[pct-l] Hiking and the real world

[Diane Soini of Santa Barbara Hikes]

On Oct 18, 2010, at 3:53 PM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:

> Find a passion that pays you to be outside, at least some of the  
> time, and works well with your long distance hiking passion.   
> Geology has been very, very good to me in these ways! My profession  
> of geologist is also a major passion of mine along with long  
> distance hiking and they both work well together. I get to walk  
> around the hills some days exploring and analyzing the surface  
> geology, and they pay me to do this!  While hiking a get to  
> understand the geology of what I walk through and this makes the  
> experience richer.

Wow, what kind of geology do you do? I got an AS in Geoscience  
Technology and found myself standing outside helping bulldozers bring  
down beautiful mountains near San Diego. In college it was such an  
environmentally wonderful occupation with the amazing field trips,  
the hiking, the pretty crystals. But in the field I was either  
staring into a microscope looking at asbestos, measuring stuff in  
labs or watching bulldozers. I guess I should have gotten a higher  
degree, but I got stuck on the math.