PLSO The Oregon Surveyor November December 2020

16 Vol. 43, No. 6 The Oregon Surveyor  |  “When I describe my duties as a surveyor, I say that I go out in the woods, gather information, find things, make measure - ments, identify boundaries, and then go back and make a map,” Ham says. “The Field Observer does a lot of the same work.” Ham discovered that he wanted to work for the forest service after interviewing a forest service employee for a “What I want to be when I grow up” report during the fifth grade in Spokane, Washington. “He showed me the way they triangulated a forest fire’s position from two or more lookouts,” Ham says. “That convinced me that working for the U.S. Forest Service was my goal.” During college, the Natural Resource pro- gram required a surveying class, but Ham didn’t like it, thanks to an unenthusiastic instructor. After college, Ham took a few 3- to 6-month-long appointments, includ- ing one with the Bureau of Reclamation doing construction surveying for the Third Power Plant at Grand Coulee Dam. “I didn’t enjoy that either,” he says. “It seemed like most of what we did was bor- ing cross sections, day after day after day.” Then he got into road surveying for the U.S. Forest Service. While he liked being in the woods, he wasn’t thrilled about going back and forth over the same 12- mile road all summer. “Another summer job was searching for original corners set by the General Land Office,” he says. “After working that sum - mer, I knew I had found my place.” Ham kept at that for about four sea- sons while going to Bible College in the winter and then finally got a permanent seasonal position, and began learning what he needed to know about bound- ary line surveying through borrowed Scorched but undamaged Brass Capped Steel Pipe. The nails that held the BT Sign. continued from previous page T Member Spotlight