>>The only thing I want to do right now is run away and join a railroad. (Joining the circus is too cliched, after all.)
Depending on where you live, wildfire-fighting usually pays well. The pay is meant to compensate for the fact that, for months and months at a time, you live in a spartan barracks out in the middle of nowhere.
I knew a guy who worked through college doing that during the summers. Only left the woods at the end of the season.