The Wild Side

In high school I couldn't have dreamed that I'd be in a major like Wildlife and Wildlands Conservation. For one thing, I had no idea such a study existed. Classes in public school keep students fairly limited to the disciplines of language arts, mathematics, history and a few sciences, and while I was able to perform well enough in all of these, I certainly can't say I had a passion for them. Each teacher imagined I would go on to an advanced degree in whatever subject he/she taught, but I couldn't explain that passion for good grades does not translate into passion for the core studies.

So far I've completed two semesters in the major, with about five more to go, so I haven't quite decided which career direction I want to take - be it in state departments, federal agencies or some private company. I'm sure I'll figure that out in the next couple of years.

The thing about a major like mine is that it sounds unimpressive. I'm sure any of those core teachers I mentioned would make a guttural sound upon hearing my choice of university study. No, I'm not an economics or engineering major, but as I've discussed in other posts, wildlife/wildlands isn't a "dumbed-down" field of study. I'm doing my best to excel in these courses just as I did in calculus and U.S. history in high school. The classes are interesting to me and this field of work has one of the highest job satisfaction ratings of any out there. I may not make as much as a surgeon, but at least I will be relatively happy.

Sorry I've been neglecting my blog lately, but now that the semester's over I can think about non-school things again. Here's a taste of some activities I've gotten to do as a member of the wildlife and range club this semester that I'm pretty sure nobody experiences in those tame majors:

Attended a falconry event
Wrangled alpacas
Tasted alpaca meat
Shot skeet with a 12-gauge shotgun
Shot balloon leprechauns with a .44 handgun
Rode a 4-wheeler around some sand dunes
Played in a puddle at said dunes
Ate lots of Dutch oven cookin'
Explored some slot canyons
Looked at petroglyphs of bighorn sheep
Visited a local Bureau of Land Management office
Hiked to some dinosaur tracks
Went to a national park and hiked one of its most
famous landmarks
and
Failed to wash the campfire smell out of my clothes

The hike up the landmark was difficult. 5 miles round-trip isn't much, but it was steep and we gained a lot of elevation in a short amount of time, plus my stamina isn't the greatest. Despite the struggles, I was able to make it up the narrow - and kind of scary - sandstone path to the top by taking it one bit at a time.

They say the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. I think the same can be said of an alpaca, a burnt Dutch oven meal or a delicious Dutch oven cake. Oh yeah, and it applies to tackling any challenge in life, I suppose. I'm convinced that after making that treacherous climb, I can conquer just about anything that comes my way, as long as I go at my own pace.