I just returned from the trip to Oregon. It was interesting to visit because I got to see some parts of the States I had never seen before - Western Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Eastern Oregon. The northern portion of Idaho along the highway is quite beautiful with lots of coniferous trees and mountains. It was around an 11 hour drive from Bozeman to La Grande, Oregon. I tried to absorb lots of the scenery, but also spent some time reading some books I got for free at the library here in Bozeman.
This trip was quite enlightening for me, because it shed some light on a question I have been carrying around for a number of years: What if I had a career doing field work? I had this question because I was seeking a number of jobs that required working outdoors after I graduated with my Ecology (and Evolution) degree. I was ultimately unsuccessful in becoming an ecological scientist for a variety of reasons, and became a baker for a few years instead. While this was the experience that I needed to best move forward on my path, it did leave the lingering curiosity of what life could have been like for me if things had turned out otherwise.
I feel that it would be rather presumptuous - even downright ridiculous - to make sweeping judgments about the broad category of
field work based on a couple weeks of my experiences. Even so, I am confident that I have gained many valid insights.
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| one of my colleagues. this man exudes science. |
the Good (mostly)
Traveling is fun
It's lots of fun for me to see new parts of the world. I have curiosities about them, and it's interesting to learn about how people live in other places. There are also other things to observe, such as weather patterns, new species of plants, animals or insects, and the patterns, placement and type of landscapes. All of the elements mix to create a whole new feel.
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| Self shot in the hotel we stayed at in La Grande |
I stayed for 3 nights at a married couple's farm house. The couple was retired, but make some extra money by renting out rooms in their home. They showed quite a bit of hospitality, baking scones and muffins for our group. It was much more homey than a typical hotel stay might have been, and I often chatted with the old couple as if they were relatives of mine.
The town I was staying in for these 3 nights was Halfway, Oregon - a town with a population of around 400. A very rural place with some beautiful scenery and nature all about. I am a city boy, so this was rather unfamiliar to me. The night sky here was extraordinary; the Milky Way was in clear sight with the naked eye, along with countless stars and specks of light.
Beautiful sites and working outside
Nature is beautiful. What more can be said? Going far from civilization and deep into the wilderness is quite an adventure. It is fascinating and even a bit mystical to absorb yourself into the quiet stillness that remote areas of the world can offer (unmolested by human Hands... lovely).
Natural environments tend to clear my head and pull me into peaceful reveries, but the responsibilities I had while working inevitably distracted me from any emerging trance-like states before I could sink too deeply into the peacefulness of my surroundings. This was no time for daydreaming - there was work to be done.
I didn't snap as many shots as I could have, but I didn't want to drop my phone into a river or get it excessively dirty.
It's awesome to be able to work with fresh air and sunlight on your skin - something that would not normally happen in an office environment.
Adventure
It's fun sometimes to go on an adventure and deal with the unexpected. Unknown complications may arise, and it can be satisfying to work as a team to make adjustments to the plan and solve problems together. Plus it can be thrilling to overcome adversity, which was rather common for our team.
Meeting smart, interesting people
Scientists can be pretty interesting people. I enjoyed the company of my team. It is fun to observe their personalities, and explore their body of knowledge, which can be quite vast. However, I think that I naturally look to the good in people, and the same could be said of office environments as well.
the Ugly
Very little control over your experience
When you go on a hiking trip or to a park, you are the master of your experience. You can walk wherever you please, seek out shade if you desire it, and come or go at any time you desire to. This is not the case with field work. While working, you will be required to complete the tasks that have been assigned to you, whether or not it requires standing steady in one place for several hours under the hot sun, in the cold rain, or between the branches of a conifer with a steady stream of bugs flying into your face.
You may have to take a long and strenuous hike into your site when you are tired and just want to rest a bit - but if you are sluggish, it will just be that much later when you get to leave for the day. After all, the day does not end for you at 5 P.M. It ends when you have completed your duties.
Long hours
We would often begin the day around 8 A.M. to remove everything from our van so that it could be organized and prepared for the work. We would then decide who needed what in what vehicles, and make sure we had everything. If we needed more supplies, we would head to the nearest hardware store to pick them up.
After we readied and loaded our equipment, we would drive to the watershed of interest. The drive to the watershed usually took around an hour, but once we got there it often took at least another hour of traversing the rocky mountain roads and surveying the environment for us to determine the best place for us to do our cross sectional river measurements and deploy our temperature sensors.
When we found the right place, we had to set up all the equipment, take the measurements, and tear down. If our other team was not finished deploying sensors, I would assist them. By the time we finished everything that had to be done at the site, the sun was usually setting.
Then we had the drive back to our lodging. We would usually get something to eat for dinner at the local general store, which didn't have much (the population of this town was roughly 400 people). Then we would return to our lodging, cook our food, and having a meeting where we had discussions about the day's work and entered data that we had recorded into a database. By the time this was done, it was usually around midnight.
We'd wake up again and repeat the process the next day. This was the most hours per day I've ever had to work for any job.
Health risks and discomfort
When working in a field environment, you may be asked to do something that has an element of risk associated with it. For example, wading into a river with rushing and deep waters. Luckily, none of the rivers I waded into were too dangerous, but I could easily imagine circumstances where getting into risky situations might be necessary to get the job done.
I have grown accustomed to the amenities of home and civilization. There are no toilets in the woods, and poopin' outside is not my idea of a good time. This didn't happen to me, but if you get diarrhea and you're 5 hours away from a toilet, you are going to be doing some pooping outside. Hopefully you have something to wipe with, and enough of it to adequately clean yourself... Also, this would likely be a disruption in the work flow. This can reduce the ability of your team members to complete their tasks as well.
There's no restaurants or grocery stores in the woods. My breakfast and lunch meals consisted primarily of smashed and melted granola bars, which was pretty unappealing. I could have brought some other items I suppose, and with more experience learned what sorts of foods would be good to bring along. This didn't happen, though. I felt that perishables or items that required much preparation or utensils to eat would be unsuitable.
Working under the sweltering sun all day without good proper nutrition for days on end was quite exhausting for me. What's nice about working in an office is that you never really risk injuries, hypothermia, unsanitary environments, and so on. Carpal tunnel is a risk, but it can be easily avoided with proper posture and ergonomic awareness. If you have an office job, you can go out to eat, and it's easy to bring snacks or perishable things for yourself. A fridge is much more reliable than a cooler with ice that is replenished only once every few days.
Working with your hands
I'm sure this one is great for some people. But working with your hands is not something that interests me. There is lots of jury rigging components together, making repairs, hammering nails, working with pliers and so on.
I completely butchered hammering a nail into a tree a few days ago. At my defense, I was knee-deep in flowing water, and had to hammer at a strange angle with tree branches in my way, but still - the nail was completely bent after I was done with it... A cruelly twisted disfigurement of the proud and straight nail it once was. It had to be removed and replaced by someone with a keener eye and steadier hand than myself.
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| a temperature logger we strapped to a tree. I butchered hammering a nail into the side opposite from what is seen in this pic. These are camoflauged so that curious travelers do not dismantle them. |
It's dirty
Everything was dirty after the week was over. Our vehicle was caked in dust and mud, even the interior had become sullied by our activities. My clothes were a bit grimy from traipsing through the mucky wilderness. My hands became dirty after handling rebar, the dirty equipment, and plunging them into the river waters to adjust rocks or get an accurate measurement for water depth.
I had to wear waders for this job, so I could stand out in the middle of a stream with my measuring rod without subjecting my body to the cold waters. By the end of the week, my wading boots were filthy with mud and rife with musty odors that come from leather and fabrics being kept slightly wet for a period of days without being allowed to fully dry.
Repetitive tasks
Our daily routine was more or less the same. I only did this for two weeks, I imagine if I had to repeat these tasks for months that it would be mind numbing. The task I probably spent the most time on each day involved holding a measuring rod steadily along a length of measuring tape. The measuring tape positioned perpendicularly to the flow of water in the river bed, and was held in place by rebar that we had pounded into the ground.
I would hold the rod steady for a few moments while one of my colleagues would read the elevation of the ground, which I would confirm by pointing at the measuring rod where the number I heard was located. I would then report water depth if I was in the stream bed, scoot forward a number of centimeters, and repeat the process until we had spanned the length of the flood plain. There is little room for creativity here.
Lack of opportunities
Field work positions are much harder to come by, more competitive to secure, and in general pay much less than computer science positions. This is just another nail in the coffin for me. I'd rather have companies fighting over themselves to hire me, and get to choose exactly what city I want to live in than be subject to the scarceness of environmental jobs, which ultimately require living wherever it is that you can find work.
Assessments and predictions
I was a bit naive in my desires for a career in field work. Completing work based tasks in an outdoor environment is far different from taking a leisurely excursion to a nature site.
I thought I'd like field work because I enjoy being outside. But working in the outdoors at remote sites fouls some of the things I enjoy most about the experience.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of nature for me is the reverie -
the peacefulness, the stillness, the quiet -
the state of mind that arises naturally when the flow of thoughts ceases and you become immersed in the natural setting. Work duties and the presence of others can easily disrupt this experience for me.
While I love the outdoors, field work is probably not for me.
Two of the things I like the most about being outside are the fresh air and access to sunlight. Being in a stuffy office with no windows for months on end sucks. But I do not foresee that a dank and stale cubicle, separated from nature's gifts will become my permanent dwelling if I pursue an office based career.
As technology continues to develop further, I anticipate that personal mobility and freedom in the choosing of work locations/environments and time schedules will increase dramatically. I have already witnessed employees at my previous workplace who lived where they chose to, and did not report into the office for work first-hand. This means that if they wanted to, they could go to a park, pop open their laptop, and hammer out some code at their leisure. For meetings, they simply phoned in. These individuals had a high degree of control over their surroundings.
I think that it is plausible that I could secure a similar situation for myself. Everything is becoming more portable, and communication between others continues to grow easier. So why shouldn't it be commonplace for an individual to work where he chooses as technology continues to develop?
In my near future, I see myself making bank while writing code, sitting on a towel over grass and beneath the shade of a tree in my back yard with a cold beer at hand, and all the amenities of my home within easy reach. .
the Aftermath
The girls (both a few years younger than I) and myself got to head back home a day earlier than we expected to. The original plan had been that on Friday we would go to a site 2.5 hours from our lodging (and in the opposite direction of Bozeman), complete our duties, and then begin the drive back to Bozeman. This would have been a hellishly long day. We were relieved that we could come home early.
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| on the way Home |
I spent the last few hours of the drive reading. One of the books I got for free, "Under a Calculating Star" by John Morressy, was quite engaging. It is a sci-fi story about a legendary treasure on the quarantined and deadly planet of Borroq-Thaddoi. I don't usually read much other than reddit or other internet discussions, but this book rekindled my interest in literature, at least temporarily. I stopped reading right before I finished the book to give the girls some attention and conversation, as I had neglected interacting with them while I was reading.
The next day, I decided that the most exciting thing I could do would be to finish the book. I did this even before I fired up my computer, which I usually do very soon after having awakened. It was a beautiful day out, albeit slightly windy, so I went to the duck pond to finish the last few pages of my book. The ducks were quite vocal today, so I got to hear lots of quacks as I read. There were several very young ducks at the pond, and some very small birds too.
I enjoyed the ending of the book. It was unexpected. I am considering buying the rest of the books in the series, which was written mostly in the 70s.
This experience has left me with some new perspectives and ideas, which I value highly. Even though it was not always comfortable, it was a bit of fun and it taught me lots about myself. It represents a valid and treasured part of my path, just like every other experience I have had (including the humiliating ones). There are no missteps to be taken here.
Good day.
~swampy
