Seize the Summer
| The summer 2019 season is officially upon us, as seasonal operations are starting to open their doors for the summer. Some of you may have already arrived and started your new jobs, some of you may be making final preparations before hitting the road, and some of you late-bloomers may still be considering snagging a last second summer dream gig (it’s not too late, by the way, lots of opportunities are still available!). As the doors and windows open on another season, we thought it’d be a good opportunity to talk about what we hope you’ll get out of the upcoming months, why we fell in love with Jobs in Great Places, and why we want as many people as possible to experience at least one season living and working in an amazing place. So, here’s some of my top picks. |
1. Become an Ambassador for Our Wild Places
One of the main reasons we’re motivated to get people outside, into public lands for extended periods of time is because we hope more people will come to appreciate and value wild, open spaces, and to benefit from the peace, restoration, and connection that they offer us. Our public lands truly are a heritage that we should all strive to protect and preserve for future generations. By spending a season in a place, you’ll have the opportunity to really learn and love that place, to explore it, to teach others about it, and to become an ambassador for that place for the rest of your life. The appreciation gained for a place after living a season there – as opposed to just visiting it on a vacation – is an endowment for that place’s future in the form of a lifetime advocate.
2. Meet Lots of New People from Different Backgrounds
A season in a great place isn’t just an opportunity to be exposed to beautiful new wild places: it’s an opportunity to broaden your horizons through new friendships. People from all over the country, and all over the world, with all different backgrounds, upbringings, views, and values are going to be your coworkers and neighbors. Go into with an open mind, and celebrate the opportunity to get to see the world through the eyes of someone different than you. By the end of the season, you’ll likely be leaving with a few new lifelong friends that you didn’t see coming.
3. Make Lifelong Memories
We only get so many summers in life, so many winters, so many days to spend exploring and pressing our boundaries. With such a precious limited inventory of opportunities to cram in as much living as possible, we believe our most valuable asset is time, and we want to see as many people as possible take full advantage of every day we get. We all have different ideas for what that looks like, but for us, it looks like living and working in a beautiful place with a bunch of other beautiful weirdos, being open and eager every day to live a life and to have friendships worth telling stories about.
“Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves.”
– Robert Neelly Bellah
“Within two weeks, I quit my job and booked a one-way ticket to Alaska, and that was the day my life truly began. It took me 26 years to start living. Because I worked a summer season in Alaska, I saw more wildlife in four months than I had ever seen in my life. I woke up to the mountains as my backyard. I greeted sea-otters in the morning while heading to the dock before work. On my days off, I hiked epictrails with the most glorious backdrops and ice-climbed solo for the first time in my life.” – Diane
