Fictional employment

I was listening to Barry Lopez' "The Mappist" on Selected Shorts last night as I scribbled, snipped, and sketched away at my Restoration final project last night, and towards the end of the story the narrator mentions that his daughter wants to be an environmental historian, and he's hoping to hook her up with this badass map maker who goes around hand drawing maps of every possible cool thing, such as the location of temporary streams, populations of predator and prey species of a given area over time, sites of historical interest, the movement of water in cities municipal and otherwise. Both jobs would be pretty cool, really - drawing the maps or writing the historical interpretation. Pretty niche work of the sort Modern Technology has deprioritized, making it hard to make a living, but still, wouldn't that be great? Hiking around, monitoring bird species, getting a good feeling of the land, creating a magnum opus.

Seed savers

I heard that there's a new seed store in Petaluma and that the owners (among other things, presumably) take one trip a year to a new place, go to farmers markets, eat good food and save the seeds to bring back. I would definitely be willing to do that for money.

I suppose antique dealers get to go on fun trips too, but I like the tie in with farmers markets, food and encouraging biodiversity. Granted there could be some concerns around invasive species not to mention import laws, but, still, one could do worse things for a living.