The Dirtbag Diaries

When Tyler Neese and four friends loaded up the truck for a spring break ski vacation in Colorado, the stoke was high. Until, just minutes from the slopes black ice and a distracted driver flipped their trip upside down. Sometimes, it's not about what happens to you, it's about how you react. 

For our third Endangered Spaces episode, we travel to Northern Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness to follow Dave and Amy Freeman on "Paddle to D.C." and "A Year in the Wilderness," two adventures that had a real impact in advocating for the protection of the place they love most.

"If you're thirsty, you're probably already dehydrated. That's what they say. Those perfect people who always have a clean, happily-colored, reusable adult sippy bottle on hand," says Anya Miller. "Most often, I only realize that I'm thirty when someone offers me a drink. My friend Jesse Bushey brought up climbing El Cap. I didn't even know I wanted to--until he suggested it."

"When we were living in a house, we were always compromising what we thought we should be doing," remembers Kathy Holcombe. Until, the day she, her husband, Peter, and their daughter Abby moved into a Winnebago to travel and work from the road. "I want her to see that... whatever her wildest dreams are, to chase them and not stop until they come true," says Kathy.  12 year old Abby's dream? To kayak the 280-miles of the classic Grand Canyon run.

"I looked like some mountain man's girlfriend, and sometimes, that's all I felt like," remembers Andrea Ross. But after an accident on Mt. Humphreys forced Andrea to draw on her EMT training, she reached a turning point in her relationship and the way she imagined her life. 

Roland Thompson used to rob banks. Now he climbs and snowboards. 

"The reason that I was able to do it is because I was incredibly naive," says Lucas St. Clair. "I had no idea how much work it was going to be, when I started. Not a clue." The thing Lucas did: work to establish Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in the North Woods of Maine. We started this "Endangered Spaces" series for two reasons. First, we want to take a deeper look at a handful of important, active land battles. Second, and every bit as important, we want to follow the stories of a handful of people who, in their own, quirky ways, have stepped up to protect the threatened spaces they hold dear.For Lucas, the endangered space wasn't the land he was working to protect, but the communities that surround it.  The comment period for the 27 monuments on Zinke's list ends July 10th. Outdoor Alliance makes it easy to speak out for the places that are important to you. To plan your trip to Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, visit Friends of Katahdin Woods and Waters.

"Three days from the end of the trip, I started to panic," writes Emma Walker. "I still didn't know what to do with my summer, let alone the rest of my life. Inspiration, as I'd imagined it, hadn't struck. Now, I had to face the realization that I didn't have an exit strategy. This had been it, and it would inevitably end."The summer after her first year of graduate school, Emma enrolled in an Alaska Pacific University Expedition Mountaineering course. She told her family she signed up because it meant she'd earn graduate credits to traipse around the Harding Icefield. But she also hoped the trip would bring some clarity on the bigger questions, like whether or not grad school had been a mistake and what she was still doing in Alaska.No lightning bolts of clarity struck during her trip, but looking back a year later, she could see that, perhaps, her month in the Alaska mountains had given her the inspiration she needed after all.  You can find more of Emma's writing at myalaskanodyssey.com or listen to her first Short, "I Poo: A Love Story"

"As a brown woman, I stand out," says Mary Ann Thomas. "People came up to me just because they were curious, just because they were like, 'There aren't a  lot of strangers here, we're just interested in who you are as a person-- as a whole person.'"Mary Ann is the daughter of Indian immigrants, she's queer and she had always lived  in the liberal bubble of big cities on the East Coast. When she embarked on a six-month, 6600-mile bike tour across the country, she worried most about the prejudice she might encounter as she pedaled through middle America. She was surprised to discover that the stereotypes she had to confront in a profound way were her own. Check out the blog from Mary Ann's trip, or find more of her writing here. 

When a bad breakup sent him spiraling into a deep depression, Tom Ireson fixated on an unconventional way to get his head straight:"I really needed something to focus my mind on to pull me out of that," Tom says, "and about the biggest thing I could think of was to try and do a new route on a big wall." Not just any big wall, a big wall on the other side of the world in the remote and wild valley of Cochamo, Chile. When he latched on to the idea, Tom had never been to Cochamo and never climbed a big wall, much less established a new route on one. Today, we've got one for you about how, if you find yourself at the bottom of an impossibly deep hole, sometimes it takes an equally impossible goal to pull yourself out of it.  If you want to hear more from Tom, check out his 2014 Short, 'Go For It'.