Allow myself, to er.. introduce myself. My name is Lucas Piontkowski and I have worked with Metcalf since 2017 as a seasonal Field Technician and Crew Chief. This last October I accepted a full time Project Director position with Metcalf. It’s a pleasure to join such a phenomenal team of professional archaeologists.
To share my journey of how I arrived at Metcalf, we’ll get in the “Way Way Back Machine”, all the way back to birth. I jokingly say I was born into archaeology and that’s not far from the truth. I’m one of those generational shovelbums, as my dad was the BLM archaeologist in both Craig and Grand Junction for about 18 years, before moving onto private contracting. I grew up visiting sites and going on interpretive tours. My first job at 16 years old was with a private contracting company helping with an excavation near Gunnison, Colorado. I worked through high school in the summers as a field tech, and then more seasonally for a few years out of high school. By the time I was 22, I had six seasons of field experience before taking a break to pursue other interests.
I worked as a rafting guide, ski and snowboard instructor, wilderness therapy instructor, Outward Bound guide, and in residential treatment for troubled youth. I gained advanced training and certification in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Hypnosis, and other therapeutic modalities to help make positive changes for the people I worked with. I “accidentally” moved to Connecticut for a few years, where I started the first of many small businesses. In Connecticut I completed my training and certification as a Wilderness Emergency Medical Technician (WEMT). For the last 15 or so years on and off, I have started multiple small businesses and worked with groups and individuals, youth and adults, utilizing coaching and consulting practices that I developed, to help them overcome challenges and thrive in their life and businesses. I returned to Western Colorado in 2009 to help with a large pipeline monitor project, which turned into a large excavation project for Grand River Institute (GRI). I worked with GRI as a Crew Chief and Project Lead from 2009 until I began with Metcalf in 2017. All the while, continuing to work on my side businesses over the years.
Which brings us back to here. I just got married this last June to my beautiful, amazing and ornery wife Sierra, who is a flight attendant and fellow entrepreneur. We
met in 2019 when she hired me to help her start her Wilderness Retreat company and we instantly hit it off. That year we moved to Durango, Colorado and built ourowntiny house together with my now father-in-law, just in time for the pandemic to set in. I spend my “free time” rafting, trail running, paragliding, hiking, mountain biking, camping, wandering around the backcountry, snowboarding, and all the Colorado things like drinking craft beer and the like. We aspire to buy land and start our own homestead someday soon with a couple “littles” running around barefoot in the woods.
I think that’s about it for me… if I keep rambling any longer I might accidentally say something intelligible, or bore you to death, and neither of those are preferred outcomes for this lighthearted piece of literature. So I say, adieu!
If you are interested in joining the Metcalf team, please visit our careers page for a list of current job openings.
