CALIFORNIA – Hanna Beatty, 24, of Redding, decided to quit her job at an escrow company to fulfill a childhood dream of living and working in nature.
As thought, it was done. Hanna was in the middle of her shift one day when a customer called her to complain loudly about the company’s services.
“This person just wasn’t very happy and decided to take it out on me,” Beatty recalls. “As soon as I got off the phone, I had that moment of clarity. ‘I deserve more than this. I’m so young and I’m so exhausted.'”
The young woman did not quit her job that day, but she told her boss that the next time they planned layoffs or needed to lay off someone to save money to think about getting rid of her position. A week later, she was separated from her.
Instead of despairing over the loss of her job, Beatty saw it as an opportunity to fulfill a dream she had had since she was a child.
She spent the winter working at Heavenly Ski Resort in Lake Tahoe before moving to Yosemite National Park in March, where she currently lives and works as a seasonal employee with her boyfriend, Justin Olsen.
Leaving the 9 to 5 routine for ‘something simpler’
Beatty began searching for seasonal jobs in October 2022 on the Vail Resorts website on the recommendation of a friend.
He had applied for a couple of seasonal jobs at ski resorts in the US, but focused his search on California. He wanted to be close to Redding, his hometown, in case things didn’t work out.
“If you’re like me and have spent your whole life in the same place, it can be intimidating to leave everything you know behind,” Beatty says.
He knew his salary would probably be less than what he was making at the escrow firm (about $5,000 a month), but Beatty longed for “something simpler” than working 50-plus hours a week.
In November, Beatty received an offer from Heavenly Ski Resort to be a restaurant manager at one of their facilities. The offer was full-time and would start in December, right after the lease on her apartment in Redding was up.
The restaurant job would pay you approximately $18 per hour working 9-hour shifts Wednesday through Sunday.
Olsen, her boyfriend and a freelance photographer, got a job as a ski instructor at the same resort. In late December, the couple packed up Beatty’s car and drove four and a half hours from Redding to Lake Tahoe to begin their new adventure.
Finding your ‘dream job’ in the mountains
Although Hanna’s contract didn’t expire until mid-April, it coincided with the end of the ski season at Lake Tahoe. She and Olsen yearned for warmer weather so they began looking for spring and summer festivals or concerts.
Olsen, who worked the past few summers in Yosemite, suggested they apply for jobs posted at Aramark, a Philadelphia-based company looking to fill part-time and seasonal positions in areas like food, retail and related industries.
It took about two weeks and one interview each for the two to get jobs at two of the bike rental stands that operate inside Yosemite National Park. She and Olsen quit their jobs in Tahoe a few weeks before their contracts were up, mainly because of severe snowstorms that hit South Lake Tahoe last winter that made driving impossible, Beatty recalls.
The job pays $16.45 per hour and requires four 10-hour shifts per week, so she and her partner have three-day weekends, usually Sunday through Tuesday. Her contracts run from March to November.
Among other requirements, bike attendants are expected to have excellent communication and customer service skills, first aid training and the willingness to work flexible hours, according to a job posting on Aramark’s website.
What most attracted Beatty to the job was the opportunity to interact directly with park visitors and explore Yosemite’s expansive meadows, waterfalls and mountains via its scenic bike trails. When Beatty received the offer letter from her via email, she felt that she had landed her “dream job” from her.
Rent of $88 per month to live in Yosemite
In late March, she and Olsen moved into a one-bedroom cabin in the same park, which costs them $88 a month each. “It’s basically the size of a tool shed,” says Beatty. “But it’s insulated and comfortable, and our bed is tall, so we have plenty of storage space.”
They share a bathroom and kitchen with other Yosemite employees who live nearby. Those facilities are a two minute walk from your cabin.
Sharing those intimate spaces with her coworkers was “a bit of a shock at first,” Hanna says, confessing that it’s been the most challenging adjustment of the seasonal job.
“But if you have a good attitude about it and agree to keep the space clean, it’s not bad at all,” he adds. “Especially for how affordable our rent is.”
Rethinking ambition as a seasonal worker
For Beatty, most mornings in Yosemite begin around 6 a.m. when he wakes up to the sound of birds drifting in and out of the tall pines that surround his cabin. She bikes to work, a 10-minute ride that she takes advantage of to spot wildlife (the occasional deer trot along the bike path). Then she opens the bike stand around 8 a.m.
Spend your lunch hour reading on the store’s front porch or exploring a new part of Yosemite.
After biking home around 7 pm, Hanna and her boyfriend often cook dinner in the common kitchen or run errands on their bikes. There are plenty of local businesses nearby in Yosemite Valley, such as coffee shops, bars and supermarkets, says the 24-year-old.
Her favorite evenings are spent making s’mores (chocolate-covered toasted marshmallow between two pieces of cookie crackers), with park guests and other seasonal workers around the community barbecue.
“The best part of working here is that I get to call one of the most beautiful places in the world my office,” says Beatty. “But I also get to meet interesting and friendly people from all over the world. Yosemite is just one giant melting pot.”
The Redding native isn’t sure how long she will continue to look for a seasonal job after her contract ends in November, but she says working in Yosemite has radically changed the way she thinks about work and ambition.
“At the end of the day, a job is a job. No matter what job you have, whether it’s a seasonal job or a desk job, there will inevitably be challenges, but it doesn’t have to be a constant race to the finish line,” Beatty says. . “Life is an incredibly beautiful and fragile thing, and not taking work so seriously can help you appreciate it more.”
This article it was initially published in English by sister network NBC. For more news visit NBC News.
