From remote rural living to world traveler, something caused me to develop a deep interest in travel. Perhaps it is my name? I learned that my last name literally means “to go for a long walk” or “to go walk about! Wherever this travel wanderlust came from, it feels very normal and natural on me!
Growing up in NW Kansas, our farm was 12 miles from “town” and 150 miles from the closest town with a population of 10,000. Remote! Yes! Common sense, being accountable for your actions, response-abilities, sense of community, patience in the face of things I could not change and loving family. That was my start.
I almost didn’t leave! Fear had me a bit paralyzed. Athletic scholarship offers invited me to step out. After community college, I accepted a scholarship to throw the javelin at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green Kentucky! That became the first time I ever traveled East of Salina, Kansas. Aside from a college education, athletic success and new friends, my life changed. Suddenly, I saw that there was a HUGE world out there and I felt a desire growing to see it all. Well, at least as much of it as possible.
So I started taking opportunities that showed up providing me an opportunity to discover, experience, learn, grow and meet new people!
I accepted a graduate teaching assistantship at the University of Utah mostly because of their reputation and the opportunity to be within a day’s drive of 75% of our National Parks. I taught , got involved in mountaineering and outdoor leadership, completed my doctorate, taught at several universities and then had a “BFO”. That is, a blinding flash of the obvious!! I didn’t want to teach, I wanted to help people improve the quality of their own lives!! Duh!
That shifted a lot of things for me. For one,I felt like the life was being sucked out of me at the University. For another, I was certain I wanted to teach people how to learn rather than to memorize and pass tests. I wanted to become good at teaching people to think for themselves, get clear about their own priorities, and in essence, to learn to be grounded in their sense of who they are and live a life that mattered to them!
I resigned and put my things in storage. I loaded my Subaru with my camera, books, camping gear, and my bicycle. And off I went exploring my own country, interviewing people, visiting national parks, touring through SW Canada, camping my way down the West Coast, and traveling nearly all the way down the Baja. Eventually, I explored the Southeastern states, camped along the Swanee River, explored the Florida Keys and the Everglades and headed North. By the time I reached the headwaters of the Chattahoochee River in North Georgia, I’d traveled over 20,000 miles in 12 months and interviewed dozens of people. A University teaching offer from California State University in Northridge set me headed West for one more go at teaching. I was excited to share what I had learned.
During that year plus of traveling, I interviewed a lot of people. University presidents, reading specialist, Outward Bound instructors, administrators at the “How to Love” school, personnel and training director at Disneyland, the staff at Carl Rogers “Center for the Studies of the Person”, Richard Bolles (“What Color Is Your Parachute”), Roger von Oech (“A Whack Up The Side Of Your Head”), Bill Glasser’s Center, Senior Researcher at the Menninger Center, Juvenile Detention Center staff and more. I also participated in a Vision Quest with Sun Bear, attended a medicine wheel gathering in Florida with Native American elders, helped build a sweat lodge for Grandfather Black Elk and spent an enormous amount of quiet still time in nature.
After teaching one more year, while I loved my students and our interactions, I knew I was through with University teaching. My enthusiasm waned, I was exhausted and felt drained.
With no job or job clarity in sight, I chose to leap into the void and figure it out step by step. At the gathering in Florida, a conversation with a new friend had been embarrassingly insightful! She asked me what, if time, talent, training, money, etc. were not important, what I would do. I gave her an answer. She told me that was BS!! I was embarrassed by what I was about to say and looked over my shoulder to see if anyone was listening. In a near whisper, because what I was about to say seemed to impossibly unbelievable, I told her I would like to be a corporate trainer. She didn’t laugh!
I spent over a year helping mom and dad on the farm, getting things painted and fixed up, giving dad some relief from all the work and cooking with mom, I moved to Boulder, Colorado. Within a few months, I facilitating work for my very first corporate client, IBM, facilitating three-day creativity training at their facility in Austin, Texas.
Business grew from there with opportunities to work with amazing clients. And, a clear intention to always have balance in my life and never let WORK dominate. Between projects, I traveled! My first trip out of the country, I was terrified and didn’t know how to do what I was about to do! BUT…I was clear that if I never started, I would never learn!
So, I launched into a new adventure that changed my life. Now, after more than thirty years of travel, I feel pretty confident that I can go anywhere in the world that appeals to me and figure out a way to make it work!