Book: A Mile in Her Boots

A MILE IN HER BOOTS

Women Who Work in the Wild

by Jennifer Bové (Travelers' Tales, Inc., 2006)

Tighten up your bootlaces and head out into the wilderness with a diverse and intriguing group of women whose stories run the gamut of on-the-job adventures...

A Mile in Her Boots is an unprecedented collection of creative nonfiction by women who perform a variety of outdoor occupations, from smoke jumping to biology, river running to professional falconry, horse packing to atmospheric science, and more. Some of the contributors are established authors, others are first timers, but all share compelling tales from the frontlines of wilderness work. Authors include MaryJane Butters, Leslie Leyland Fields, Ana Maria Spagna, Susan Marsh, Gretchen Dawn Yost, and many other fine writers.

Here's an excerpt...

Jennifer Bové's Introduction to A Mile in Her Boots

There must have been a couple of big rocks stashed somewhere in my backpack, somebody's idea of a joke. That's all I could imagine because, seriously, I was struggling. Halfway up Killer Hill, a steep grade above Conboy Lake National Wildlife Refuge, I forced one leaden foot in front of the other as I moved toward the lookout from which I could observe sandhill cranes in the lakebed below. The climb was never easy, but suddenly it seemed impossible, prompting sweat and fatigue and even nausea. I could hardly even feel the crisp spring breeze that normally would have buoyed me up the trail. Finally, I had to stop, rest the spotting scope and its tripod on a stump, and drop the pack from my shoulders to check out its contents. Binoculars, field notebook. No rocks. Planting my hands on my knees, I bent over with a sigh. Morning was waning, and at this rate, there's no way I was going to catch up.

A ringing chorus erupted from the valley floor. Cranes were trumpeting a day-breaking territorial announcement to anybody who'd listen, and I knew they would venture out into plain sight for just a fleeting hour before the heat of the day set in and pushed them back into the cover of trees and brush until dusk. I had to get up to that lookout, above the wall of fir that obscured my view, while the birds were still flaunting their brightly colored leg bands for me to see through the scope. Those bands were key to revealing all kinds of important information: which individuals had returned from seasons past, who was mating with whom, and where the pairs were establishing nests. I had to get my data; that was the whole reason I was scaling Killer Hill at all.

Just then, I spied a little nutshell between my boots, cupped open to the sky. I sat down in the dirt and picked it up. It was an acorn shell from an Oregon white oak, barely big enough to sit atop my pinkie finger. As I studied it and tried to quell the ache in my gut, some latent voice of instinct spoke up, and a most peculiar thought began to take shape in my brain: I'm pregnant. Pregnant? Even though I could hardly fathom it, I knew right then that it was true, without so much as a plus sign on a plastic test strip as evidence. And the funny thing was that I wasn't particularly shocked or terrified at the realization in spite of the fact that this event was something, if anything, I'd planned against all my life. Somehow, sitting there in the wilds of southern Washington with Mt. Adams rising up across the valley with her own fiery volcanic seed in her belly, it was almost like I'd just let myself in on a special secret, and since nobody in all the world--not even my husband--knew this secret yet but me, I was free to just simply revel for a moment in the sweet surprise of it. The wee bud inside me might be just about the size to fit in the acorn shell, I thought.

Eventually, I stood up, dusted off my jeans, and shrugged the pack on again. I took a deep breath and tried not let myself consider the impact that all of this would have on my work. I'd spent the better part of six years breaking in my identity as a field biologist. It was just getting comfy--soft and form fitting like a good pair of boots. This was where I wanted to be, out here in the middle of nowhere with more bears and sharp-shinned hawks in earshot than people by far. Wilderness had seeped in through my pores and found fertile ground where it could spread root and flourish. I wasn't ready to leave, not now, not ever. But, my concern seemed a bit premature. After all, I hadn't actually seen a plus sign yet. The day was still young, the cranes were still calling, and I had a job to do. I tucked the tiny nutshell into my pocket and continued on up the hill.

As it turned out, I was pregnant with my first daughter, and it did take some getting used to. But once I'd settled into the course of change, and once I finally got the nerve to spill the news to the guys I worked with, I understood that I didn't have to spend the next eight months in a housedress with my bare feet propped up; I could still wade wetlands, wield a machete, and hike Killer Hill--just a bit more slowly. And even though I would stay home to raise my baby, I wasn't sentenced to leave the wild when I delivered her. How could I possibly leave it? Wilderness was my identity, ground in deep like dirt within the rings of my fingerprints. And it wasn't simply because I'd walked its woody paths or dipped into its sacred water; it was because I'd gritted my teeth, pulled muscles, worn blisters, and exhausted myself working in it. My blood, sweat, and tears had grown akin to pinesap, elk musk, and rain. And so it really wasn't until I became a mother that I learned that wilderness was not just the place where I worked, nor can it be bound by any kind of strict definition like distances to roads or the diversity of creatures within. Wilderness is a state of mind that so many of us enjoy in places, expansive or small, that still harbor elements of nature in its native condition. This mindset is a vital part of who I am, of who my children will be--thanks, in large part, to having spent my formative years immersed in the untamed outdoors. No ordinary job that I know of could offer such a durable sort of sustenance.

In 1980, eminent wildlife ecologist Anne LaBastille published a groundbreaking collection of historical observations and contemporary profiles called Women and Wilderness, which documented the burgeoning phenomenon of women living and working in the wild. "Across our continent, women are entering the traditionally male bastions of wilderness work and life," LaBastille wrote. "Sometimes alone, sometimes with families, they are proving beyond doubt that women do have wilderness in them."

And, indeed, they do--now more than ever. Twenty-five years after LaBastille broached the subject, I set out to assemble an unprecedented anthology of writing by modern women who have abandoned the bounds of society to earn a living in a wide spectrum of outdoor professions and who could attest, in their own words, to their proclivity for wild work. I sent out a call for stories to myriad individuals and organizations, a few of which included the Outdoor Writers Association of America, Women in Natural Resources, Women in Fire Service, Women in Fisheries, The National Wild Turkey Federation, and The Wildlife Society. My criteria for submissions were unrestricted, leaving room for interpretation by women in every imaginable wilderness-oriented occupation--the wilder and more remote, the better. I encouraged lively, engaging tales that revealed something about a woman's relationship to wilderness within the context of her job. The experiences could be funny, tragic, harrowing, enlightening; any subject was fair game. Of particular interest were the influences that led women to wilderness work, the ways nature has affected them, and the ways they feel they have impacted nature.

In response to my request, A Mile in Her Boots bloomed, offering the collective expression of thirty women who have ingrained themselves in the natural world as a way of life. Their professions are varied, ranging from smoke jumping to biology, river running to professional falconry, horse packing to atmospheric science, and more. Some of the contributors are well-established authors, while others are new to the literary world, but all present compelling tales of their experiences afield.

As you wind your way through the book, you'll get to know this diverse and intriguing group of women, each of whom extends her hand and welcomes you to explore the rough-hewn details of her trade. Rescue a nest of hatchling sea turtles amid a swarm of nude bathers on a Hawaiian beach with Judy Edwards; fire up a chainsaw and buck fallen trees with Ana Maria Spagna in the Washington rainforest; fish for a little trouble with MaryJane Butters, the first female backcountry ranger hired by the U.S. Forest Service; set out spur-of-the moment to a remote Pacific archipelago to study lizards with Maggie McManus;; track a pair of fugitive Montana mountain men with Susan Marsh; and keep moving on, as fire lookout Karla Theilen urges in her gripping story of survival. Twenty-seven more adventures await.

Each experience in this collection is unique and each perspective deeply personal, but the creed is the same throughout: we choose to work outdoors because the wild is unshakable in us. We are what we do. It's not about showing up the guys we work with or even trying to fill their size-12 Danners®; it's about the pure feat of breaking ground within ourselves. As Deborah McArthur so determinedly writes in the luminous final essay of the book, "We know who we are. We're wilderness women."

Come, turn the page, and walk a mile in our boots.

Review for A Mile in her Boots:

From Angie Dierdorff Petro, Out There Monthly:

After reading A Mile in Her Boots, I may never again complain about my aching back after a hard day at the laptop. For the women who contributed to this compilation of true stories, "going to the office" can mean anything from waking at dawn to set nets for the pink salmon run, to jumping from an airplane into a forest fire far below. Editor Jennifer Bové has brought together an inspiring group of smart, strong and gutsy women. The writing styles in A Mile in Her Boots are as varied as the profiled outdoor jobs and their natural settings. In "Caught for Sure," a sweet and short story by Mary Jane Butters (of Mary Jane's Farm) about her days with the Forest Service in the 70s, we are treated to an anecdote about a na•ve young woman with the fishing patience of a hungry bear. I especially loved Leslie Leyland Fields' visceral "Hurled to the Shark" and the Old Testament passages weaved into a tale of a seasonal battle with herself and the sea. Bové included a story of her own with "First Night at Field Camp," a brief glimpse at her work as a field biologist, trying to act like "one of the guys" to get along with the summer crew, while simultaneously praying she remembered to tuck tampons in her backpack. And I will never forget Lori Messenger's "Milk." The image of new mother Messenger sitting behind a tree, on break from setting controlled burns and smoke jumping, desperately cursing her inadequate hand pump while trying to express breast milk into a bottle had me laughing in sympathy and admiration. The women's work done in A Mile in Her Boots is all over the map. Literally. But a common theme in these stories is one of the intense satisfaction and the sense of being completely awake to their lives from working in nature and from using their muscles as intensely as they do their minds.