Extreme outdoor adventures taught me more about femininity than a beginner ever could.

Growing up in the suburbs of Denver, my life was a fairy tale. I was definitely raised like a Disney princess, sent to group dance classes to learn upper-class etiquette before being introduced to society at a dance for the first time. My father was a successful businessman and a man of action. He told me the secret to life was to never show weakness and never let people see you cry. My mother was the perfect trophy wife, a cheerleader who married a rich man.

Who knows? Maybe I'm living this life in an alternate universe, married to a lawyer somewhere, with fake breasts and a cabinet full of red wine.

But my father's suicide brought the world down around me.

After his death, my mom and brother fled to California. I said, “I don't want anything” and moved to the mountains to be a skier.

Skiing showed me what I really care about.

I skied hard and furiously that first season, smashing the top of every bump on every turn, attacking skiers like they were my high school tormentors. More than once, I got on the lift with a cute ski guy who would inevitably comment that I skied like a guy. The only way they knew I was a girl was because of the braids sticking out from under my helmet. It was the sweetest thing anyone could say to me because I thought being a woman made me weak.

After the season ended, my mom came to visit to find her little princess working on a ropes course. Her first glimpse of me was of me suspended 50 feet in the air, covered in glue, with no makeup on, and my leg hair sticking out from under my shorts for six months. She begged me to come back to California with her, to shave my legs, put on some makeup, and act like a woman for God’s sake. I told her I was staying to pursue my dream of becoming a ski instructor.

Even if we had the money, my mother wouldn’t have supported this dream. I had to earn my certification in wilderness first responders and high-angle rope rescue the hard way, by becoming a volunteer firefighter. There was no class in magic school to prepare you for the “burn to learn” part of a firefighter’s certification. I purged the remnants of my femininity by carrying heavy equipment up and down the stairs of a burning tower, breathing compressed air from the self-contained breathing tank on my back.

From there, I made my way to ski patrol in Stevens Pass, Washington. I was no longer content to just smash the tops of bumps. My patrol route required me to shoot down entire hillsides using snow throwers and sticks of dynamite that I threw into the slopes.

I felt strong and capable, but I couldn’t pass my level 2 instructor certification. Zeke, the director of the ski school I attended, who was like a real-life Ken doll and skated better than he looked, sat me down and told me I would always fail this test because I didn’t have the skill to skate at a high level. I was more daring than technical – the only degree I ever passed on my first try was the diagonal.

And then the water carried me away.

I wasn’t ready to give up on my dream, but the ski season was over. I decided to spend the off-season guiding whitewater rafters, even though I had never rafted before I started training. I had guided all the commercial rivers in Washington State, but the most famous was the Skykomish. In normal years, it was scary enough. However, this was a high-water year, which unleashed the fury of the Sky River. Its towering waves howled like a scorned woman, especially at the river’s most famous rapids, the Boulder Drop.

I was terrified when I first saw the Boulder River. It was early in the season, and the melting snow had pumped up the rushing water. We stopped at the river’s edge to survey the line, only to see that it wasn’t just one line, but a series of three—each capable of flipping a raft into powerful currents. I could see the approach and the line, but there was no room for error.

We made it through the first two pools with ease until we reached the last point. We tried to keep going and hold our line, but the river had other plans. It pushed us up onto a huge rock at the bottom of the pool. We threw ourselves over the sides of the raft, trying to get it out but failing. We ended up swimming through the massive hydraulic systems, defeated.

That night, Shane, the owner of the rafting company, approached me by the campfire. His shaggy, flowing hair and tanned skin told the story of his life on the water. Shane believed that rivers were spiritual and that water was the most feminine of the basic elements. He suggested that I paddle in an inflatable kayak that year instead of a larger boat, so I could learn to feel the currents. For the first time in years, I had a problem I couldn’t solve with brute force and dynamite. I ended up swimming every current on the Sky River that year at one point or another, and I learned to think like water.

Trying to paddle a small boat across the Boulder Drop during the spring thaw would have been foolish, so I managed to avoid my enemy for a while. But by mid-summer, I knew I would have to try again. When I finally did, I lined up perfectly for the first and second paddles, but I veered off on my way to the third pond. I knew that trying to cross the third pond wouldn’t work. Instead, I let the water take its course and paddled back out of the Boulder Drop. I was dry and straight, and the other boats were cheering.

Before rafting, I believed in the masculine power of anger, fire, muscle, and heat. I thought that willpower alone could move mountains. Boulder Drop taught me about the energies of depth and focus—the energy that can carve the Grand Canyon as well as heal disease and water crops. It is powerful, moving, and relentless.

The following winter, I returned to Stevens Pass, and Zeke retested me for my Level 2 instructor. After reconnecting and balancing my masculine and feminine energy, I glided through the turns and followed gravity down the mountain. He was forced to pass me with high marks, despite what he had said the year before.

I'm getting old but I'm still living the dream

I wasn’t going to be a figure skating instructor. My knees were in a different position. By the time I was 26, a doctor advised me to stop figure skating and get an office job. Instead, I embraced the feminine healing arts of massage and yoga.

My childhood rowing training got me a job at high-end spas during the summer, where the pay was higher than rowing. When my mom came to visit, she saw her little girl putting on her makeup again and enjoyed spa days with her daughter much more than a double ropes ride.

I stopped doing my patrol duties and went back to teaching others how to ski down the slopes. In the process, I was able to extend my skiing career ten years longer than doctors thought possible—all by focusing on the feminine energy I once tried to escape.

I will always cherish the feeling of jumping out of a roaring helicopter onto pristine snow. However, I treasure that decade of snowy mornings and smooth turns that will forever remain in my memory. Long, flowing curves that, along with my inner self, have become so much stronger and sweeter by learning to accept all parts of me, both male and female.

Conclusion

Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, I was able to get knee braces that allowed me to ski again. After a break of nearly 15 years, I returned to skiing in the 2022-2023 season with a trip to the Deer Valley as well as a trip to Bulgaria.