As previously posted, Mom headed back to Ohio and I had “gone West” to pursue my dream of becoming a forester. The year was 1974.

I settled into the university scene, plowing through all those freshman classes that were overloaded with students that seemed to drop like flies as each quarter progressed. Living on the fifth floor of the seven-story High Rise Dormitory, in a room with a communication major cowboy from Texas, located directly across from the elevators, was a “trip” in and of itself, but that is another story, perhaps to be told another day, perhaps not.

I didn’t own a vehicle, and similar to my days in southwest Ohio, I either walked or hitchhiked every where I went. Each day, as I walked to classes from the dormitory, I would stare in awe at the mountains around Logan.

On weekends I would stand along Highway 89 on the south end of campus, my thumb in the air with my day pack slung across my shoulders. Inevitably I would catch a ride and head up Logan Canyon to the Cache National Forest to “suck air” climbing peaks like Mount Naomi (see picture below). Not knowing the terrain, but certainly wanting to explore it, I would inform the driver at a moment’s notice to stop and let me out. I’d spend the day exploring and then, late afternoon, put out my thumb so I could catch a ride “home”.

Between my freshman and sophomore years I convinced my best friend from high school to forego his physics major at a Kentucky university and head to Logan. After exploring his options, he “headed West” and enrolled in the geology program. He joined me on my “explorations” of the Cache National Forest, and like me, has made outdoor activities on public lands a livelong endeavor.

It seemed nothing stopped my friend and me from making the most of our newly found public lands. We hiked every chance we could. We camped throughout the school year. In the fall we backpacked into unexplored areas. In the winter we built igloos and snow caves, then sat inside them, in our sleeping bags, with candles stuck in carved-out platforms that served as candlesticks, playing cards or board games. One night we slept directly under the winter stars and woke up to a crystal clear -30 degree morning. Damn, was it ever cold! In the spring we crossed raging creeks and traversed around snow drifts draping down steep mountain slopes, occasionally jumping up on a drift and boot-skiing down the softening snow as it glistened in the sunlight.

Late in my sophomore year I overheard a conversation between classmates that forestry was a dead-end field and watershed science was an up and coming career opportunity. After giving it some thought – because I always wanted to be a forester – I decided to change my major and switched to forest-watershed management. I still had to take all the forestry classes, but I also had to take a full suite of watershed science and hydrology classes. Professors Hart, Hawkins, and Gifford were an inspiration!

To cover my college career bills I was enrolled in the work-study program. I landed a job at the Soil, Water and Plant Analysis Laboratory located on campus, and spent hours on end either processing soil samples for their cation exchange capacities or preparing thin sections for microscope analysis. The work was incredibly interesting so I started taking classes in soil science. I never fathomed there was so much to learn about dirt! But Professor Southard helped me through my journey.

By the time I graduated in 1978 I was well positioned to be hired as a civil servant forester, hydrologist or soil scientist.

Between my junior and senior years I was hired by the Medicine Bow National Forest in Encampment, Wyoming as a hydrologic technician. It was an amazing summer nestled in a remote part of a State I knew little about but, ironically, would spend most of my adult life being a resident. I can remember flying into Laramie, Wyoming, walking out to the highway with my life’s belongings in my backpack, and hitching a ride to Encampment. I was offered a ride by an old man driving a gas-guzzling Cadillac. I climbed into the back seat of his vehicle and was promptly introduced to his 20-something year-old wife and newborn baby. He said he could get me up the road a few miles but then after about twenty, turned to look at me and said “What the hell…I haven’t been to Encampment in years”. He dropped me off at the front door of the Hayden Ranger District office, a mere 90-miles from the Laramie airport.

After graduation I was rehired by the Medicine Bow for another summer’s work, but mid-way through the Soil Conservation Service hired me as a full-time soil scientist to work on the Summit County Soil Survey in Coalville, Utah. So off I went, back to Utah.

Mapping and interpreting soils is incredibly rewarding but at the same time, at least for me, incredibly boring. During the field season I would, each day, drive to a specified location, dig a hole down to 60-inches deep that was wide and long enough for my 5′ 11″, 200+lb frame to drop in to so I could fill out a form describing the soil. Once the form was complete I would climb out of my well-dug hole and proceed to fill it back up. It was fun for a while, but only until I started feeling like I was digging my own grave each and every day!

The following summer, 1979, the Medicine Bow hired me back, but this time as a zone hydrologist for the Hayden and Brush Creek Ranger Districts. It didn’t take me long to discard the quintessential tile spade of the soil scientist for the stream flow current meter of the hydrologist!

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