I originally wrote this to give as my Ice Breaker speech for Toastmasters.

 If you hear an accent, it’s from Kentucky. Even though I haven’t lived there for 28 years, it still rears it’s southern-belle head. I am the only in my family of four to have picked up a southern accent from my early years.

Often we are defined by what we do. In my case what I’ve done is based on what I love. What I do and have done is a painting of my greatest joys.

So as I tell you my passions, the threads that are woven into every decision I’ve made, I will share bits and pieces of my life. I have been able to chase most of my dreams, guided by intuition and joy.

Where would you go and what would you do if your greatest joy was being in the wild lands and interacting with wildlife?

When I was a child my parents volunteered in Rocky Mountain National Park each summer. We would fill our big green suburban with all the basics of mountain living and drive I-70 until we got to my only true home, the mountains.  I climbed my first mountain at the age of 9. When I dipped my toe in that remote glacial lake as the marmots looked on, I dreamed of all the untouched lakes in my future that had no other purpose but to nurture wildlife and bring beauty to the few who trekked to her edges.

The summer of my second birthday, while hiking with my Mom, I removed my diapers, handed them to her, and squatted to pee. I was free. The woods were and are my happy place. The only place I truly feel safe. My life in Kentucky was full of potholes and sink pits. But my life in the woods, was full of trees, quiet, and wildlife as curious of me as I them.

I was considered eccentric back then. Girls didn’t sleep on the ground, climb rocks and spend days hiking by themselves. I tried to fit in, I tried to be ‘normal’ and do all the things everyone else thought was fun, but no amount of alcohol brought me the joy I felt sitting against a tree. The first solo drive I took once I had the blessing of the DMV was to go blissfully hiking by myself.

In 1994, due to a cat who kept bringing half-live birds into the house, I discovered I could be a wildlife rehabilitator. I never thought anything would match the joy I felt sleeping on the ground near a mountain stream hundreds of miles from anything considered civilized. But the first time I helped rehabilitate a great horned owl and then release her back into the wild, brought me to a new level of ecstasy.

If your infinitely curious how would your school life look and how many college degrees would you end up with?

For me four.

Though my first two years in college I almost flunked out. Not from partying, but from exploring. I just didn’t care about anything happening inside the walls.

But n 1987, in the summer between my sopohmore and junior years in college I backpacked across Europe. It was way before cell phones and personal computers were common. It was just me, and whoever I met. There was no way for anyone back home to find me. I stopped being the strange girl. All the chains that I had collected, in an effort to get  me to fit in fell in bits and pieces across Europe, a link in Amsterdam, a couple of links in Budapest, and lots of links in Austria and Switzerland. I got the first peek of who I really was.

I returned to KY, quit the sorority and piled up classes that fascinated me. I took 20 hours a semester my last two years, and got a 4.0 every time. I competed in triathalons, I worked  a job I loved.

This curiosity, coupled with my Dad’s hatred of his high paying corporate job and my Mom telling me I could do anything I wanted, drove my work life.

Imagine getting paid to live in the heart of Yosemite in exchange for taking employees backpacking and rock climbing. Or what you would think about getting flown to small communities in the middle of nowhere, as an Indoor Air Quality Inspector and help improve people’ well-being.

Would you dare to apply to a prestigious lab to be a writer, and spend your days talking to some of the brightest minds in the world, in a remote forest covered town, when you have never done any technical writing?  I did just that, answering the question I consistently ask myself, “What would I do if I were free?”

What did you do or think you’ll do when you turn 50? I am celebrating how much I have learned and experienced in my short time on this planet.  As we go along we try to not repeat our mistakes, but now I know it’s funner to grow from a place of curiosity and seeking adventure.

I have lived in places where bear slept on my driveway and deer left antlers at my doorstep, but now I am getting to learn the power of deep human connection. Of accepting people as they are and not taking meanness and undependability as personal. I am learning to like people as much as I love animals and trees.

I am married to a man who I enjoy backpacking with more than I enjoy backpacking alone.

I have the best relationship with my parents that I have ever had because I stopped wishing they were different.

My need to be in the woods and my unsatiated curiosity has guided me to India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Jordan, western Europe, and about every state in the U.S. I have seen things very few people ever get to experience because I will happily hike 50 plus miles carrying 35 pounds on my back.  I have woken up covered in mud, because I passed out at a remote Jain temple on a mountain in central India, I have gotten to commune with bears and mountain lions and rattle snakes. None the least bit interested in harming me, as they knew I wasn’t interested in harming them.  I have gotten to surf with wild dolphins on a private California beach, I have gotten to sit with my granddad and many others as they took their last breath. I have gotten to hold a baby hummingbird smaller than my pinkie nail, and saved it’s life, and I have gotten to look in the mouth of a nighthawk and see it’s puppet throat.

I’m looking forward to seeing what adventure the next 50 years brings!