I've been (and am) there. My undergrad was at least half ecology with plenty of field work (in the states and briefly in Africa), and one of my graduate degrees was also in environmental science, but somehow here I am in a windowless concrete cube for the last 2.5 years writing code and building models. When I was finishing undergrad I was looking at park ranger type jobs, but it turned out that with a couple of wars on those jobs were almost impossible to get for someone who wasn't preference eligible. I could have gone to grad school more explicitly for fieldwork-related disciplines, but I wanted to focus on getting a solid set of technical and policy skills, which ended up with me in an office in the south, driving everywhere and getting fat.

After about a year of that I really buckled down and focusing a lot more free time on exploring the outdoors and the ecological and geological systems I enjoyed in undergrad. I end up spending a lot of time outside: hiking, camping, backpacking, even just relaxing in a hammock, and exploring the natural processes I know as best I can in a somewhat-informed sense (Why is that gullying? What's that on this tree? Was this burn prescribed or accidental? How old is this rock? What is this rock? How hard is this rock?).

Basically, you never know what path you're gonna go down, but it's not the end for you to pursue physical, hands-on knowledge on your own, you just won't get paid to do it. The motivation can be often hard to come by, but when I'm out there and get to take a nap on top of a mountain, clamber up onto a boulder mid-river, or get that perfect picture of a bee pollinating some wild flowers I feel quite at peace, even if the rest of my week is in that windowless concrete cube.

I'd like to learn about what lives around me, but having recently emigrated I can't yet read the local field guides!

I plan to find an amateur ecologist group and join in. Perhaps using something like iNaturalist [1] where observations can be recorded, and other people will verify (or dispute) the identification. Good observations become "research grade", and are shared for research.

[1] http://www.inaturalist.org/

You don't have to leave engineering to research plants or rocks. You just have to leave some urban center. Remote work is difficult to negotiate at times, but for some of us it is worth it.

You might also like this book.

A Review of Jeff Schmidt’s Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives

http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/business-and-society-revi... http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/

Absolutely. Here are a few ideas on how to go about it casually, from a friend of mine: https://anaturalistsjournal.wordpress.com/2016/01/10/journal... https://anaturalistsjournal.wordpress.com/2016/01/12/a-speci... https://anaturalistsjournal.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/writing...

Awesome! Thanks guys!

I went to Clemson years ago. No really decades ago. So my memory is vague. I had friends on zoology, biology and forestry (I was a chemistry major). They took me to a place maybe 10 or 20 miles away from campus that was an isolated ecosystem. It was on the top of a rock outcropping and was a little moist eco-system of lichens, moss and air plants. Some trees. It was so cool. Wish I knew the name of it. I was also fascinated with the plants and other life there. Not like anything I saw growing up in the burbs of Orlando.

I live in southeast Alaska, and it's almost impossible to avoid becoming an amateur naturalist if you spend a lot of time outdoors here. I've been thinking of using the Center for Open Science's tools to organize some long-term investigations my friends and I have been undertaking informally.

https://cos.io/

That sure looks tempting.