I'm getting paid for this?

That thought occurred to me more than once as I hiked up the snowy Chautauqua Park trail with the rest of the IPM crew, the trees wreathed with snow, the Flatirons frosted and topped with misty clouds, and as I sat down alone in the middle of a small stand of trees to complete my assignment -- 20 minutes of silent contemplation of my surroundings, open space, nature, etc. The snow on the bare branches surrounded me with a fractal maze of black and white lines. It was still but for the tiny sound of little, hard specks of snow hitting my jacket and birds occasionally calling in the distance, and the wash of traffic far down in Boulder. I'm getting paid for this!

Besides that, most of my first day was standard first day stuff -- orientation, introductions, and paperwork. Being around peers and watching a powerpoint on weed management made it feel strangely like an ecology class back at CU -- a class where the school was paying me instead of the other way around. The other three techs and the leader seem to share goals with me -- learning plant identification, GIS mapping software, and improving communication skills by speaking up more and asking questions when necessary -- so I think they'll be pretty easy to work with. There was only one guy who said he actually wanted to "tone down" his apparently overbearing extrovert personality. Hopefully there won't be any conflicts. Anyway, I'm really excited to get to work outside doing relevant ecology work, even if it does mean having to give up being a night owl so that I can wake up at 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning, a time I'd usually just be heading to bed.