The outdoor adventure club didn’t want me. It was the best thing that could’ve happened for my career⛺
Freshman year of college, I walked into my university’s outdoor club meeting and walked right back out.
Clearly, it wasn’t for me. Despite growing up hiking and camping on my great-grandparents’ 120-acre parcel of woods in rural Massachusetts, packing the family car for National Park road trips, and even plunging through whitewater on rafts in Maine, the message was that I was not qualified to join the outdoor club.
The club was for hardcore, backcountry-living boys. It was for backpackers, not day hikers, and for backcountry skiers, not newbies falling over in the lift line. It was about conquering mountains, peak bagging, dominating, summiting at all costs. They used their own secret language and rituals, and I could tell immediately they wouldn’t want to initiate a girl like me.
So for years, I worked in what I thought was “Adventure Lite.”
I joined the sustainability club instead (infamous for Do It In The Dark, our dorm energy-saving competition where we handed out glow-in-the-dark condoms). I introduced children to crawdads and tree forts at day camp. Then I got a full-time role doing admin for the National Park Service.
Sitting in my cubicle, I passed the hours longing for deeper adventure, getting off-the-grid, being so far away from a computer or subway system that I’d forget they existed. I scrolled blogs from people hiking the Appalachian Trail and thought, “but I could never do that.”
A tough Boston winter rolled in, bringing endless snow, a nagging feeling that environmental science wasn’t the right degree for me, a cousin’s death, and, of course, boy problems. For the first time in my life, I felt a need to get out of Boston, even just for a little while.
With just a few weeks’ notice, I took a job on a phone call and impulsively moved thousands of miles away to Moab, Utah to become a whitewater raft guide for people with disabilities. I thought I’d be gone for four months, but within two weeks, my whole world rearranged.
Everything I thought I knew about adventure changed.
Before then, I’d never worked with (or even hung out with) people with disabilities. I’d spent my adolescence avoiding eye contact with people in wheelchairs and desperately hoped I’d never be in one myself. Who was I to row these folks to places society had always told them were unsafe? I didn’t even belong to the outdoors club!
But day one of training introduced me to the concept of “dignity in risk,” the idea that self-determination and risk-taking are essential to self-esteem and that taking away those freedoms is dehumanizing. We believed that every person, regardless of ability or background, deserved to live a full and robust life, including river trips.
People with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, and previous strokes all found joy and connection in an environment where other companies had turned them away (or not even bothered to market to them).
I heard the whoops of people in wheelchairs as we rowed them through Class IV whitewater because nobody else would. I saw the tearful gratitude of folks who’d had strokes or terminal diagnoses as I led them into slot canyons and red rock caverns. I created spaces for veterans where they could better cope with PTSD and find new perspectives.
This was what adventure was about. Nobody cared if I had the newest ski boots. Nobody cared how fast I could scale a mountain. Nobody cared how much money I spent on sports supplements I didn’t need.
“Adventure” redefined itself as listening to people and working as a team in the backcountry. It was about problem-solving and creative thinking to introduce new populations to wild environments. It was about showing the world that in community, anybody who wants to can access desert expeditions or snowy mountaintops or urban park trails — even if the magazines aren’t showing them.
Millions of people are unable to access adventure simply because they don’t see themselves in media – and that’s exactly who we need to reach.
Moab sparked every cell in my body with the determination to help people traditional media ignores to get outdoors, and to talk about the taboo topics they desperately want to hear about. I developed curricula for Girl Scouts that helped some girls notice a tree while others ventured out snow camping. I built a trail running scholarship for women to run their first 50k. I got on mic and taught thousands of menstruators about backcountry periods since literally nobody else was. Outdoor events and adventure media somehow became my career.
Child Me exploring the woods, College Me writing emails about sustainability — she’d be in awe. Because none of this was what she thought “adventure” was. But it’s far more fulfilling than she could’ve ever dreamed.
Yet, after helping thousands of people access adventure, and hundreds more craft and share their adventure stories, I still carry the pressure to look like a badass outdoorswoman, to go faster and stronger, to make it “count.” I still compare myself to others on a podium, setting an FKT, or on a 3-month expedition.
But then I catch myself and remember the stories I’ve collected over the years. Adventure is a mindset. A guide in Nepal told me that a peak under 19,000’ is just a hill, not a mountain. People think I’m bonkers for running a 100 miler, but I scream-cry trying to paddle my kayak while my partner can casually huck off a waterfall while taking a sip of coffee.
Every human deserves a relationship with nature, and every adventure story is worthy.
If you agree (hello, friend!), here’s what I have going on at the moment:
✏️ Storytelling Intensives for Athletes + Teams - Build a campaign for your brand that showcases its values through personal athlete stories
🎤 Outside Voice Program + Retreat - For creative women ready to speak what they mean, make sense of all their multipassionate selves, and come together for adventure in Moab (co-led with the outdoor industry coach GOAT Justine Mulliez!)
🏃♀️ Trail Running Sisterhood - Scholarships expanding for 2027! Join the interest list to hear about the First 50k Sisterhood and First Half Marathon Sisterhood opps. (And obvi tell the runners with platforms in your life about it so they can amplify!)