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In honor of my not-so-secret birthday, let's discuss what careers we envisioned for ourselves as kids. Did you have just one idea that all your dreams were made of, or was your future more of a moving target?
I was one of the latter - each year I had a new profession that I was gonna be when I grew up. Here's my list; note that my "years" are based on school years not calendar years, as my memories are inevitably tied to what grade I was in at the time, not how old I was.
Pre-school - garbage man
I was in awe of the garbage trucks and how they could "gruff" the trash in the compactor!
Kindergarten - ornithologist
My favorite book was the Field Guide to Birds of North America and I loved to watch hawks and vultures soaring above.
1st grade - construction worker
I wanted to operate a lime green front-end loader because I loved giant construction machines.
2nd grade - center fielder for the Detroit Tigers and wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals
The hometown Tigers had just won the World Series and the Bengals had cool helmets; apparently I was going to be Bo Jackson!
3rd grade - paleontologist
I was going to dig up fossils to study prehistoric mammals; my favorite was Andrewsarchus for obvious reasons. :)
4th grade - zoologist
I wanted to study large mammalian predators such as wolves, bears, and big cats
5th grade - marine biologist
In particular I wanted to study marine mammals, especially orcas and dolphins.
6th grade - fiction writer
Reading countless Newberry Medal books got me thinking that I could write cool stories, too.
7th grade - forest ranger
I loved trees, especially redwoods and sequoias. A family trip to Yellowstone National Park inspired this one.
8th grade - canine and/or dolphin behaviorist
My plan was to understand dog/dolphin communication and ultimately learn to speak their language.
9th grade - astronaut
My dream was to take part in the first mission to walk on Mars.
10th grade - architect
I read a book about Frank Lloyd Wright and loved the concept of blending form with function.
11th grade - aerospace engineer
I loved airplanes and flying; plus, it sounded impressive when written on a college application.
12th grade - helicopter pilot
I had started taking flying lessons and preferred "low and slow" rather than "high and fast" flying.
How did I choose? With my eyesight too poor to become a pilot, I stuck to the most recent available career and became an aerospace engineer; besides, I kinda felt locked in by virtue of my choice of college major. In college I did revisit the pilot idea with the Marines when I found out they offered waivers for imperfect eyesight; however, my vision was way too nearsighted for a waiver and I didn't want to be a back-seater.
I might have considered careers in athletics had I thought that was an option; however, from an early age my mom instilled that such careers were dead-ends and sports were just games. Now that I realize how possible it is to have meaningful careers in athletics, perhaps my interests there would've received more serious attention.
Ironically (or perhaps predictably) I'm presently none of the professions listed above; I still call myself an aerospace engineer but in truth I work as a computer systems engineer for a company that puts their products on aircraft. In retrospect I probably would've preferred a career in the natural sciences because as cool as technology is, it's never more fascinating than nature.
One of my favorite adventures during our vacation last week was an excursion I took in the kayak I borrowed from the cabin's owner. It's just a short, 9.5-foot recreational boat but I decided to take it on a long trip and see if I could reach the public beach that was barely visible in the distance.
Lake Malone was once a network of rivers and tributaries that were dammed up several decades ago. The surrounding topography is rugged enough such that the lake never filled out like some dammed rivers, but instead sports several "fingers". The shoreline is mostly vertical sandstone bluffs anywhere from 10 to 200 feet high! It's amazingly scenic - Amanda's photos from the pontoon boat tour exhibit the scenery quite well.
You can see in this map the approximate route I took while out on the water. Initially my plan was to simply head north from the cabin to the beach near the dam; I figured it might take me half an hour or so. It wound up taking just 15 minutes! Kayaks are amazingly fast, even the stubby one that I was paddling.
I proceeded southwest along the coast, pausing for a few minutes to watch a pair of pied-billed grebes fishing for some breakfast, sometimes as close as 20 feet away! Then I continued until I reached one of Lake Malone's "fingers", an inlet that's part of the state park and doesn't have any cottages on its shoreline. I paddled upstream through the mist - in fact, throughout my entire voyage there was steam fog rising from the calm surface of the water. This inlet was shrouded from direct sunlight and the surroundings had an eerie "Jurassic Park"-like feel about it. Part of me kept waiting for a dinosaur to burst from the trees on the cliffs above!
Despite my imaginary fears I bravely paddled deeper into the mist until the water became so shallow that my paddle hit bottom. I'd now been on the water about 30 minutes - that's all! It felt like a day-long adventure already except that I wasn't tired. In fact, I was feeling very much alive despite the prehistoric ambiance. Several times I drifted close enough to great blue herons that I spooked them into flying away, sometimes remaining perched until I was just a few feet away! If any birds look like dinosaurs, these are the ones.
As I emerged from "Jurassic Park Gorge" I was blinded by sunlight from two angles - the sun from above and its reflection off the water from below. Luckily I brought my sunglasses! Being at this angle relative to the sunlight provided an amazing spectacle I'd never seen before - minature tornadoes of mist! They were invisible with the sun at my back, but were relatively easy to spot (in a ghostly way) with the sun in my face. First just one, and I even paddled through it! I couldn't feel a thing as there was barely any strength to this vortex. What was happening was that the sunlight was heating up the water, the rocky bluffs and the trees; however they all warmed at different rates, creating different velocities of upward-moving air as it warmed in the sunlight. The results were faint, gently swirling but distinct rope-shaped tornadoes. As I moved further out of the inlet and faced a wide expanse of open water, these twisters appeared everywhere! Literally dozens were dancing in front of me - it was an eerie scene as if I were watching the formation of the planet except instead of raging with powerful fury the tornadoes were tiptoeing with delicate grace.
I guess you'd figure that leaving a place that reminded me of Jurassic Park would bring me back to the present, but instead pushed me further into pre-history! However, my hungry stomach reminded me that breakfast was in the near future and it was time to head back to the cabin. Starting from the north shore I decided to hammer the pace and see how fast I could go. What took me 15 minutes on the way out took just nine minutes this time! I could see our dock in the distance and was surprised to see the silhouette of a heron standing on it; however, as I got closer I realized that it was Amanda! Apparently I was still stuck in the jurassic era...