A Nature Lover's Career--A Decades Long Journey!
Part 4
During the winter of 1999, I began to realize that living and working in NE Indiana prevented me and my wife from seeing our families as often as we liked. Even though I was happily married and was blessed with a great job, I missed seeing my parents, my brothers, and their wives, nieces and nephews.
They all resided in Nothern Illinois. So, my wife and I decided to start looking for employment opportunities to be closer to family. I polished up my resume, which by then was nearly 2 pages long with almost 7 years of diverse work experience. I focused on applying for jobs near Madison, WI area mainly because there were several ecological restoration firms established in that part of the state.
After living in Indiana for several years, I had hoped to return to Wisconsin someday to continue my career and live in the state that had always held a special place in my heart. By March of 1999, I scored 2 interviews with prominent firms, one was located in Mt. Horeb and the other in Brodhead. After some twists and turns along the way, my prayers were answered, and I was offered a position with Applied Ecological Services (AES) in Brodhead.
This was a growing company that was at the forefront of prairie, woodland, wetland, and stream bank restoration projects throughout the upper Midwest. So, in May of 1999 I began working as a project supervisor for the field services division of AES. Little did I know at the time, but I was about to embark on a roller coaster of a journey with AES that would last for the next 5 years. This was a time during my life when I seemingly had everything you dream about come true.
In addition, to an amazing job, I bought my 1st home in Monticello, WI and soon after that in April of 2000 welcomed the birth of my 1st child, a beautiful daughter, Olivia Anne. God had a plan for me. It was exciting to watch the plan unfold right in front of me.
All my previous work experiences before AES were steppingstones leading to this company. At the young age of 29, I finally felt like I had found my calling. Here was a company with employees who seemed to have all the right combination of ambition, passion, work ethic, knowledge, and experience that’s necessary to be successful.
The company’s founder, Steven Apfelbaum, a visionary, leader, and pioneer in ecological restoration innovations was the driving force and inspiration behind the firm’s success. Steve’s influence on the employees from the top down and the direction of the firm was obvious. Here was a well-established, successful, ambitious company with a reputation for being the best.
It was during the 5 years that I worked there that AES was growing rapidly and expanding their projects from locally to Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, as far west as Colorado, and as far east as New York. My position with AES meant that I traveled to many of these project sites to do hands-on restoration work. The majority of these projects were full scale prairie and wetlands restoration/mitigation work.
In other words, construction developers who filled in wetlands to build housing subdivisions, new shopping center, or any kind of building were required by law to mitigate the wetland. That meant designing and constructing a new wetland to replace and replicate the old one which was destroyed by backfill, concrete, asphalt and lumber, all products of construction development.
AES would compete with other firms to bid on these projects and ultimately win a large share of the contracts. These contacts were usually for 3+ years and included the initial earth moving and construction (i.e. building retention and detention basins for rainwater runoff and then planting native prairie and wetland seeds, trees, and shrubs) and the subsequent maintenances (i.e. weed spraying, mowing, and prescribed burns) that insured a successful restoration.
My job was to visit these sites once the native plants had germinated and work on eradicating all the aggressive weeds by ‘simply’ spraying them. Actually, it wasn’t simple at all. In order to do the job proficiently, it required many skills including the following: and herbicide applicator’s certification, expert plant I.D. skills, extensive knowledge of different herbicide chemicals, being physically fit. Most of the spraying was done by hand with backpack sprayers which required walking for hours at a time in the summer heat over large acreage sites.
In addition, visiting all the different sites throughout the Chicago “burbs usually required long work hours (10-12+ hour days during the summer), extensive travel, and sleeping in hotels at night. And this part of my job was only the beginning of it. Once summer months were over, we transitioned into woodland restoration season.
This would last from October through the heart of winter, until March. This meant that I was the project supervisor on jobs throughout the Midwest, specifically brush clearing jobs on oak savannas and woodlands. Working outside in winter really separated the wannabes from the dedicated, hardcore restoration professionals.
The summer heat could wear anybody down over a long stretch but the bitter cold waves and snowstorms of winter would really test a person’s resolve. I, personally was invigorated by the cold and snow. I loved being out in the elements, running a chainsaw, burning brush piles, having camaraderie with my crew of men and women.
One of the highlights of my job was working with some amazing people with diverse backgrounds, all of whom shared the same passion for the environment, conservation, and ecological restoration. The kind of work we did and the people I worked with always kept things interesting.
End of part 4…. to be continued!!!
Submitted by: Scott Rebholz
