Emily Ford ‘15 talks about her background, path to, and experience at Gustavus, her love of and place in the outdoors, becoming head gardener at the Glensheen Mansion in Duluth, Minn., and, in the off season, an epic winter trekker inspiring thousands, gardening at Glensheen without any formal horticultural or landscape training, solo winter thru-hiking Wisconsin’s 1,200-mile Ice Age Trail—the first woman and openly LGBTQ person of color to do so—and then the Boundary Waters the following year in early 2022, why she undertook both hikes, her trekking canine companion Diggins, and her case for Gustavus and the liberal arts.