The Corridor

I had big plans for hunting this year.

There was not a week during the summer that I wasn’t out in the woods, putting miles on my feet, hanging game cameras, scouting prior hot spots, chasing bears and getting my gear right. I became a fixture in the high country outside my home town, so much so that the Forest Service employees came to know me by name, my truck by sight, and my intent by conversation. If persistence is the key to success, I was pouring the coal on all summer to be ready once October hit.

Fast forward to the now end of November, and I came out of the 2025 season without an animal to my credit, but with deeply concerning questions about my future that only solitude and suffering can bring to the forefront.

After sixteen days of hunting the high country, I realized I hated my job. Not the “oh I just don’t like going to work” sort of thing, but the “I may just quit when I get back and burn it all down” hatred. My job is important, and I get immense satisfaction in doing it, but my coworkers in a few important cases make it unbearable.

Take for instance, my boss. Nice enough guy, but the sort of stupid person that doesn’t realize he is stupid. He means well in everything he does and by all accounts does his job alright, but given the nature of the job I can’t handle any sort of personal conversations with the guy. We share similar hobbies, but only one of us seems to go out of their way to know what we are talking about or is quick to recognize what we don’t know. It’s led to a strange relationship where he seems to refer to me as the young welp in the office…and I see him as the old codger. This wouldn’t be so bad if he wasn’t so damn insistent on his age being the reason he can’t possibly be wrong.

Then there are the people well above us, who are for a lack of any better way to describe them; jackasses. We have a culture built on our identity here that has worked for the last seventy-plus years, and they are intent on ignoring that in favor of some corporate nonsense that makes us less effective at our jobs and focuses most of our energy on the wrong things. This leads to the brightest of our organization leaving in frustration because this isn’t what they signed up for, and only those who seem to buy the bullshit stick around. I don’t happen to be one of those who can drink the Kool-Aid anymore, and as time has progressed I am becoming resentful of the fact that I have to in order to do a job that frankly I love more than anything.

If it wasn’t the two weeks of freedom that brought me to this realization, it was the simple fact that I have zero freedom to make even the simplest choices upon returning. I’m thirteen years into this, with another seven to go before retiring, but apparently that isn’t enough to decide that I am too busy to put on the slave suit and forego that task until I complete pressing company business. No, not only am I apparently not capable of making that decision after all this time doing what I do, I am also going to be tattled on by someone in another department to my own upper management. This occurs despite a culture built on on the spot corrections of subordinates when they aren’t looking right, and also of minding ones own business when it’s outside your department and has no effect on the bottom line.

I’m not the brightest person, hell I am actually pretty stupid at the worst of times, but this job is not difficult, it’s made difficult by people who want to see it look more like other industries out there that aren’t us. We have a long standing cultural heritage that was born in the fires of adversity and struggle, but God forbid anyone exercise the traditions of that heritage because that would mean we have a issue thinking “outside the box”, which is not alright in Corporate America. The issue is we aren’t Corporate America, but don’t go telling these people that.

My happiness is no longer measured by things or relationships or even the higher purpose of what I am doing, it’s defined by the growth I feel as a person day in and day out. If I am not learning something, or helping someone, or making meaningful impacts at changing the status quo where it needs and standing up for tradition where necessary, then I want nothing to do with it. After thirteen years of doing this, I find myself seeing that the ends no longer justify the means when the ends don’t even accomplish anything worth being proud of or taking ownership over.

Instead of staying here another seven years, I think I am done after 2026. I found solace in the timber this year, and a renewed purpose to do things that I am passionate about that won’t be influenced by people that drive me up a wall with their idiocy. Maybe part of my problem is those people affect me at all, but in this environment, the people can make or break a company.

I ended up seeing over thirty bucks, which is a record for me. Never in my life have I found so may deer during a single year, much less a thirty-odd day rifle season. Several opportunities alluded me, I made a poor decision here and there, but I found something this year I haven’t had for a long time. Real meaning. Not something force on me by circumstance, but through growth and struggle. I can’t wait to explore that further.