Guides Gone Wild

Today we're featuring Guides Gone Wild listener, Laura Siebert of 180Health! You can imagine how stoked I was to get a submission on GuidesGoneWild.com with a nice note from a listener who was getting inspired from the stories she was hearing - inspired enough to be planning her own section hike of the PCT. So of course I had to reach out to her, and of course there was A LOT more to Laura Si...

I am going straight to the top! My guest today is none other than Judy Camuso, the Commissioner of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. If you’re a guide, hiker, bird watcher, kayaker, hunter, game warden, fisherperson, whatever else in Maine, Judy has an impact on your experience in the outdoors. Wildlife-related recreation brings more money into Maine's economy than downhi...

If you don’t wind up loving these two, we can’t be friends any more. Today I’m bringing you my second ‘Real Womxn, Real Adventure’ feature episode (if you missed my first one with Mikayla Clarke, I hope you’ll go back and check it out at GGW Episode 8 ). CJ Mauger and Becky Wright started hiking together when they were in their mid-40s…. Yes, that's right, mid-40s. From an inauspicious first...

Those of you who are Mainers might be familiar with this week’s guide-in training. Jessica Carter is part of the Carter’s Cross Country Ski family of Western Maine. Her parents opened their first ski center in Oxford in the mid-80s, and followed it up with a second location in Bethel in 1992. The Bethel location took off, and is now the headquarters for all the Carter's operations, which incl...

If you don’t get some inspiration from this one, you have a heart of stone! Krista Alderdice is one of the founders of Blue Collar Runners , a website devoted to telling the stories of ordinary people who love to run. Krista and her husband Guy got into ultrarunning as "grown ups", Guy in his mid 30s and Krista in 2015, after a horrifying injury that we talk about in this interview. On o...

"Hey, New Girl, don't take any sh*t from anybody!" And so began the friendship between Jesika Lucarelli and Tallie Martin that spawned Great Mountain Guide Service of Millinocket, Maine. I happened across Great Mountain Guide Service on Instagram, when someone shared a picture from a trip these two were guiding on the Cutler Coast, except it looked like no overnight backpacking trip...

Make sure you listen until the end of this one - Laura Farrell drops some serious wisdom bombs. Here’s one of my favorites: “As you get older, focus on the things you CAN do, and don’t worry about the things you can’t do.” That’s fire in and of itself, but what makes it probably 10,000x more awesome is that Laura Farrell continues to KILL IT in her mid-60s. There’s still basically nothing she can’...

Have you ever had a friend say "you totally have to meet this person, they are awesome"? That’s what led me to my guide for today, Jane Koopman . If you’ve been with Guides Gone Wild since the beginning, or even if you’ve picked up on us recently, you probably listened to my interview with superstar Alicia Heyburn from Teens To Trails. Once Alicia was fairly certain I wasn't a total...

If the word ‘brave’ conjures visions of base jumping or grizzly wrestling or that crazy Alex Honnold movie Free Solo , then today’s episode is for you. Because as you’ll hear, the fact that your brain went there automatically is kind of BS. Amanda Hatley is a long-time retail industry pro and the founder and director of She Summits Co. , a company she launched in late 2019 to provide unique advent...

If you were one of the millions of people trying to get your hands on a new canoe or kayak this summer to amuse yourself during quarantine, you probably saw Christi Holmes front and center on the Old Town Canoe website. While many of us have spent the last several months eating too many Cheetos and trying to Jedi-mind-game schools into opening this fall (or was that just me??), Christi has been ri...

Holly Twining is the founder of Maine Yoga Adventures - a company that brings together her love of nature and the outdoors with her love of trying new things, the more random the better. Like the marriage of flow poses with beer and knitting. Belly dancing and Bellinis. Or Maces and Macrame - don’t ask me, check out her site, you can join her for that in September. If fun was an actual person, she...

Polly Mahoney 's calm and soft-spoken demeanor gives you zero indication of all the bad-*ss things she’s done outdoors, including living in the Yukon bush for a decade. Polly and her partner Kevin founded Maine's Mahoosuc Guide Service 30 years ago, and have managed to keep themselves busy year-round ever since offering dog sledding and canoeing trips suitable for beginners and enthusias...

Should we always be striving to go harder, go faster, be better in our outdoor endeavors?  If we do, what kind of message is that attitude sending? Whom are we impacting when we model those behaviors and goals?  What other things do we do or say in an outdoor adventure setting that might impact others’ willingness to try something new or join us on a hike or paddle or bike ride?   We are diving in...

Most Americans are lucky if they hit 4,000 steps most days. And then there’s Mikayla Clarke , who took on over 4,500 miles - successfully thru-hiking both the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail. Mikayla is my first guest on a new segment I’m calling ‘Real Womxn on Real Adventures’, which I’m hoping to experiment with more in some of the episodes going forward.    As I’ve been getting more i...

I started chasing Bri Dostie down several months ago, when I somehow stumbled across her exquisite illustrations online and saw that she was a newly minted Maine guide. She wound up being an extremely interesting onion to peel, as I was doing more research I kept uncovering more and more things she was involved in, starting up, and bringing attention to.   Bri’s focus on inclusion in fly fishing c...

Danielle Dorrie , in classic outdoor guide fashion, could barely stop moving long enough to chat with me back in April.   Danielle is a transplant, having moved to Maine from Florida in 2010 in a quest for seasons, snow, fall, and adventure. She became a tireless evangelist of Maine’s outdoor adventure scene almost immediately, while working in hospitality and later starting her own photography co...

It’s Shannon Bryan ’s nature to share every fun, unique, maybe-slightly-weird thing she discovers (usually with enthusiasm, boundless energy, and occasional references to tater tots). She wants everyone to love and enjoy all there is to do in Maine, just as much as she does. Shannon launched her website, Fit Maine , in 2015 as a side project where she could write about the entertaining and memorab...

“It’s just persisting and not talking yourself out of doing things.” My guide today is Jeanne Christie from Connect To Wilderness . (And speaking of connections, I was introduced to Jeanne through my very first GGW guest, Alicia Heyburn - Jeanne is the Outreach Program Manager for Teens to Trails, among all of the other impressive-as-hell things she does.) Jeanne is the definition of low-key when...

Let's consider the concept of inevitability. It’s probably hard for some of our younger listeners to wrap their heads around the idea that a girl or woman would be actively dissuaded from pursuing outdoor interests or a career in an outdoor-related industry. But that’s been the reality for many women, just as it has been for many people of color, LGBTQ, and other under-represented groups of o...

Welcome to the Guides Gone Wild Podcast! Get ready to fill your ears and minds with the stories of everyday, extraordinary women who’ll inspire you to take your outdoor adventure game to the next level. Whether you’re starting your journey from the couch or the trail head, this is the place for you. (And yes, I know how nervous I sound. Because, I AM!!) Send a text

Our guide for this inaugural interview episode is Alicia Heyburn . Alicia’s guiding cred ranges both broad and deep - she’s a registered Maine sea kayak guide, a wilderness first responder, long-distance bikepacker, and co-leader of an amazing outing club for Maine women, all of which we talk about in this episode. Alicia shares some great ideas for easing into new activities at any age, and as a...