Guides Gone Wild

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Back at the end of September, we hosted the very first Guides Gone Wild live event at Evans Notch Lodge in Gilead, Maine.

Despite crazy weather and unexpectedly chilly temperatures, we had a fantastic time! Thanks to our unflappable guide 'Tall' Ashley Leedberg of Two Loons Guide Service, we managed to get some stand-up paddleboarding in, did a gorgeous hike up Albany Mountain, and did a bunch of arts and crafts while we enjoyed the cozy wood stove back at the lodge.

Before the ladies left on Sunday, I asked a few to chat with me on mic about their experience of the weekend and what it meant to them, so today you’re going to hear a little bit from Lisa (one of our New York-based campers), and her friend Meg (from Maine). Lisa and Meg were friends from high school who were having a mini-reunion week hanging out, so it was fun to listen in on their exchange.

Quick apologies before you dive in, the three of us were basically sharing one mic we had to tweak the audio in a few places so you could hear what was being said, but I don’t think it takes away from the awesomely positive messages and encouragement these two share, so we ran with it…it’s a fun conversation, so I hope you’ll hang out until the end to hear about the next Guides Gone Wild experience coming up!

A few more links:

• Sign up for the (Cast) Iron Chef Weekend!
• Two Loons Guide Service
• Follow @TallAshley on Instagram, and keep an eye on her Etsy page for new additions of her handmade jewelry and art
• What is DHEA?
• Albany Mountain
• “Tall” Ashley Leedberg on Guides Gone Wild
• Ari Leach on Guides Gone Wild

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Today I am fan-girling hard on an emerging rock star of the outdoor industry sustainability movement, Meg Carney, the author of Outdoor Minimalist (the book), and the host of The Outdoor Minimalist Podcast.

You’ve probably heard of Leave No Trace, and the words Reduce-Reuse-Recycle have probably crossed your lips more than once, but how often do you stop to really consider the meaning of those phrases, how they might apply to the situation you find yourself in in the moment, or how they might not be the full picture of what it would mean to live in a sustainable partnership with the environment?

Meg’s been thinking like this since she was a kid playing outside on her family’s farm in Minnesota. While she’s the first to admit her minimalism might have grown roots because money was a little tight, she also observed her family’s commitment to living off the land and getting the most use out of anything they bought or owned.

Meg eventually went off to college with kids who were more accustomed to buying new than reusing or repurposing, but all the consumption never quite made sense to her, and staying the minimalist course served her well when she later spent some time living a nomadic life out of her car.

Today we’re talking about creativity, supply chain, pets, vanlife, perfection - or lack thereof…. I know it sounds like we’re all over the place, but stay with us - there’s a framework for thinking about all of this stuff, and spoiler alert, there are a lot of Rs involved.

Get your hands on a copy of the Outdoor Minimalist book, it's such a great primer and process manual for anyone striving to lessen their detrimental impact on the outdoors and their environment.

And even if you get the book, I strongly encourage you to check out The Outdoor Minimalist Podcast - Meg definitely expands on her content through some interesting interviews with thought leaders and people doing very cool things in the sustainability space.

Finally, I’d also recommend you follow Meg on Instagram for all the useful snippets of inspiration and information she shares to enhance our knowledge and provoke our thinking about the impact we are having on the spaces we move through.

Fun and useful links from our chat:

• Meg’s not kidding, there are a ton of fun things to do in Duluth!
• What is bushcraft?
• Field & Stream (Commerce Team posts)
• Falcon Guides
• Greenwashing
• Icebreaker (you can check out their Sustainability Transparency Report here)
• DIY Waste Audit worksheet
• Lava Linens Mini Towel

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Serene Cusack is the huge smile, infectious laugh and indomitable spirit behind Fatty on the Fly and Outcast Anglers.

Serene’s hero’s journey kind of started like many others we talk about on the pod - she started looking around while she was doing her favorite outdoor activities, and realized that no one looked like her, and decided she could do something about it, or at least try to show up more visibly as a self-defined fat person who loved to fly fish.

Cue the pandemic, and Serene was stuck at home on furlough thinking all the things on repeat. But instead of getting bummed out and discouraged, she let her mind wander (wade?!?) into all kinds of new ideas about building community around the water. And for trying to hold a very exclusive-not-in-a-good-way industry accountable for its lack of efforts to welcome more and different anglers into the ‘club’.

Please note, I felt like I had to mark this one as explicit because we get a little bit salty when we start talking about internet trolls, but in all honesty, Serene’s message can and should be heard by all but the youngest kids. So I hope you’ll let this one keep on playing, even if you and the tweeners are listening in traffic on the way to the 97th soccer game of the week...

I also hope you’ll go feed off Serene's boundless energy by following her @Fattyonthefly on Instagram and Facebook, and if you have any interest whatsoever in learning to fly fish - actually ON the water, not just a big lawn - keep an eye on ConfluenceCollective.org for more information about the 2023 Outcast Campout dates. Or better yet, connect with Serene and Bri directly if you want to help plan your own campout at your own awesome, local, 100% fish-guaranteed river! Let’s all take a page out of Serene’s book and make a point of building the communities we want to be part of!

Speaking of community, I hope you'll join Guides Gone Wild for our next live event - Iron Chef Weekend - November 4th through 6th! Sign up here for more information, and to be notified when registration is live.

And finally, some links from my chat with Serene:

• Bri Dostie guests on Guides Gone Wild
• Sign up for Confluence Collective’s newsletter and weekly virtual office hours
• Panther Martin lures
• Gallatin River (MT)
• Spider Man rod
• Confluence Collective coloring pages
• Outdoors for All (NC)
• Ranger Outdoors (TN) 
• Miss Mayfly waders
• Madison River (MT/WY) - watch out for those waders!
• Flex Tape
• Plus Snow
• Plus Outdoor
• XTM
• Oros strike indicators (aka bobbers)

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Hey, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but there are SO MANY awesome outdoor resources available to us here in New England. Have you ever stopped to wonder how those amazingly mapped and maintained trail networks or hut systems or water access points come to be?

Probably no surprise, there are a LOT of people and organizations hustling in the background, because big projects like those usually require a LOT of cooperation and alignment on a lot of fronts. For every great trail system you enjoy, there are probably 100 that never left the drafting table.

It’s not too difficult to recognize the beauty and potential when you’re looking out from a mountain top or over a pristine lake or dramatic oceanfront cliff. But what about the turn of the century mill towns scattered across the state that used to harness Maine’s countless rivers for manufacturing power?

When buildings and dams and ugly fences and parking lots are crowding your urban center’s waterfront, do you have any options?

Today’s guest says Heck YES! I’m stoked to welcome Kristina Cannon, Executive Director of Main Street Skowhegan to the pod today.

I found Main Street Skowhegan after I saw some kind of social media post about a whitewater park that was going to be built on the Kennebec River in Maine and went down a Google rabbit hole (as one does). I had a mental picture of kayak racks and PFDs piled up in a dirt parking lot in some rural location along the river, but heck no - it’s going to be right smack dab in the middle of downtown Skowhegan!

The Skowhegan Riverpark Project is just one of about a zillion cool things that Main Street Skowhegan is working on, with Kristina at the helm, so I’m going to let her tell you all about it and get you stoked for your own Skowhegan Staycation.

We just missed the craft brew fest, but there are plenty more reasons to visit Skowhegan coming up, head over to VisitSkowhegan.com or check out @visitskowhegan on Instagram and Facebook for all the details on upcoming festivals and events.

Better yet, when you decide that Skowhegan sounds like a pretty cool place to take your remote work - where you can run some rapids in the morning, run your financials an hour later and be running out for locally sourced wood-fired pizza at lunch - go to Main Street Skowhegan or Skowhegan Entrepreneurship to find out how easy it will be to make those dreams your reality!

More links from our conversation:

• Abby Bennett, Mahoosuc Land Trust
• Jen Klein, Trustees of Reservations
• What is a 'design charette'? (this link will tell you AND give you all the info you need to host your own!)
• Mill City Park (Franklin, NH)
• Main Street America program
• BikeMaine
• Outdoor Sport Institute
• Maine Wood Heat
• Maine Grains
• Spork

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Welcome to the second installment of our special Rooted Mountain Bike Festival recap!

I hope you’ll check this one out even if you’re not really into biking, because these conversations I had with other attendees of Rooted are more about what it means to be part of a women-centered event than anything else.

Sure, we talk bikes, but we also celebrate how awesome it is when you get together with people who have a lot of the same struggles and concerns and body types that you do.

Huge thanks to Jess D. for being part of planning this spectacular event, and to Rae F. as well for being so open and vulnerable - I honestly didn’t expect to get so deep in these recap conversations, but I think it’s really awesome to hear perspectives like this, to realize how much we all struggle sometimes, and how important being active, whatever that looks like, is to reconnecting with yourself and your value.

And of course, the hugest thanks of all go to Heather Kinal, who continues to hone her next- level connection skills and set the highest bar ever for festival rest-roomery! She's created a fantastic weekend that was well worth 20 hours of driving! (Maybe even better than Niagara Falls......) Save the dates for the next Rooted MTB Festival - July 21-23, 2023!

More fun stuff to check out:

• Rooted MTB Festival
• @Sistersinsingletrack
• Jess Devine
• Rae Faba
• Team Mandalore
• The Crusher
• Ray’s Women’s Weekend
• Copper Harbor
• Ride Inspired Coaching - Catherine Neff
• Stacy Simms - Roar
• Kona Bikes

If you’re drinking my koolaid on this and can’t wait to hang with multiple generations of awesome, I hope you’ll consider joining us for our first-ever Guides Gone Wild End-of-Summer Camp Weekend that we’re hosting September 23-25 at Evans Notch Lodge in Gilead Maine. We’ll be doing a lot of paddling and crafting, but we’ll ALSO have a very cool add-on option for any of my TryAthlete team out there who might want to kick up their adrenaline a few notches and do some downhill mountain biking at nearby Mt. Abram on that Sunday the 25th - I’m totally stoked to go, mostly because I hate climbing and guess what, they put your bike on the ski lift for you, even the inappropriate 26” hard tails of doom!

But seriously, it’s wicked wicked WICKED fun, so come on over and get all the details on the weekend, and make sure you opt-in to our Sunday downhill adventure too!

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I've got another two-parter for you this week, because every time I go to a women's outdoor event I get SO STOKED.

In today's first installment, Trish and Jen are back together on the road, and you know what that means - we did something awesome and we feel the need to tell everyone about it!

Back in July, we trekked all the way across Mass and New York to the lovely hamlet of Bemus Point to attend the Rooted Mountain Bike Festival, put on by friend of the pod Heather Kinal. Back when I’d interviewed Heather, I got all in a fan girl lather and committed to going to the Festival before I even looked at a map. But then I did, and instead of bailing I decided to take the 9+ hour ride as an extra challenge, and try to get Trishy to come with me. Ta da!!

Anyway, there are many, many takeaways from this conversation - Trish was ON HER GAME! So I hope you’ll get all the way to the end (despite the sometimes crappy audio), but in case you don’t, here are my top 3:

1. Even when you have the best intentions, it’s normal to not live up to them - Trish and I thought we’d bike a ton after our awesome Vertical experience last fall, and we didn’t, so we went into this weekend basically cold. And you know what, it didn’t freaking matter.
2. Life is always, and will always be, busy. You can’t always put yourself a distant second (or worse) to everyone and everything else in your life. If you need it, you need to make time for it.
3. Do the thing, and go overthink something else. You’ll have to listen in to see where that precious nugget came from.

Come back tomorrow for part two - you’ll actually get to hear from some other fabulous women from Rooted, who brought completely different perspectives to the event (and in one case, even brought her 60 something year old mom to the event! Yes, you read that right!)

And if you’re already convinced that a women-centered outdoor event is something you (and maybe your mom) have to be part of RIGHT.THIS.SECOND, come on over to Guidesgonewild.com/Camp to learn more about our first ever End of Summer Camp Weekend we will be hosting September 23-25, at Evans Notch Lodge in Gilead, Maine.

I'll be joined by yet another fabulous friend of the pod, 'Tall' Ashley Leedberg of Two Loons Guide Service, who will school us on all things paddle, take us on an excursion at a nearby lake so we can peep on the critters and colors, and later on, even lead us in some arts and crafts - because by the way, she’s an amazingly talented artist and crafter. Why should the kids have all the fun, amiright?!? Hope to see you there!

A few links (more tomorrow - and of course on the GGW site!):

• Loud Performance Bike Shop
• Tubolito (the cool orange tube they showed us)
• Long Point State Park
• Who is this Heidi person we keep talking about?

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Today we are traveling to the White Mountains of New Hampshire to chat with another one of my new favorite people, Alexandra Roberts of Alexandra Roberts Photography.

If you love the outdoors and participate in basically any visual digital media, the Big Brother algorithms have no doubt fed you tons of gorgeous images of well-dressed couples posed in dramatic backdrops - in the middle of giant boulder fields, by a waterfall, on a cliff overlooking peak foliage, or in some kind of magical hobbit-land of moss and lichen. 

You might stop to wonder how the heck they got to that place without getting all sweaty and gross. Or maybe your mind goes immediately to the giant packing list that couple must’ve had. But I’m guessing in all cases, if you think at all about who is behind the camera, you’re assuming she or he is like a Jimmy-Chin type - a hardcore outdoorsperson who hikes and climbs 24/7, is wearing Patagonia head-to-toe, and has an ice ax next to the zoom lens on their utility belt, ready to self arrest and save everyone’s day.

And if that’s where your mind went, you are going to love this conversation as much as I did.

Alexandra's photos started popping up all over my feed many moons ago, and I loved to see all the beautiful and rugged places she went with her couples. So imagine my surprise when I find out that Alex was mostly a prosecco-sipping, urban patio sitter until a few years ago.

If elopement or marriage is in your future, or if just feeling like a glamorous, paparazzi-stalked superstar in the White Mountains is your jam, you absolutely must check out Alex’s website,  @alexandraroberts on Instagram , or her Facebook page.

And please be the person who gets photographed at Table Rock, I am very impatiently waiting for someone to take her up on that!

TONS of links in this one, here's a few but come on over to the Guides Gone Wild website for the full list!:

• Mt. Madison - Madison Spring Hut (NH)
• What is rime ice?
• Carter Notch Hut (NH)
• What are the ‘10 essentials’? 
• Carter Dome (NH)
• Rumney (NH)
• Crow Hill (MA)
• What is an ‘AIARE’ course?
• What is AT gear?
• What does it mean to be ‘spruce trapped’? 
• John Sherburne Ski Trail (NH) 
• Skida Sun Tours Buff 

Sign up here for more info on our upcoming Guides Gone Wild weekend event, September 23-25, 2022!

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Ari Leach is THE guide you’re going to want to call to help you survive the zombie apocalypse, let’s just start with that.

Today we are getting back to the roots of this very podcast by talking to brand spankin' new Registered Maine Guide, Ari Leach of Blackbird Guide Services.

I discovered Ari when lovely friend of the pod, Nancy Zane, posted a congratulatory note on her North Star Adventures Instagram page, because Ari had taken a guide course through North Star and had just passed her exam.

I always love seeing new women guides, so I was already excited about her, but then in pretty short order I realized Ari was blasting out of the start gate and setting up her own company and guide service, too - Blackbird Guide Services - which doubled my excitement.

And then the kicker came when Ari posted about her grandmother, but I’m going to let Ari tell you all about that. 

I feel so privileged to have met Ari and heard her story, and I know you’ll enjoy this one too.

Make sure you’ve got Ari on the digital equivalent of speed dial before the next zombie apocalypse, follow her @blackbirdguideservices on Instagram, find her on Facebook, or head over to her website, and get psyched for a little forest bathing or stick carving or whatever else tickles your fancy!

A few fun links from our conversation:

• Nancy Zane talks ‘Leave No Trace’ on Guides Gone Wild
• Unity College
• Where the Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls
• Maine Department of Marine Resources
• Umbagog Lake
• Lincoln County Search and Rescue
• Baxter State Park
• Tiny Homes of Maine
• Kula Cloth
• She Pee
• Maine Small Business Development Center

This episode definitely has a call to action, people - if you want to be one of the first to know when I'm going to bring Ari’s Iron Chef skills and her mom’s 'witchie-poo cabinet' up to Evans Notch Lodge for a weekend of fun and learning, make sure you subscribe to our email list - it’s right there at the bottom of the home page, super easy, just do it!

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This week I’m back to in-real-life interviewing (woohoo!), and taking you with me to the ultra cool and vintage headquarters of the Mahoosuc Land Trust at Valentine Farm in Bethel, Maine, where we'll be chatting with Abby Bennett - aspiring ultra runner and conservationist in training.

As you’ll hear, I first started trying to get Abby on the pod because she had a little online business selling fun-looking compression socks for hiking and trail running, and I thought that was cool. I got some socks, but never did manage to connect with her enough to chat at the time. So while we both languished through most of COVID, I followed her Instagram account and got even more interested in her progress as an van-life-ing ultra runner, and her professional transformation, all of which we’ll dig into here.

Abby is as big a fan of western Maine as I am, so of course we have some fun. 

I hope you'll follow my new friend Abby (@abby.j.bennett), where you can watch her grit it out through all kinds of vertical, and take on her new schwanky van conversion!

Because I know next to nothing about land trusts and trail/ultra running, I had to look a LOT of stuff up from this episode - I've dropped a few of these links below, but you'll also want to head on over to Guides Gone Wild, because there's a lot more where these came from!:

• Mahoosuc Land Trust
• YouTube video of Abby living out of van at school
• ‘ProMaster’ van
• Billy Yang
• Courtney Dewaulter
• Madison Gulf Trail (NH)
• Baldpate Mountain (ME)
• Ultimate Direction running pack
• Western Foothills Land Trust
• NSF program at UMaine
• Maine Coast Heritage Trust
• Buck’s Ledge Community Forest (Woodstock, ME)
• Spandits - and my episode with the Spandits ladies!
• OnX app
• Speed Goat 50K (Utah)
• Loon Mountain Race (NH)
• Acadia Gantz on Guides Gone Wild

And finally, thanks to Evans Notch Lodge for giving me a reason to be close enough to meet Abby at Mahoosuc Land Trust's headquarters in Bethel!

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This week has been a mentally tough one for many of us who saw the anticipated roll-back of Roe v. Wade become the new reality. We’re pissed off that this handful of people can make decisions that strip us of civil liberties. We can’t believe that the government can turn on us this way, that one group of people can be singled out and systematically denied agency and autonomy and the ability to make decisions and take actions that are in their own self-interest...

Oh, right, this is basically the way every Black person, Indigenous person, and other person of color feels. Every. damn. day.

And this is the way our country has worked, or should I say worked against them, for generations. 

Fighting for justice and equity is not an either-or exercise. The same systems that knee-capped reproductive rights this week are the ones responsible for the history of oppression our country was built on.

We can sit back and be silently depressed and hopeless about the direction our country seems to be going in. Or we can decide to take action.

I want to keep reminding myself about this action part, so today I’ve brought back Serena Ryan, owner of the Notch Hostel in New Hampshire, but more importantly for today’s discussion, one of the founders of Summits in Solidarity, which is a non-profit founded back in 2020 to foster justice and equity for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.

This year, Summits in Solidarity has an aggressive goal to raise $30,000 by today, June 30, 2022 - but don’t worry if you’re tuning in and it’s July or next winter or whenever. The need for this work, and this organization’s amazing efforts, aren’t going away. And if you are so inclined, maybe take a pause and make a pledge before you dive in!:

• Summits in Solidarity - Donate Now
• Summits in Solidarity - Amazing Resources
• Summits in Solidarity - Me and White Supremacy Challenge

A few other links (you'll have to head over to the episode page on the Guides Gone Wild website for more good stuff!):

• Serena Ryan on GGW - Summits in Solidarity 2021 episode
• Serena Ryan on GGW - first episode
• Notch Hostel (NH)

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