Finding My Purpose and Passion

If I can do it, anybody can

In the 1970s, I was a scrawny teenager from the flatlands of northern Michigan with no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. I didn’t want to follow my mother’s life, raising three kids, working a secretarial job she hated, and smoking unfiltered Pall Malls. She would say to me, “Whatever you do, don’t take shit from nobody. You go after your dreams.”
Except I didn’t know what my dreams were. An indifferent student, I drifted through school smoking pot and ski-racing. No way could I stand an indoor career like being a nurse, secretary, or teacher.

A Pivotal Moment

At age fifteen, I went on a month-long backpacking trip to the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana. Overwhelmed by the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains, on the first day, I stood at the trailhead with a pack that dragged down my shoulders, hiking boots that rubbed my skinny ankles raw, and a map in my hand full of undecipherable squiggles.

“I don’t know how to read a map.” I whined to the bearded guide. “We are hiking where?”
I really wanted my mommy to rescue me from an adventure far more daunting than I’d anticipated. But mommy wasn’t there. It was time to put on my big-girl pants.

The trip taught me how to read a map, use a compass, and navigate the landscape. It also taught me to refuse defeat, work with a group, and discover the consequences of self-absorption.

Upon my return home, I’d changed. I had fallen in love with great expanse of the west and knew I was destined to live a life of adventure and travel.

But how?

There were no manuals, no female mentors, and no way to make a living for a poor kid from the mid-west in the outdoors.
The mountains called me back for college at the University of Montana in Missoula, where I pursued my outdoor passion. I volunteered as a ski patroller, took an avalanche class, and landed a work-study gig guiding backpacking and ski trips in the US and Canada.

Geology, my topic of study, kept me in the field and forced me to be proficient in map and compass, necessary tools needed for success. I was among a small handful of women in a sea of men in my science courses. I soon learned those male classmates occupied desirable outdoor professions.

To break in, I’d have to find my voice and fight for what I wanted. My mom’s lesson took on new relevance and meaning. Somewhere in my fight to be heard and seen, perseverance and determination blossomed.
I now had a dream and began to chase it.

Recognition and Realization

For the early part of my career, I looked for gold in rocks. I was outdoors but the work didn’t fulfill me.
Then at age 33, I learned about an avalanche that buried three toddlers near their rented condo in Crested Butte, Colorado. They were playing outside while the parents loaded the shuttle bus to the airport. Suddenly, an avalanche barreled down the mountain and completely buried the three children. Two were found within six minutes. The last was located an hour later, under 10 feet of snow and dead. The local avalanche dog had failed to find him.

That horrifying story stuck with me, working deep into my core. I asked myself, “What if I trained a dog to save a life?”
That simple question set me on my journey to serve my community, understand K-9 behavior, ski area medicine, and avalanche search and rescue. With little guidance or formal training, my rebellious black Lab, Tasha, and I learned skills needed to find lost people. We soon discovered most missions were not rescues but recoveries.

We became the search dog team to call in the high country of Colorado. Tasha dug up victims in avalanches, drowned in water, or lost in the woods. She even found victims of crimes. We kept our promise to never leave anyone behind. One mission climaxed in the rare and precious experience of finding a missing boy alive.

I was asked once, what is the best thing I’ve ever done for a human. I answered, “Helping family members find their loved ones.”

Tasha and I received Congressional Recognition for our efforts. Our creative, productive, life-affirming partnership taught me how to find myself, my purpose, my mission in life.

Writing Go Find

The mutual respect, bond, and adventures with Tasha prompted me to write about our search career. Writing a book is like training a puppy. Facts and ideas rambunctiously tumbled and romped through my mind. I had to learn discipline before I could trot out well-crafted story.

Over the past forty years, I’ve carved out a fulfilling and rewarding path as author, wilderness medicine and avalanche educator, desert survival instructor, gold exploration geologist, backcountry risk manager, and K-9 search and rescue handler. And I’m still doing it happily and making a decent living.

I am the consummate traveler and life-long learner having worked on the highest, coldest, and hottest places on earth. For a quarter-century, I’ve led my outdoor educational company, Crested Butte Outdoors, to international acclaim, teaching students from the Secret Service, rocket scientists, and Sherpa guides on Everest.

What I’ve learned about the writing process and my not-so-ordinary career: it’s not a destination you reach one day and you’re there. It’s a path that continues over the ever-changing topography of life. I continue my search, to Go Find better ways to show up as a friend, a writer, an educator, and a mindful leader. I honor the times I’m not connected or energized. I honor the times when I fall behind. Sometimes even the strongest leader must be a follower and I will allow myself to show up as a follower. All roles, equally important.

Looking out my office window today at the snow-covered peaks of the Rocky Mountains, I ask, what would I tell my 15-year-old self who volunteered to go on that hike, in an ill-fitted backpack with bruised and blistered feet, and scared shitless?
I’d tell her, “Good job for sticking it out, taking on the unknown, following a desire, walking with your fears. If I can do it, so can you.”

My unconventional career has turned me into a confident search and rescue leader, an extraordinarily successful business owner, and if I must say so, a pretty compassionate and empathetic human.

Little did I know, I was paving my own wonderful, rewarding way for others to follow.
It’s not too late. You can find your dream and your life’s purpose. I’m here to help.

-The end-