Dream Jobs: Lumberjack and Working Outdoors

 We tend to romanticize working outside (and activities like camping) for good reason: the fresh air, the scenery, the weather, being around nature. It feels natural and organic, how humans are supposed to live. 

On the other hand, camping has been rightfully satirized as a bizarre way to have fun -- sleeping outside in an uncomfortable tent on hard ground, having to carry all the comforts of home into the woods, just so you'll feel like you're at home. Why not just stay home? (One clue: it's about buying the equipment, which is a pretty big part of most hobbies, when you think about it.)

When I was a teenager, I was in the Boy Scouts and enjoyed learning about axes and chopping wood, for some reason. I was lean and strong and well built for this sort of activity (at least then). I found out -- about the same time -- that my family had owned a logging camp in Washington state in the early 1900s, and I'm sure I convinced myself that this was in my blood. Maybe it was, though my Norwegian heritage would also suggest that I would into fishing, and I've never quite taken to it. ("There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot," as one comedian once said.)

I arguably held one of my dream jobs when I worked as a summer camp counselor at a place called El Rancho Cima when I was 16-22 years old. I wasn't a "counselor" in the sense of living in a cabin with a group of kids, like the movie Meatballs. At this particular camp, a boys' camp, counselors ran programs and taught kids skills, including outdoorsmanship and things like outdoor cooking, while the boys slept in campsites with adults they knew. 

Anyway, while working with the kids was mostly enjoyable, what I really enjoyed was working outdoors and teaching things like wilderness survival, rock climbing, and, yes, axemanship. At one point, my job title was even "Adventure Director," which sounds pretty cool. (In reality, this meant I managed three or four other guys I mostly considered friends, which wasn't always fun.) I loved working outdoors, taking hikes as part of my job. At times, my job involved driving a little bus and playing the guitar. There was even some acting when I played "Jake," the lost miner, and helped kids "pan for gold" (which was a ruse to keep restless young boys busy for a while, though it usually only took them a half hour or so to figure it out). 

Living the lumberjack dream: This is me at the top of a pole climb at Philmont Scout Ranch. 

At this job, I found my "group" in this job, like I belonged. Many of us had the same mindset and had taken a job like this to get away from something, to get away from the feeling of not fitting in elsewhere. In the few years I worked there, I became one of the most popular and well known people at the camp -- a kind of feeling I had never experienced -- probably due in no small part to my guitar skills. (Is there any instrument quite like the guitar? Maybe that's a post for another day.) To this day, I have friends who say I "light up" when talking about this job, and maybe that means it really was my passion for a short time in life. It's hard to follow your passion at all times, but sometimes it finds you and the result is magical and life-altering. 

Playing the Trombone

 In junior-high and high school, I played the trombone in the school band. I quit my senior year because there was a schedule conflict with my theatre class, and it was one of the first moments of realizing you can't do everything at the same time, and I was clearly involved with band for the wrong reasons. 

I never liked the trombone as an instrument much, even though I'm generally keen on trying new instruments and can figure out almost anything on a rudimentary level. I am an avid and pretty skilled guitar player, but I've also dabbled with the banjo, the ukulele, and the piano. I chord the piano like a bad lounge act, but it's a remarkably fun instrument with a complex tone and sound quality that naturally touches on all things spiritual and moving. 

I was terrible at the trombone because I never liked it much. Although the trombone is often seen or depicted as a fun, jazzy instrument (and it can be), it is also used most often as a middle-tone filler instrument in large marching bands, and I was never good enough to play solos or be engaged with the instrument at that level. I didn't practice much, so of course I never got better. I envied tuba and euphonium players because their instruments seemed neater and more precise. The trumpet seemed to have instant sex appeal, and even instruments like the clarinet had a certain contrarian appeal. The trombone involved endless maintenance (with that slide that could easily be dinged or accidentally bent).

The trombone was "picked" for me when I was in 7th grade because I didn't know what I wanted to play. The band director sized me up and that's what we went with. There was little discussion. My brother played the trombone, so it seemed like a natural if preditable choice. I always resented the idea of this instrument being foisted upon me, yet I lacked the inner voice and confidence to object.  

This is me plaing the ukulele at a party. I couldn't find a personal picture of the trombone.

The trombone was the instrument that a lot of "regular" guys, lanky guys with average personalities, played. The one thing I enjoyed about the trombone, however, was the comraderie. A lot of us shared an apathy for the instrument and boredom with the idea of marching in lines and taking orders from junior-sized squad leaders who took everything way too seriously, and we also shared a tendency to fill the time by being jokesters. Sometimes the joking went too far, but we were also teenagers with complex emotional lives, unrealized longings, and self-loathing that came in waves. The "joking" aspects of being a trombonists seemed baked into the role. It can be a naturally funny instrument, of course, capable of crazy sounds. The word itself (trombone) lends itself to all kinds of teenage-boy-type humor. There was a special trombone squad that played goofy songs (like "Tequila") during slow moments during the football games. 

I quit trombone at the beginning of my senior year, because of the schedule conflict but also because I realized even as one of the jokesters I didn't quit fit in and didn't do enough to help make the band a success in my own small way. It was perhaps a small moment of becoming an adult -- trying to focus more on things that matter and also trying to figure out where you really belong and what you really should be doing. I focused more on theater but also became involved with journalism and writing, something I realized I should have been doing all along.