Profile on Outdoor Instructor, Dave Fields

Dave was hesitant. He hadn't had much luck in the past with Forest Service jobs, but on a whim he decided to a try again. This time, he was lucky. His job application fell on the right desk, and he got a call from Challis, Idaho: Was he available to work with a helitak crew fighting forest fires in Idaho? Was he ever! Dave didn't even pause to think about it.

After a summer of fighting fires, he picked up a job for the Post Register, Idaho Falls' newspaper. He first covered Custer and Lemhi counties as a general assignment reporter and then eventually moved on to education reporter.

Becoming restless with the reporter's job, Dave started thinking about working on a second BA (he already had a BA in history from Illinois State University), and in 1989, enrolled at Idaho State University in Secondary Education. What made Idaho State particularly attractive to Dave was the Outdoor Program--and he harbored a hope that he might be able to work part time for the program.

He got his chance. Dave has always had a strong interest in survival, particularly winter survival. He is a voracious reader of outdoor literature and has a keen interest in the polar exploits of Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton and other explorers. He also has a fair amount of survival experience from his military background as an airborne infantryman. Consequently, in 1990, his proposal to teach a winter survival class for the Outdoor Program was accepted.

The class was such an overwhelming success that the next semester he started teaching a fall survival class, and soon after that, a class in basic mountaineering.

Dave is the sort of person driven by curiosity and who is never satisfied with the ordinary. He is constantly trying new things, reorienting his approach in his classes, and exploring new intellectual ground. By the same token, he is also very much a physical person, enjoying corporeal challenges, a trait which came to play one fall in the early 1990s.

It was volunteer weekend for the Portneuf Range Hut System, a community winter hut system, one of the bright spots in the Pocatello area winter recreation scene. Of all the huts in the system, the McNabb hut is the highest (8,000 feet in elevation) and the most difficult to get to. Dave volunteered to help with getting McNabb ready to go for the winter. There was one major problem, however, with McNabb: the wood stove. The newly acquired stove was much heavier than we had ever expected. Made of thick steel, it weighed well over 100 pounds.

At first it seemed hopeless. There was no possible way to get the stove to the yurt, but Dave had a look at it. He rocked the stove back and forth, picked up a corner and modestly offered to give it a try. Strapping it to a pack frame, he set off on the 2,500-foot climb up the steep mountainside leading to the yurt site. To his amazed companions on the trip, he made it and, in doing so, solidly secured a place for himself in Portneuf Range Hut System lore.

Dear Ron:

I came across a web site about Friends of CW Hog. I thought I'd drop you a line.

I reached my goal of becoming a PA some 18 months ago. I planned on at least four years of training; with a year's detour into nursing school, it took five. It's been extremely fulfilling.

I found work without too much trouble and began my career in Montana at a small, rural hospital. I left after nine months to find work closer to home. After more than 20 years of living in the west, we moved to Wisconsin.

I work in family practice, urgent care, and emergency medicine at a level III trauma center at a small, rural community a couple of hours east of the Twin Cities. I'm also on trauma call a couple of nights per week. The docs with whom I work have been terrific. I find the work challenging (very few illnesses or diseases seem to present classically), which is what I wanted when I changed careers in 1998. (It may be difficult to believe, but, with the exception of nursing school, I enjoyed the years of training, particularly PA school.)

Ironically, we have more public land here than where we lived in Montana. We have in this county both a groomed Nordic area and a down-hill area (when we lived in Billings, I had to drive all the way to Bozeman to find reliably groomed trails). The Nordic area is meticulously groomed with varied terrain and I got a belly full of track skiing this winter.

Corly and I bought 20 forested acres bordering miles of public land south of town. We hope to move into the A-frame there in a month. After six months of living in a townhouse, we're looking forward to getting out of town.

Really, the biggest news is our adoption of two kids. Sarah is five and Ben is three-and-a-half; she's from China and he's from Mongolia. Both are bright, affectionate, and very well-adjusted. We adopted Sarah at 19 months of age and Ben at 18 months of age. I didn't go to China to get Sarah (it was during my didactic year of PA training); but, I went to Mongolia to get Ben. The country around Ulan Bator looks a lot like the area around Ketchum. The city itself looks like a high-rise version of Crow Agency: run-down with stray dogs everywhere. Although we had to boil all of our drinking water, we had a marvelous trip.

Life is good, Ron. We're back among family and old friends. We enjoyed our time in the West; however, this feels like home.

Thank you for all the letters of reference. I consider myself fortunate to have known you and for all of your career advise. I look forward to staying in touch with you.

Corly, Sarah, Ben, and I wish you well.

Dave Fields

Dave Fields

In the 1990's, Dave worked for the Outdoor Program as an instructor in Outdoor Survival, Winter Survival and Basic Mountaineering. Not long ago he reached his goal to become a Physician's Assistant. He and his wife, and his children Sarah and Ben, now live in small, rural community in Wisconsin.