Recently, I was on a training run on the Centennial Trail with my two kids tucked into a double stroller. It was a Sunday, the trail buzzing with runners, walkers, dogs and cyclists, and I’d had an overwhelming week. The river tumbled like fraying ribbon below, ospreys floated in tight circles above, and my breath came hard as I pushed my bike-trailer-made-stroller and its extra 70 pounds along the concrete.  

Shortly after passing a high-perched osprey nest, I realized the mileage I needed would include running down Doomsday hill, an inclined section of the Centennial that has gained notoriety from the Bloomsday course. I didn’t know this when I headed west from Kendall Yards, because specifics like trail topography are at the back of my mental load when packing two kids for a stroller run. Whatever. I pushed the stroller around the corner that would dip down Pettet Drive and pounded down the hill, weight on my heels.  

On my way back up Doomsday, I crossed paths with a runner on her way down, which I was happy about so that someone might bear witness to the stupidly stubborn feat I was pulling. She shouted “Impressive!” and I was glad about that too, lifting my hand from the stroller bar long enough to give her a wave of gratitude.  

The truth was that running with a double stroller up Doomsday had been the easiest part of my week. A family member had had an unexpected medical emergency, my husband had been sent to Chicago for work, and I was operating on sleep interrupted by long hours of cradling my daughter while her fever raged during an ear infection. The truth was that running up that hill was not as hard as motherhood. Hauling ass with a heavy stroller was something I could control.  

Everyone has a week like that. Or a month. Or a year. But people don’t say “Impressive!” just for making it through the day.  

In that five-second exchange, what that other runner had really said to me was “I see you,” which was not something we say often enough to our fellow humans these days. 

Calves burning with catharsis, I made the top of Doomsday hill. I pushed the stroller back past the ospreys, still circling. I arrived in Kendall Yards sweaty and red-faced, walked the stroller back to the car, and fell into the familiar pattern of buckle, carry, break down, buckle.  

Later, I thought about how other people on the trail that day might have been there to escape life’s stressors. How we turned to the outdoors for neutral space, a place to process, a place to refresh. How a small acknowledgement in that space could resonate as a large kindness. 

What I’d like to say leading into summer, a time when our trails are most packed, is to remember the impact of a five-second wave, a head nod, shakas, a thumbs-up, or whatever gesture you might convey when you’re sweating like hell and breathing worse. It can matter a whole lot to someone when you say I see you. I’m here too. We’re on this trail together, and that’s as good a metaphor as any. 

• Lisa Laughlin, managing editor 

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By Elizabeth Graves

The impetus for ultrarunner Katie Arnold’s latest memoir, “Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World,” is a rafting accident in June 2016 when she is thrown from her raft and breaks her leg. No longer able to run, Arnold must learn to appreciate the power in stillness. What follows is both an adventure comeback story and an introduction to Zen Meditation.  

Arnold’s memoir jumps forward and backward in time, which creates suspense and reminds readers that each part of any journey serves a purpose: “Each action, no matter how mundane, affects another, on and on down the line, forever.” From stories of rafting trips, running Rim to Rim to Rim of the Grand Canyon with a fever, to the practice of Zen Meditation (sitting in stillness) and the inner work that must be done to heal, Arnold shows readers that no moment is wasted, teaching that it is in the moments of stillness, when our bodies and minds are quiet, that we are perhaps most able to connect with ourselves and the world around us. 

The book is organized into four parts: Rivers, Canyons, Mountains, and Sky. In each section, Arnold shares stories that correspond to the section header, but the deeper meaning is expressed through metaphor as Arnold discovers how her marriage, motherhood, training, writing, and recovery are all intimately linked to the landscape and the essence of nature.  

“Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World” concludes two years after Arnold breaks her leg when she puts her physical, mental, and emotional healing to the test by racing The Leadville Trail 100, a one-hundred-mile ultramarathon that traverses the Collegiate Range outside of Leadville, Colorado. I won’t spoil the outcome of the race. However, I will say that after this read, I’m convinced that there may be something to this whole “Zen thing” after all.

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There is a sensationalism that we’ve begun to demand in regard to outdoorsing. It isn’t just that we’re looking for those who have climbed the highest, run the farthest, survived the extremist. We’re demanding a story that makes them worthy of this level of soul suffering journey or our interest: shitty childhood, trauma, grief, drug recovery, some salacious deservedness.

Fish may or may not have any or all of the above. The only thing one senses in his presence is that he’s at home outside. Shelter, whether on land or sea, is fine and all that, but mostly for sleeping.

If ever there was a rule book for how to do life, Fish probably burned it to make a campfire. Or used it for toilet paper. He is dispensing financial advice as we move up the trail. Pay off your house as fast as you can, don’t let them banks keep your money, that’s your money. A mile alongside Fish is arguably loaded with more wisdom than any meeting I’ve ever had with a financial advisor. And that’s just the money talk.

Fish is in his 60s but only his silver hair and variety of adventures give him away. There’s no poetic story about a life-altering hunting trip or some deep connection he had with his father in the outdoors. His dad was a trucker, passed away when Fish was a teenager. I don’t ask what they called him then. “We were out in the Pokono Mountains when there wasn’t nobody there,” he says of being a normal kid growing up in rural Pennsylvania. He went outside a lot. He liked it. He thought maybe someday he’d be a forest ranger.

When Fish got out of high school, he went to work for the mill like everyone else in small-town Pennsylvania. They had good wages and poor outcomes and Fish was a bit too curious about life to last long. So he joined the Coast Guard, then decided to head into the wilderness for a month before he became an indentured civil servant. Maybe this is what put the mountains into his blood, or maybe it’s in all of ours and we just don’t know until we’re there.

When Fish had leave, he hiked. When he finished his time, he stuffed a metal-framed Kelty pack (it weighs over seven pounds) and hit the Pacific Crest Trail for a thousand or so miles. It was 1980. The “trail” was more marked than it was cut. He lamented the manzanita, still crisp in his memory. That pack and its collection of patches hangs next to his Osprey now. He’s not beholden to some kind of old-school misery and a flannel sleeping bag with a metal zipper.

His transition to water versus land was not a direct result or resentment of that adventure. Rather, someone asked him to help sail a boat somewhere and so he hopped aboard and learned how to sail. Then he sailed for another decade plus, bouncing around islands, falling in love with his bride, Red, on the high seas. Or maybe a port town bar, but any of it sounds romantic when the word “Caribbean” is thrown in.

“She was a cougar before it was a thing,” he says as he shows me her collection of art. She lets Fish talk. Her long, silver hair is as shiny as her eyes are keen. She still paints and produces an incredible amount of art. Most of it sold, but there are a few pieces she just cannot let go. They decorate the walls of their octagonal cabin. Their art show travels are what brought them to the Northwest along with Fish’s love of mountains.

Far off the beaten track, they own a swath of land that is nestled into the canyons of the Cabinet Mountains. They had been on the search for some years.

“I told them, ‘Don’t even bother showing me anything that’s been logged,’” he says. The giant, 100-year-old cedars and firs sway in the early spring wind above our heads. They feel like towering guardians watching silently over the valley.

Long ago, the land had been a camp in the early 1900s. Then it had been owned by a Native woman who moved her teepee around each season until she found the perfect place to build. The couple upgraded the bare-bones cabin by chinking the logs and insulating the floor. Strange artifacts from the land’s history still surface in the soil every spring. They decorate the exterior of the various structures on the property: wood shops, green houses, outhouses, and the one with the corrugated metal roofing as walls to keep the bears out.

“What you have here is as close to the beauty of the Trinity Alps as you can find,” says Fish. Then he describes creeping up the backside of Mount Jefferson, breaking through the trees into a panorama of this perfect peak above the high desert. One gets the impression he could accurately describe every peak he’s seen as if they were lost loves he still daydreams about. “Mount Saint Helens, though,” he says, almost with a sigh, “that was the perfect shaped mountain. Until it blew.”

Long gone are the days of carrying a 75-pound pack with 15 days of food stuffed into it. He still goes out on multiday trips, just with lighter gear. And when he showed up at the trailhead in his lifted Jeep, he hopped out like he’s decades younger than he is and right in his element.

The truth is, and Fish seems to embody this, it is in our nature to be in nature. We are creatures of this earth and its elements. These cities and suburbs are rather like zoos of humanity. To be in the forest, to sail the waters, to tend the land, steward trails, build homes with bare hands, explore—these things are in our blood.

Anyone who has made a campfire or crawled into a tent knows the feeling. It’s like coming home.

Originally published as “A Man Called Fish“ in the May-June 2022 issue.

Ammi Midstokke lives with her family in North Idaho, where she observes outdoorsy people in their natural habitat.

Read Ammi’s first People in the Wild story.

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Katie’s cow dog ejects from her vehicle like a wayward, spotted torpedo. Katie ignores the dog and moves around her Nissan pickup and camper with the kind of chill that makes you wonder if she’s had lorazepam for breakfast. Or she just gave up coffee to breastfeed. Either way, it is not the neurotic new mom one expects. She looks adventure appropriate: Ski pants, knit hat, buff, bright jacket, braid.

Though she never said as much, one could not help but wonder if she believed she was the exception, like every pregnant woman before her. There is a growing socio-cultural expectation that parenting success is first measured by our ability to continue being exactly as we were before, only with a 15-150 pound, perma-snacking side-kick. Katie initially accepted this challenge. We assume we’ll carry on as usual, that pregnancy will only be a difference in pant size, and that if we buy the right equipment (bouncy chair, ski trailer, breast pump), parenthood will be a matter of … logistics and tiny laundry.

In winters past, Katie’s camper-cabbed truck was not to be found at trafficked trailheads. When the first snow fell in the mountains, a predictable message was sent out: “I’m breaking up with you until spring.” Katie has curated her life carefully, like an intentional museum. Each wing has a specific genre, offering a layer of sophistication and depth that only the connoisseurs of that medium might appreciate. There is the backcountry split-boarding wing. There is the corporate bulldog that closes sales deals, attends food fairs, wears designer sweaters in good taste. She’s got a wing full of literature prowess, including topping off her already thorough education with an MFA, because people ought to know what they are talking about when evoking Didion to Dostoevsky.

There is also a catch-all wing for the eclectic parts of her spirit: That time she lived on chicken breast and strawberries, got a spray tan, and danced on stage in glitter shorts for a body competition. The time she told Fischer she’d learn how to ski if they sponsored her (they did). Random ultra marathons she signs up for. Themed parties. Ministering weddings. Bee keeping. Grape growing. Her resumé shows she’s proficient in everything from French cuisine to mountain bike coaching to barbecue. (In fact, she’s a certified barbecue judge—that is a real thing and worthy of an invitation to any summer party.)

She squirms when the conversation is about her for too many sentences in a row. One gets the impression she does not do those things to talk about them, but rather to experience them. She artfully redirects in an upbeat, off-topic inquiry about anybody else. With a vast appetite for and repertoire of experience, it only seemed appropriate that Katie sample her maternal instincts by getting a puppy and then getting pregnant. As usual, nothing was accidental.

Katie launched into pregnancy with the same optimism we see on Instagram. Even as her skin turned that ashen shade of gray-green reserved for the gestating, she planned a mountaineering excursion. She spent the summer wearing bike shorts, slowing down only when her medical team threatened her with early delivery. And this she still did reluctantly, if not resentfully.

As women, there is pressure to have “belly-only” weight gain during our pregnancies, and our impending buffet-breasts are celebrated (“Oh look, you finally have boobs!”) as a reminder that our barren selves are inadequate. We should stay active and thin as per marketing by brands like GAP who use prosthetic bellies for their maternity wear, because bodies swollen with progesterone and estrogen are unsightly.

Enter baby. Or in Katie’s case, childbirth, where she lost as much blood as an extra in a Tarantino movie, replacing her green with a ghostly white for several weeks. Her postpartum exercise plan was scrapped for a goal of making it around the block without passing out. Had she not been severely anemic, she probably would have been preemptively purchasing race bibs.

What people cannot explain to the expectant mother is the visceral pull of motherhoodd—the way our bodies have a compulsion to be near our babies. The things we want postpartum are things we could never have imagined. Closing the bathroom door; eating a meal with both hands.

“I thought I would want to be out more,” says Katie. “But I don’t really feel like being four hours away from my infant and out of cell service.” That used to be considered a perfect morning.

When pried about what is hard — are you sleeping, do you miss adult conversation, is your marriage suffering, what really took you by surprise?—Katie curls up her lips and appears as if she’s looking inside her brain for a moment. “I didn’t think breastfeeding would be so hard,” she says. “These titties have never had to work a day in their life.” 

We new mothers also learn that the babysitters we were going to rely on—runaway teenagers, free grandmothers, and good-willed friends—are hardly the reliable resources we had so optimistically envisioned. We realize we cannot entrust our offspring to our parents (who probably still dip tea towels in whiskey for babies to suckle) or anyone who has not had advanced infant CPR training or wears anything other than natural fibers washed in Dr. Bronner’s.

Katie’s limbs stretch gracefully above the snow as her skis slide in groomed tracks. She’s only ten minutes from her house. Her baby is with a nanny who met the said qualifications and she has come to move her body in a familiar stride. She does not look like she just grew an entire human and expelled it from her body.

Before I can tell her how good she looks, she says, “People are always commenting on ‘how good you look’ when you are postpartum. I don’t want people to acknowledge my body. I like my body. It is doing what it is supposed to be doing.”

She is acknowledging the expectation that our bodies somehow lose all evidence of pregnancy—another measure of successful womanhood. And that her value and life experience is now measured in motherhood, which she should only expose the pleasant parts of.

She exposes it all, answering the door in a bra and knee-high socks. She’s been riding her Peloton while staring at her babbling baby. She is glowing pink and happy, her eyes bright. It looks just the same as when she comes home from the backcountry.

“People say, ‘You’re so fit, you’ll get right back into it,’” she says. “But what if I don’t want to?”

What if we fold motherhood into ourselves, like cinnamon into a dough, and it forever alters our relationship to self, to the outdoors, to how we experience ourselves in the outdoors? And what if that is okay? What if, God forbid, we changed and we were fulfilled by other things too? In that version, our past is a foundation, not a time to which we are infinitely longing to return.

The gear shit-show that is Katie’s porch is evidence of her commitment to this strategy. Shoes with cleats, ski boots, dog leashes, jackets, baby carrier. When she talks to her new daughter, June, it is as if to a cohort of common ground. This new entity is no extra—rather, a fold in the dough that will be kneaded into a cohesive family.

What parenthood teaches us about love is that we feel the connection when we bear witness to the wonders of life with those we love. That is, the moments when we regard the other with the same awe and bewilderment and curiosity. When we take our children into the mountains, onto the slopes, against the wind, and share this other pulse of our beating heart. When we experience ourselves and the outdoors through their eyes.

And for a while, those eyes are two feet off the ground and they move really slow. Some changes just make us better.

Originally published as “A New Mother, an Old Identity, and Nothing Lost” in the March-April 2022 print issue.

Ammi Midstokke lives with her family in North Idaho, where she observes outdoorsy people in their natural habitat. She can be contacted at ammimarie@gmail.com.

Find more motherhood stories in the OTO archives.

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People talk about the joy of sharing the outdoors with their kids, but here’s another truth: sometimes it’s just damn frustrating. Now that my son is a toddler, a walk meant to refresh our bodies and moods more often turns into a struggle. We usually take our French Bulldog, Winston, which doubles the stop-and-go pace of the trip. Either one of them will want to stop for a stick at any given moment, but never at the same time and never in the same direction. Both are stubborn and surprisingly strong for their size. When the dog stops to relieve himself, it’s like a secret signal for the toddler to start sprinting toward the least safe place of the trail, most likely over the edge. Which is where the pair tend to drive me, mentally, because I still want the trail to serve me as an escape.

Several solutions jump to mind. Leave the dog home, or insist the toddler ride in a stroller or backpack instead of running pell-mell down the trail to his heart’s delight. But I try to embrace the chaos of motherhood as much as possible, and here’s why: usually there’s no other option. Sometimes I coordinate with my husband so I can hit the trail on my own, but a solo run or hike is rare at this point, so I’m invested in examining the chaos. And I’m committed to taking on the challenge of bringing a toddler to the outdoors, because I still believe there’s something we can take away from it, even if it’s unlikely to be a sense of peace.

There are some things that won’t change when hiking with my toddler. I’ll still carry around low-level mom anxiety. I will look into trees for cougars more than I used to. I will eye the edge of the bluff as he wobble-runs down the trail ahead of me, calculating his risk of injury versus the merit of building his physical skills. I do not expect that kind of worry to go away. Nor do I expect the little problems to dissolve that come from taking a toddler into uncontrolled circumstances. More often than not, I will be carrying the toddler—who previously seemed to possess unlimited energy—for the last half mile of our walk (which will probably be up a hill, possibly in the mud, probably with lots of rocks). But it’s occurred to me how I might enjoy myself when the pace is more stop than go, when we’ve walked a frustrating 0.4 miles instead of the full length of the trail, when I feel the resentment start to build: to look at things exactly as my son does, which is to say closely and with a lot less ego.

When I walked my son in his stroller in those early locked-down months, I could tell you precisely which wildflowers were ready to open, or had reached peak bloom, or had just started to wilt. I felt more connected than I did when the trail was a blur on a solo run. I was experiencing seasons of motherhood that seemed to change as frequently as the plants—frustrations and joys that many mothers had weathered before me—and I felt peace in that connection even if I didn’t feel calm on the trail. It’s not the perfect answer, because I rarely have that sort of clarity in the moment, especially when snags happen far from the trailhead. But if I remember to look around when my toddler stops to draw in the dirt, instead of tapping my foot, I might notice something like a thunderhead as it blooms above the pines; how it’s burdened with rain but still rises and stretches and grows.

Lisa Laughlin is a freelance writer, editor, and mother living in Spokane. She serves as an Associate Editor at Out There and has a MFA in Creative Nonfiction. She looks forward (mostly) to bundling up her kid and dog and taking them on the trail this winter.

See a map of Spokane’s Trolley Trail.

Find more stories in the OTO archives about motherhood, parenthood, taking kids outside, and parenting in the outdoors.

Visit the Out There Kids archive to read the full collection of stories about families and children in the great outdoors.

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Tiny in the midst of the string of mountains and knife-edge peaks, a barely-visible ribbon of dirt trail meandered along a ridgeline. Three miniscule shapes moved along the track, slow beneath the weight of their heavy packs. Sounds of laughter and conversation faded into the wind and waterfalls.

A group of friends—all women and moms in or approaching middle age—climbed switchbacks toward a mountain pass far from any trailhead. We were the only all-women group of backpackers we encountered in three days. We saw a handful of couples and mixed groups of men and women, but most backcountry campers we met were men traveling together.

This is typical of every backpacking trip I take, and yet somehow I am still surprised at how uncommon it is to see groups of women, especially those 40 and older, unaccompanied by men in wild spaces. It says a lot about how our culture continues to view women in the outdoors.

So many youthful, vibrant women nearing the middle of their lives are already looking back and saying, “I wish I would have tried stuff like that when I was younger.” But we are younger, right now, than we will be later. What better time to go?

Olivia Dugenet

Maybe that’s why it didn’t occur to me at first to invite other women and moms on wilderness trips. I have been backpacking with my daughters every summer since they were six and eight years old, and I have never encountered another solo mom leading kids out on the trail.

I always felt like an outlier. I assumed, wrongly, of course, that women my age who aren’t already established in an outdoor activity or lifestyle are simply not into that kind of thing. I was surprised and really delighted when women I’ve known for many years started asking if they could join me.

My daughters have grown into adult-size teenagers with adult-size packs to lend. So, I started putting together additional trips to include women friends who had never had an opportunity to try backpacking.

Quite by accident, I found myself serving as an informal, volunteer backcountry guide with a patched-together gear library and a super nerdy zeal for planning and logistics. It’s a lot of work, and certainly worth the effort.

When we walk out of the wilderness after a beautiful, brutal multi-day trip, everyone is tired, dirty and hungry. I always wonder if my friends secretly hated the whole experience, especially those who struggled with self-doubt and discomfort along the way.

Instead, they consistently report a feeling of euphoria, even describing trips as “life-changing.” What is it about walking outside for a few days that generates such a profound visceral response?

Author Florence Williams explores the transformative effect that wilderness can have in her analysis of the “Three-Day Effect”—a scientifically-tested phenomenon in which people who spend multiple consecutive days in wild spaces without digital devices experience an astonishing 47% increase in creative thinking and insight problem solving.

Not everyone enjoys equal access to that wilderness euphoria. In 2016, REI published a blog post called “Closing the Gender Gap in the Great Outdoors.” Author Katherine Oakes cited research from the Outdoor Foundation finding that 66% of boys ages 6-24 participated in outdoor activities, compared with only 55% of girls in the same age group.

More interesting, however, is that as women age, their participation in outdoor activities drops off. By age 66, only 20% of women report engaging in outdoor activities compared with 40% of men. The Outdoor Foundation’s new 2021 report on outdoor trends still finds “stagnant female participation” despite “significant industry efforts to address gender disparities.”

It is not that women and moms don’t want to get out there. Many do, though I can see why some women stop participating in outdoor activities as they age.

Motherhood is demanding. We put a lot on hold while raising children, giving much of ourselves away to our kids, families and jobs without always finding ways to replenish.

Years pass quickly, we get into a routine, and soon it feels too late to start something new. So many youthful, vibrant women nearing the middle of their lives are already looking back and saying, “I wish I would have tried stuff like that when I was younger.” But we are younger, right now, than we will be later. What better time to go?

Cultural narratives over many generations have created a distorted social reality where women, especially as they age, are made to appear inept or disinterested in wilderness. These false stories may influence how women perceive themselves and their capacities.

At the same time, through all the noise and distraction of everyday life, there is this other wild reality, vivid, physical and very close by. Some joyful part of me is always there, caked in dirt and sweat on the blue lake shore, diving into the icy water and then rising up again into afternoon mountain sun. 

It is true that women must be disproportionately brave to enter wilderness, but not because we are afflicted with some special type of female weakness that makes us too scared or incapable to navigate the outdoors. Women are brave to challenge stereotypes and social expectations that try to convince us we don’t belong at home in our own wild world.

Olivia Dugenet is a writer and nonprofit professional living in Spokane. She holds a Master of Science in Cultural Communication from EWU, and spends a lot of time thinking about philosophy of nature. Her best adventures are with her husband, four wonderful grown-up children and their Yellow Lab Zizou.

Originally published in the November-December 2021 print issue.

Find more personal essays in the Last Page column archives.

Read “Mountain Biking Women of Spokane” (March 2020 print issue).

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Amy McCaffree is Out There Kids columnist and has been writing for OTO long before motherhood. She learned to ski with her junior high Ski Club, in western Washington. She married a ski patroller and committed to a lifetime of skiing as much as possible, and loves being a Ski Family with their two children.

Photos: (left) Landon at Mt. Spokane with his cousin Matthew Richey. // Photo: Amy McCaffree; (top) Jumping off a rock cliff last ski season. // Photo: Judd McCaffree; (bottom) Landon with his Ski Patrol Dad at the summit of Mt. Spokane during a Friday night sunset. // Photo: Amy McCaffree

Read stories about other Little Rippers from the Inland Northwest.

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My son is now 18-months-old. Certainly in the first throes of motherhood I recall a few uninvited external voices that made me nervous about how to balance motherhood and an outdoor life. While the strength and influence of such voices varies in different communities, I know I’m not alone.

A lot of women hear that if we are moms, we are going to have to sit it out when it comes to adventure. We hear how dangerous or inconvenient it is to include our kids in being outside, or that our changed bodies and new priorities will keep us otherwise occupied. Even if a woman has silenced the voice saying that she will be too busy or too out of shape after giving birth to get back on the rock, another voice might whisper that the effort of dragging kids up a mountain is too much to overcome. I even believed that I’d lose acceptance or respect in my mountaineering community if I stayed away from climbing too long.

Friends who are moms and climbers have told me their own version of a similar story. But we agree that despite the changes that come with kids, we still have a need for our outdoor life and to bring our children along with us. Those things have a stronger pull than any hang-ups those external voices could utter.

I asked a friend, Lindsey, who has an 18-month-old daughter, Olivia, what has changed in her relationship to the outdoors. “We can’t just go climbing with only the two of us (referring to her husband, John) without a third person. There are a lot fewer after-work-weekday-climbs, but we still go. And, we have amazing climbing partners [who help with Olivia] when we’re out.”

Of course getting out to climb is not always free of challenge. She says sometimes on a weekend she and her husband bring their daughter to a crag, and they might only get a couple of routes in before they have to head home for nap times or other needs.  Still, together, the family has accomplished an 18 -mile backpacking trip in the Enchantments, and plenty more. Lindsey says taking Olivia with them is creating a strong sense of family and trust in each other. She hopes it will help her daughter build confidence and joy in the outdoors too.  When she is out with her daughter, the goals are not as “epic” as they used to be, but she “experiences the little things more,” and says it’s always worth the effort.

Another friend, Jen, has a three-year-old, an almost two-year-old, and another one on the way. She says she gets out to run and hike but has found some challenges with backpacking and climbing. While her kids love being outside, when they were younger they were not happy in backpacks or long car rides to get to climbs. For a while she and her husband wondered if they were “doing it wrong.” But they make it work. Sticking to local, short hikes with their kids and getting out on runs by herself has been her way of connecting with her outdoor life.

For me, a poignant moment with Caleb happened just this spring. We had been stuck inside for almost two weeks with a cold. I couldn’t stand being in the house anymore so I strapped Caleb to my back and headed down a trail behind our neighborhood that leads to the Spokane River.

I could hear him babbling along as we walked, and when I glanced over my shoulder I could see him reaching out to touch flowers or gangly weeds. Then, he stopped babbling as we saw a robin fly above us and perch on a branch nearby. In almost a whisper, he uttered “bir..bir…” in what may have been his first word in which he truly knew the meaning.

These days have been quieter physically since my son was born, but I have been struck by how grateful I feel when I’m climbing, hiking, or running. I’m more aware of spontaneous beauty and the people I’m with—the things that called me outside in the first place, even if it takes more planning, even if I don’t always get as far as I could on my own. // (Meredith Jeffries)

Meredith Jeffries is a writer, climber, hiker, and mom. Most days, you can catch her around Spokane on the trail, or with her nose in a book. This is her first article for Out There.

[Feature photo: Caleb’s first ice climb in North Idaho // Matt Jeffries]

For more ideas on recreating with kids, check out Amy S. McCaffree’s column, Out There Kids.

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It was visually kid-friendly, for sure, and provided structure and routine. I wanted this calendar to make me feel prepared and accomplished. It committed us to a bucket list of fun. With a school schedule no longer organizing our lives, I thought this calendar was a great idea.

Back in the 80s, I was a latch-key kid with older siblings who had fast-food jobs, which meant I spent too many summer days watching TV and only occasionally biking with friends to 7-11 when I had enough money for a Slurpee. There weren’t day camps or outdoor public pools, and we lived on acreage with only a few nearby kids my age. Mostly, I was bored, and I wanted to make my children’s summers better than my childhood memories.

Yet all my planned “epic” fun created overwhelming expectations for my family, with little kids who still needed help with sandals. I was trying to make our days feel pre-emptively exciting.

Though, in reality, I was already feeling busy enough while juggling motherhood and work-from-home responsibilities. By mid-July, I was deflated. Too many unrealistic plans.

From then on, I vowed to not create an obnoxiously full summer “to-do” calendar. Instead, I made spontaneous morning-of plans according to our energy levels, moods, and the weather forecast; sometimes I tentatively scheduled the night before. And I kept it simple: splash pads, playgrounds, picnics, pools. Plus, some family vacations and camping weekends.

Now that my kids are older, planning more detailed summer adventures is easier. We meet friends at a beach, plan a short morning hike or bike ride before it gets too hot, and if I want to make banana pancakes for breakfast, we relax and enjoy.

This summer, with free admission to City of Spokane aquatic centers, we’ll definitely be swimming more often. And some days, like past years, we may just put our small inflatable pool under our backyard slide, attach the water hose, and call it a water park. No packing swim bags, snacks, and lunches; instead, quick bathroom access and air-conditioned breaks inside.

I don’t have to be my kids’ awesome day camp director. Together, we now choose a mix of favorite and new activities to structure our summer days. Some will be better than others. Not every day has to be “amazing.”

Our Summer Adventure Guide is meant inspire you, not overwhelm you. Pick and choose a feasible few outings from the over 100 summer adventure ideas. Maybe try a couple of new ones. My kids want to try stand-up paddleboarding and ziplining this summer. We’ll see.

There are 10 weeks before school starts again. There’s no time to do it all, but enough to make it a memorable summer with plenty of time spent outside.

Find stories about kid-friendly activities, travel destinations, and recreation ideas in the Out There Kids archives, as well as Summer Adventure Guide articles.

The post Planning Summertime Family Adventures appeared first on Out There Venture.

She eventually made it to the front door, rode her bike through Riverfront Park down to Mission Park and back, and then ran 1.5-miles.
“This was a wonderful experience for me. I met some great people that I still stay in touch with,” she says. “I actually won that tri, but to be fair there were only nine people competing in the whole event.”

And then mommyhood was upon her; Teri was pregnant with twins. Her sons were born in the summer of 2005, and her next race was the Valley Girl Triathlon in 2007—a sprint tri featuring a one-third mile swim, 12-mile bike ride, and three-mile run.

“I signed up with Kirsten DeHart’s group, Moms in Motion, and we spent eight weeks training for this event. This group was fantastic,” says Teri. “Each woman was juggling motherhood and a love for athletics, and it was very satisfying to be connected with other women who were pursuing the same goals, especially during this time of my life. I have met some amazing women through this group who have enriched my life and have become wonderful friends. The spirit of camaraderie is magical, all of us working together for the simple goal of improving—improving our time, our technique, our fitness.”
Teri’s Valley Girl finish time was 1:13. “Looking back, that seems like a very slow time, but I was very satisfied with finishing it,” she says.

After this, her triathlon résumé revved up. In 2008, she competed in another sprint triathlon, and in 2009 completed both the West Plains WunderWoman sprint triathlon and the Spokane Triathlon, which was an Olympic distance. And last year, she ran a marathon and completed two sprint triathlons.

“I trained for the marathon to improve my triathlon times,” she says. “My best time for the sprint tri distance is 1:06, last year’s WunderWoman. My ultimate triathlon goal is to compete in San Francisco’s Escape from Alcatraz.”

She admits that tri events make her nervous, but she loves training and especially cycling. “When I bike with the boys, I usually pull them in a Chariot® bike trailer,” she says. “We crisscross the South Hill [trying] to sample as many parks as possible. Now that the boys are five years old, we have a tandem trail-a-bike that we will ride all over Spokane.”

When the weather is warm, she swims in Medical Lake and completes 30 to 70-mile rides on the Palouse on the weekends.

“I would like to train year round, but invariably the winter quarter is my busiest [one],” says Teri, who teaches online anthropology classes at Spokane Falls CC. During the winter, she skis every weekend and is a volunteer Nordic patroller at Mt. Spokane.

“I love triathlons because I like giving myself a challenge and seeing if I can meet my goals,” she says. “The fact that I couldn’t swim and now I compete in triathlons is personally rewarding.”

Here is Teri’s competition gear list:

SWIM ATTIRE: “I swim in a sports bra, tri top, and my bike shorts on the day of the triathlon. I don’t own a wetsuit—I rented one from Fitness Fanatics for the Spokane Tri,” she says. She also wears Speedo or TYR dark goggles and a swim cap.

BIKE & ATTIRE: Cervélo P2. “My favorite piece of gear is my tri bike,” says Teri. “I love this bike. For the first year that I owned it, every time I walked by it in the garage I would blow kisses to it. This bike makes me feel fast.” She uses Vision tri-bars, which came with her bike, and wears Sidi clipless cycling shoes, Zoot bike shorts, and her Moms in Motion Sugoi tri top for competitions.

HELMET: Giro Ionos

SUNGLASSES: Rudy Project

WATCH: Garmin Fourrunner 310XT

RUNNING SHOES: Saucony ProGrid Omni 9. “On my second triathlon, I did not wear socks and I still have the scars to remind me that saving 30 seconds is not worth that particular pain,” she says.

The post What’s Your Gear? TeriTucker:Triathlon Mom appeared first on Out There Venture.