This summer, Kirby Powers is helping with injury recovery at her workplace in Quechee.
It’s an unusual job because the patients can’t tell her what hurts and aren’t really accustomed to human contact.
They’re birds.
Powers, a 24-year-old Florida native, decided to work as a wild bird rehabilitator at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science, or VINS, because she loves to learn about the birds and gain care skills. Seasonal work has been ideal, she said, because it brings her to new places to pursue her passion for conservation in different ways.
“One of the things I like about seasonal work a lot is that you find a position somewhere and then you’re able to just go and live in that area for six months,” Powers said July 21 at VINS.
In the summer months particularly, the Upper Valley offers a variety of temporary work opportunities for those who are transient, figuring things out, or looking to try something different.
A June report found an additional 3,200 jobs this summer in Vermont since May, according to the Vermont Department of Labor. New Hampshire saw an increase of 3,500 jobs between May and June.
While some start a career as a young adult and stick with it until retirement, others take a detour, or like Powers, a series of detours, into new opportunities.
Kirby has favored seasonal work as her norm in recent years, but others may take on these roles as students on summer break or as a post-retirement gig. Regardless of the reason, seasonal jobs are there for people who need or want them.
Here’s a look at three of them.
The life of a bird nurse
Last week, VINS took in a bald eagle, but it’s not clear what happened to him. While the eagle came in wounded, he’s in the right place. Powers and her colleagues cleaned him up, gave him meds and fluids and will monitor him throughout the recovery process.
VINS is one of few wildlife rehabbers that specifically treating birds in Vermont. Powers sees at least two or three new patients per day, with over 200 birds at the center at a time as of mid-July. For the year, they’re close to treating 1,000 birds.
As one bird recovers and the team releases it back where it came from, another comes in.
“It’s definitely a revolving door,” said Powers.
Powers attended the University of South Florida as a biology student. Her last seasonal role was as a general wildlife rehabilitation intern in Alabama. She opted for something more niche, and started healing birds at VINS in May for $17.50 an hour.
Intakes skyrocket in the summer, she said, with orphaned babies brought in regularly in addition to some experiencing broken wings or rodent poisoning. Birds of certain species tend to behave similarly, said Powers, whether they’re shy or combative or high-energy.
Even so, every case is different.
One owl has been at the facility since last year as the team awaits full recovery, but other birds are back out in the world after just a day. Powers’ job runs the risk of injury if she’s not careful. Frightened birds can defend themselves with their talons or beaks, so she wears gloves.
“We just try to be as quick as possible and try and keep it as low stress for them because that also plays a factor in how well that they heal,” said Powers.
Wildlife rehab is a competitive field, and Powers is glad to have gained more experience and practical skills, such as drawing meds, giving fluids, doing wraps, x-raying and blood work. It has also provided her with vast bird knowledge, though she’s still figuring out how to handle new situations.
While Powers has enjoyed these first few months caring for birds in the Upper Valley, she’s not certain of her next steps. She’s interested in possibly exploring the West Coast for a future role.
Trading one machine for another
Some seasonal workers stick around.
Joe Frazier spent his career working with computers. On a visit to Mount Sunapee with his family, he took a look at the ski lift and decided that was where he wanted to work in retirement.
Frazier, 76, moved to the Upper Valley in 1977 to work for an early computing company and ended up transferring to Boston, only to return in 2000. From there, he started his own company, Personal Networks, which helped people set up networks in their homes.
Twelve years ago, when he started working on the ski lift at Mount Sunapee, he realized it was much different from his past pursuits, more social and more fraught with potential for danger than setting up technology.
“Those are machines. And you go over here, now you’re dealing with people, and their injuries and somebody could even be killed,” Frazier said. “Suddenly I realized, this is the most responsible job I’ve ever had in my life.”
Mount Sunapee runs a ski lift in the summer for visitors looking for a ride to the summit. Of the 150 people who might be riding the lift on a busy Sunday, many haven’t experienced it before.
“They’re very nervous. So your job is to greet them, make them feel comfortable,” Frazier said.
To do this, Frazier and the other operators will slow it down or even stop the ride to explain how it works and ensure everyone feels safe. He walks them through the process and shows them the safety bar ahead of time.
People get married up on the mountain, and sometimes they have guests who feel scared, he said. The lift is outfitted with buttons that will set off an alarm at the top to warn the other operator that the person in a particular chair needs more assistance, whether because of nerves or a disability.
“I got a woman up there right now in her 90s,” Frazier said at the lift on July 19.
Frazier, who lives in Canaan, operates the lift in the winter too, when it runs at 800 feet per minute. In the summer, the high speed is more like 500 feet per minute. He considers the job vastly different between seasons.
“Right now we’re dealing with a lot of people that might not be used to this,” said Frazier. “But in the wintertime, everybody’s very experienced, so it’s a completely different environment.”
Both seasons have their own peculiarities, but Frazier prefers the summer due to the difficulties of snow with his long commute.
“It’s my retirement job. I like the people I work with. I am 76 years old. I get to work with young people,” Frazier said. “They keep me young.”
‘Wedding planning, but for horses‘
Across the border in Vermont, Meghan White is just getting started in her career.
White, who grew up in the Bay Area of California, attended an outdoor camp at age 5 that featured horse riding, and was hooked.
White studies equine science at UMass Amherst. She first considered vet school or horse training as her post-graduate path forward, but neither felt right.
“I’m getting to my senior year of college and I’m like ‘I gotta find something I want to do once I leave,’ ” she said.
White ended up at the Green Mountain Horse Association (GMHA), which hosts competitions, clinics and educational programs in South Woodstock.
Spending the summer at GMHA, where one week might bring in a dressage show and the next a combined driving event for carriage horses, is exposing her to more options in the industry than she’d been aware of. Her plans after school are still “up in the air,” she said, but this internship feels like a step in the right direction.
“You learn so much more about an industry that has so many cool possibilities that you just don’t hear about when you’re going to college,” she said.
For example, GHMA has introduced her to dressage, in which horses and their riders follow a set pattern, called a test, and the judges score them based on movements along the pattern. The association offers nearly 200 stalls for horses to stay overnight throughout a weekend of events, with many competitors and judges from out of state with a range of ages and abilities.
When it comes to events, such as the dressage show on July 24, White considers her and her fellow interns wedding planners, “but for horses.” She explained that it’s exciting to see all of the competitors on the big day, but her job is to stay behind the scenes and make sure everything runs smoothly.
Animals can be unpredictable, so part of White’s job involves adjusting to situations as they arise. During one of her first times jump judging, someone fell off their horse as it attempted to get over the fence during a competition.
“You’ve always talked about what to do in that circumstance, but it’s different in the moment,” she said. White remained calm and quickly attended to the rider, who was uninjured.
Event days are the longest and busiest for GMHA’s three interns, White said, adding that their shift could start at 6:30 a.m. and end 12 hours later. The rate is $15 per hour, plus overtime. Their roles during events could range from checking people in, serving as a scribe for the judges, working in the office or running scores.
While White started without experience eventing, a sport that combines dressage with jumping big, solid fences on a cross-country course and a final stadium jumping round, she loves learning about it.
“Behind the scenes is so different, even from just watching or competing,” said White.
The internship came with a learning curve. White understood the concept of dressage at first, but not the practice of it.
“Learning to scribe for the first time was nerve wracking because you’re working with someone who this is their profession for years,” she said, adding that everyone is willing to help because they want to pass the practices down.
White hopes that the exposure in this role will help her firm up her plans for the future.
“This has been what’s felt so far the most correct in terms of direction for me,” White said of her summer internship.
For White, seasonal work has allowed her to assess job options across the industry she finds most exciting as she wraps up her college career.
