfect job, and at this stage in my life I think it would be. However, when I was just out of college I had, not the best outdoors job, but a job in one of the best outdoors places in the world- I worked in Yosemite Natl. Park as a maid cleaning CWOBS (Cabins with out baths). From 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. I worked in guest cabins, sweeping them and emptying the garbage- that's it, no bathrooms to clean! In addition to regular pay, my co-workers and I used to separate out returnable bottles and redeem them at the end of the shift. Because we were in a national park you get 15 cents per bottle, and because Yosemite Valley is a party scene, there were a lot of bottles. I'd often get $10 to $15 bucks a day in returns, which easily covered my own beer and partying expenses!

Of course, the best part about the job was living smack dab in the middle of paradise, and having the better part of the day and some weekends to enjoy it. We used to float down the Merced, climb Half Dome, do epic hikes out in Tuolumne, visit insider's spots that tourists never see, drag 1/2 kegs up some of the no-name domes, party all night, and the list just goes on and on.

Best job ever.
 
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Good Thread!

Job #1 : I have a friend who has a "high end" offshore fishing boat that he has to keep down on the coast of NC, about 4 hours from where we live. There is a service on the coast that will check on his boat each month: they pull it from dry storage, drop it in the water and take it out for 20-30 minutes and run through a pretty good checklist to make sure that the boat is well maintained at all times. If there is something wrong (and with a boat there is always something wrong) the service will recommend a repair and coordinate having it done by a licensed mechanic. I would love to get paid to splash other peoples boats and run them monthly, you get to be on the water and have a pretty stress free job at the same time plus likely to have a small kickback from the mechanics that you send work to...not a bad gig.

#2 would be a jet ski instructor at a nude beach....
 
Pretty much every job I have ever had was an outdoor job. I have worked on deep sea fishing party boats and whale watch boats since high school in Gloucester, Mass. , started commercial fishing during and after college (lobstering in MA, shrimping in FL), did a year at a plant nursery in Florida (Odessa I think..I can't remember) went back to deep sea fishing, then commercial lobstering again in MA, tried being a fisheries observer for 6 months in Chincoteage VA. That job didn't pan out, so it was back to whale watching in MA, then lobstering until the boat sunk. Then off to Chicago to work on towboats on the Illinois river between Chicago and Peoria, and occasionally down the Mississippi to Cairo. Finally, I am back in MA, lobstering AGAIN, (and whale watching on the side in the summers) but this time I own the boat. It has been rough getting a new business off the ground and it is hard physical work in usually poor conditions coupled with a lot of stress but I can't picture doing anything else. Once April comes around, I spend more time on boats than on land and am outside from sunup until sundown. I get to see things that most people will never see, whales breaching right next to the boat, large sharks, or other strange sea life that comes up in the traps or on a hook.
 
I had it in the mid 90s - I was the Ocean Kayak 'rental boy' at Bahia Honda State Park, Florida Keys! I ran around in a bathing suit and Tevas 5/6 days a week (occasionally wearing the Staff shirt) kayaking, teaching how to kayak etc., to lovely young ladies in their bikinis :) Most fun time of my life and they actually paid me to do it!
 
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That's a given if I had it all over to do again I would be a Air National Guard reserve Para Rescuemen in Alaska
 
MSgt said:
I had it in the mid 90s - I was the Ocean Kayak 'rental boy' at Bahia Honda State Park, Florida Keys! I ran around in a bathing suit and Tevas 5/6 days a week (occasionally wearing the Staff shirt) kayaking, teaching how to kayak etc., to lovely young ladies in their bikinis :) Most fun time of my life and they actually paid me to do it!
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Ha! We spent a 10 days there this past summer and the kayaking was awesome...we did the No Name Island tour vice the state park tour, but it was still a blast. That would have been a great job for a while. In fact we were talking to the tour guide, she and her husband were retired professors and opened the rental/guide business...they love it and have been doing it for the past 7-8 years.

I had a young Army captain take a job with a major petroleum/oil company and he volunteered to do exploration tours in Canada (6 months from later spring through early fall) and he said it was one of the best jobs he could have (his degree was petroleum engineering).

Ken (kgd) has a very nice job; at least I think so. I know education (even under-grad/post-grad positions) doesn't pay a ton, but depending on the field, you can enjoy some of the out-of-classroom work. Kevin is in the same boat being an instructor and member of the Wilderness Learning Center. That would be my ideal post-Army retirement job. My under-grad is in bio-chemistry so I could teach middle school biology/physical science, with my wife (she teaches English and history) and set up some sort of "outward bound" for part of the summer to take at-risk youth kayaking, rock climbing, backpacking, etc. At least our work schedules would be more synchronized and I wouldn't have these 6-12 month tours to other "outdoors" locations like here:

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Cheers!
ROCK6
 
I'd like to be one of those armed guards at African wildlife reserves who defend against poachers. Carrying Cold War rifles, riding around in old 4x4's, protecting endangered species--what's not to like?

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