Cat: Hey everyone, welcome to the Broad Beta Podcast. This is Cat, and I'll be hosting today with Broad Beta co-founder Jeannie Wall. Our guest on this episode is Jan McDonald Bradley.

Jan became the first female river guide in the Tetons after moving there in 1973. She backcountry skied there before it was cool, back when Jackson Hole was known for having 10 men to every woman. Jan found her way to Jackson when she left behind a difficult family life in New York.

She found empowerment through travel, outdoor sports and connection with wilderness. In this interview, Jan describes the journey of raising two daughters and how doing so eventually led her to face the demons that characterized her own childhood. We're so honored that Jan shared her story with us, and we were inspired by her strength, courage and perseverance as both a mother and a strong woman in a man's world.

This episode does contain curse words and sections about sexual and domestic abuse. Please be advised. Without further ado, let's welcome Jan Bradley.

Jeannie: The whole impetus for Broad Beta is to share women's stories, mountain women's stories that aren't getting heard. Stories like yours where you have so much to share about being the only woman river guide and one of few who were pushing tele-skiing for a little while. It’s fascinating to learn about your upbringing and how you got the courage to do what you did.

I can’t wait to expound on what you mentioned in an email, “I just wasn't afraid. I didn't think about it. Like the guys were never oppressive or sexist or anything.”

Jan: Well, they were, but I laughed at them.

Jeannie: Okay, there we go. So those are the gems for everyone reading about the things that you did and the barriers you broke. We can all get inspired from hearing your truths. That's what Broad Beta is all about, we are sharing these stories to inspire all of us and give us the courage to laugh at those who don’t believe in us, and go after our dreams.

Jan: Exactly, and… I ran away.

I didn't know until a few years ago that I ran away because I was sexually assaulted by my father. I was brought up in New York and told I was worthless. I was told I was ugly, fat, stupid, everything.

So when I ran away from home, I ran a long way away to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And in 1973, 1974, there were probably 10 guys to one girl, and all of a sudden I got all this attention that I had never had before. And it felt really good, but it was also sort of empowering because all these men believed in me.

And I thought, if they believe that I can do this, then why shouldn't I? I'd never had anybody be supportive before. It wasn't my idea.

I didn't go out there and say, hey, I'm going to be the first female whitewater guide. The guys I was working with thought I was competent and they said ‘you want to try this’?

We're going to start training you. And I said sure. It was romantic in that it's not only just learning how to read water, but it was learning how to read nature. And through that, it was nature that nurtured me into more and more and more of that. That felt good, because I grew up in Catholic school. I graduated before Title IX.

We weren't allowed to do any sports. Patent leather shoes reflect your underwear. It was a very closed situation and my parents were very Catholic. You had to toe the line. When I left and found this freedom, and I felt accepted, supported and loved by this community, I just continued to express that in all outdoor ways.

My two passions literally were food. My grandmother was a caterer. And I started working in my aunt and uncle's restaurant when I was 12 years old. Part of being hired as a guide for this river company, was being the first ones who did lunches, dinners, and overnights. It became a very popular float trip company. It started out very small. It was me, the two owners and one other person. And they had a new baby. It was like a family.

So I got to design the food part of it too. And then it got too big. And then we hired a chef to put all the coolers together for all the different trips. I ended up being the lead guide after a few years because I had seniority, which was great because I got to have my choice of trips, et cetera. And they didn't know how to dutch oven and cook.

And so we would do these wonderful sessions of making brownies or chicken in a pot, let's do all these things. It was met really well and to this day I still have guy friends who still thank me for teaching them how to cook outside.

Cat: I'm just backing up a little bit. Which river company was it? I lived in Jackson for a long time so I’m curious.

Jan: Mad River.

Cat: Oh, yeah. Cool.

Jan: And to this day, if you go there, there's a whitewater museum and I'm on the wall.

Cat: So cool. Did you have to fight your way into that job at all or convince anyone that you had it in you? Or do you really feel 100 percent you were just welcomed with open arms into a guiding job there?

Jan: I think that I just had the kind of personality that I got along with everyone. At the time, I don't know if you remember, but where they put in and took out from river trips, one was called Sheep Gulch. It was a very narrow little back-down dirt road, and the drop off went into the river.

It was really, really scary to back a trailer down there, but I never got scared. I just listened to the guys, and I did what they told me.

To this day, I can look at the mirrors, and I can back anything. A lot of people will go, oh, just let her do it. Just get out, let her do it. And my daughters are like, oh, Dad, just let Mom do it, Mom's got this.

Cat: I love that so much.

Jan: So I think because I was easy going…I remember the first day, they pushed a boat out into the river, put me in it, and one guy came with me and he goes, okay, we're just gonna do this. The whole thing was about reading water. Time after time after time, learning how to read water.

I had been on the water but I just didn't understand the concept of it until I did. I just kept doing it until I got really comfortable with it and they were comfortable with me. I took all the first aid classes and the advanced first aid too.

I had friends who were park service people and I learned about the habitat of all eagles. And what are those flowers? And what is going on over here? It was just lovely. It was like the school of life.

I was very well appreciated and accepted by my peers. The older guys, they were in their 40’s at the time. You know, we're in our 20’s and they were blown away that Breck O'Neill actually hired a woman. I worked at the Calico out on Village Road and I got notes on my car that said, it takes balls to be a boatman.

I don't know if you know Charlie Sands. Well, back in the day in the 70s, he was a pretty crazy alcoholic guy. But he since has been clean for many years. I recently saw him at a memorial service and I talked to him and said, do you remember what you did? Do you remember what you put on my car? And he goes, no. And I said, you told me it took balls to be a boatman. Look at all the women out there now. What do you think about that now? And he goes, I made a mistake and he grabbed me and hugged me. And he said, you broke the barrier. I always liked you. But I had to be a gruff. I had to be a jerk.

But because I was a woman, I got all these really wonderful things. ABC American Sportsmen were doing these interviews. There were three. One was a climber, one was me as a river guide. I don't even remember who the third person was but my job was to take Cheryl Tiegs down the river.

At the time, she was a big… model? I guess you would say. When we put in the river and started, there were helicopters. I mean, it was really a big deal.

But as I went around the first bend, I got a 40 moon salute from the guys, you know, and the camera was panning up there. It was just one of those things that you can't take back. It was, it was lovely, you know, it was fun. It was their way of saying good for you, and that happened a lot.

Cat: I do have to ask Jan, as you're telling these stories, I'm really curious if you had any difficulty trusting these men from the beginning, having been a survivor of sexual abuse, and what that was like?

Jan: Oh, yeah. Well, you're vulnerable.

Cat: Yeah.

Jan: So it's hard, but you have to hold your power, and you have to believe that you're capable.

And I didn't.

Cat: And that doesn't happen overnight. I mean, it's just so amazing to me that you were able to go into that situation, like run away from the situation that you grew up in, and then go into a new situation in Jackson with so many men around and be so confident and empowered.

Jan: Yes, I had big fears, but I didn't know about my father until three years ago, four years ago now.

Cat: Wow. Yeah.

Jan: But you know how they always say the body knows the score.

Cat: Yes. I was thinking about that book while you were talking actually.

Jan: It's absolutely true. I was the oldest of five kids, my mom had to go to work, my dad was unpredictable. So from the time I was really young, my youngest sister is nine years younger than me, I was like her mom.

So I had skills, survivor skills, and I used those. Part of that is called control. Good, better and different. How you survive is control. And I had a lot of control over what was going to happen to me, or what my circumstances were. I tried to stay as safe as I could.

I think it was just innate. I feel incredibly, not just lucky, but blessed that I survived the way I did. I mean, I always questioned my worth. I was always afraid that I wasn't enough. And this gave me so much power to believe in myself. The whitewater was huge.

In those days, we had 30-foot Moravias. We stood in the center. It was a wooden platform that you put sand and varathane on to hold your feet in position. You pushed your one foot against a big wooden box, and the other foot was against your cooler. You stood up. You weren't sitting down in those days.

Where we had lunch was right above Lunch Counter, right above Kahuna. And there were always, during high water, these gigantic logs and stuff hanging out. It was a scene. Photographs had started. There's people coming down there taking pictures of you, and you're pulling out of this really hard place in high water and getting your boat lined up perfectly and standing. So anyway, I think that all those things led me to feel comfortable and capable in what I was doing.

Of course, there was inner turmoil, but I was young. I was figuring it out. What I found in nature was what healed me; would help to heal me.

Jeannie: I’m going to go back to what you said earlier, Jan, when you were learning to navigate nature with the river and being thrown into the fire. Can you speak more to how nature healed you? How outer nature healed your inner nature?

It feels like that was a really powerful force for you. I know you were also a telemark skier and spent time off the river, in the mountains, in the Tetons, who wouldn't?

And you had girlfriends there too. It seems like all of that was maybe a healing force. But I'd love to learn more about that.

Jan: You know, growing up, we didn't ever go anywhere. We never camped, we never did anything. The furthest I ever went from Rochester, New York was Boston.

Jeannie: How the heck did you pick Jackson? Not that it wasn't the place to be at the time, but still…

Jan: Well, I had started skiing. My parents belonged to this group of people who would go out on Saturday nights. And Sunday morning, I woke up and there was a pair of skis, wooden skis, with Cubco bindings.

I would go down to the park, and I would walk up and down, and just teach myself to ski. And then when I was a sophomore in high school, I got on a bus that our town sponsored, and we would go off on ski trips. So I would just go off skiing, and I didn't know anybody.

I would go meet people, and it was pretty fun. That led to skiing in high school, and there weren't any women skiing, there were just guys. So I developed all these friendships, and we had great times. When I went to college at Alfred State University, in my second year, I was on the ski team there. I had good friends that were like, hey, we have Alan term, which means you have the month off after Christmas. We're going on a ski trip. You want to come?

So the day after Christmas, which happened to be my 20th birthday, I go to Cleveland and we leave, packed into this small little car. There's four of us and we drive directly to Vail. You get out in the parking lot, your boots are frozen. And that was the start. So we went from Vail to Aspen to Snowbird. One of the guys we were with, his brother lived in Jackson. So we went to Jackson. We were there for a couple of weeks, and then my friends were going back, and I said, I'm not going, I'm staying. My dearest friend, Jim, he said you have to go back and finish college. You have to get your degree.

And I was like, no, I don't.

Jeannie: Wow. So I grew up Catholic, and I had a whole experience of going west, my sophomore year in high school, but there was no way in hell that my dad would let me stay out West at that point. I would have been kidding myself to think of not going back.

But obviously you had this inner drive and confidence to just say, this is what I want, and to know that you felt that so profoundly to just do it.

Jan: I remember driving into Jackson Hole and thinking, oh my goodness, this is the most magnificent thing I've ever seen in my life. You know, it was just amazing.

Jeannie: Why would anyone leave?

Jan: Exactly. You know how it is. I mean, you're working really terrible jobs. I'm pulling it together at first by cleaning rooms. I was waitressing at the Elks Club. That was entertaining. You can only imagine what that was like. A little pinchy of the butt. I was like, no, go away.

Jeannie: The Calico was an upgrade.

Jan: Oh, the Calico was great. I worked at the steak pub. I worked catering with a couple of girlfriends who had started a catering company. We were doing all these commercials, like a Jeep commercial and different commercials, doing food.

And so my outdoor life was woven with food, too. I got a job at Flag Ranch, the gateway to Yellowstone. We were so naughty, we would go pinch hot springs and go camp overnight. We skied into Yellowstone and I got to know all the NOLS guys because they were coming through.

You know, you're learning from all these people and a lot of them were very good outdoors people. So I learned a lot. And I just kept going with them and doing it and becoming more and more comfortable. I met this guy who ended up being my husband. I used to see him at the ski area when I was working for the Jackson Hole Ski Corporation. We had a B pass line where you go up the back stairs as a B passer. I used to see him and I was like, oh, no, he's a good looking guy. I got done working at the Calico. He was an ER nurse at the hospital at St. John's. We both ended up at this party. And, you know, started talking. We were kind of the only sober people there at the time.

So he said, hey, you want to go skiing tomorrow? And I was like, sure. So he said, well, I'll meet you and pick you up. We're going to go up Teton Pass, and go to Twin Slides. He brought a friend with him who was Whit Thurlow, who at the time was the North American telemark champion. Of course, I had wooden skis, the Bona skis, and I had the little regular cross-country ski boots, nothing at all technical.

Jeannie: That's so crazy.

Jan: We went to the top of Glory Bowl, went over and down Twin Slides.

Cat: Oh my God.

Jan: I think because I didn't complain and I made it, they were teaching me how to telemark, that as soon as we got to the bottom, they go, hey, let's go to Jack Dennis Outdoor Shop. They have passenger high-tour boots. You need those.

So I went and bought a pair of passenger high-tour boots. This was 1980 and I started skiing the pass all the time. And then into the Park, and all the things you did in the spring. I started taking them to the ski area, and in those days, you had to wait until spring and sign out to go to Four Pines and all those out-of-bounds places that year.

Cat: You had to wait until the spring to go out to Four Pines?

Jan: That was all closed until spring. And then you had to sign out with the Ski Patrol. And I worked for the Ski Corporation. I was a ski host. Ski ghost, as they say.

Cat: And you got to pass through that, I'm assuming. Yeah.

Jan: In charge of wine and cheese parties and beer slaloms.

Cat: Oh my gosh.

Jan: It was insane in those days. It was just fun. Fun, fun, fun. And there weren't the rules that there are now. You know, litigation, et cetera, just didn't exist in those days. Everybody was friends. Everybody was having fun. You sat in the tram dock building, waited for the tram to come down. There was never a line. Just get in, go back up.

Yvonne Chouinard was doing ice climbing and mountaineering kinds of things. He was teaching people. I got little snippets of that. Then when avalanche courses came out, of course, we were all taking avalanche courses because we were skiing in the back country all the time. And yeah, it was fantastic.

Cat: When did avalanche courses become a thing?

Jan: Maybe ‘82, ‘83, something like that. And then it was just for a few people. In the beginning, nobody knew anything. Lucky to be here.

Cat: Did you all just guess and go out and did you pay attention to the weather and have any focus on the snowpack at all? Or did you just go out and ski?

Jan: We did, but it was more like, hey, I wonder how much powder is here. And more like, well, maybe we shouldn't do any kind of gullies. Maybe we shouldn't ski, you know, that. You could see cornices. You definitely saw avalanches. You were aware that things could happen. So I knew what to look for.

I had a few times when the snowpack just sinks and you're like, uh-oh, but I never had anything happen.

Jeannie: I think of that time period and the gear, and people weren't skiing stuff that was as big. So there's a little bit of luck involved that you didn't end up on that terrain as often as people do today. And the access wasn't there. So it kind of saved you a little bit, but you still could enjoy powder skiing.

Jan: Well, there were rules, like Jackson Hole Ski Corporation, they didn't let you go out of bounds. And there were rules in the Park. You did not not ski in the park, except for in the spring. And you had to sign out. I mean, they knew where you were.

It was such a smaller group of people that, I don't know, I always felt safe.

Jeannie: So you landed at some point with Renny Jackson - who was the head commie ranger in the Tetons - at Everest Base Camp with a group of women. What's that story?

Jan: Oh boy. So 1986, Sherry Funke, Jim Dorwood, another gal named Anita who worked for the Park service, but she was not a ranger. And my husband-to-be and myself. Dick Bass, from Snowbird, was supporting a female group that was going to climb Everest. And we knew Renny was there and Renny asked us to come. We flew to Lukla and then started walking from there.

Jeannie: At this point, you're just going as a group to just have fun and see it.

Jan: It's just the five of us, yeah. And because we all knew Renny, and because we got an invitation, and everyone had experience, everyone felt comfortable. It's always good to go with climbing rangers.

So when we were on our way up, and of course you're taking your time, we were at Namche Bazaar for a while, then we were up at Pheriche. At Pheriche, I think it's like 17,600’, there was a gigantic snowstorm that lasted five days. We were in our tents for five days, taking Diamox , getting down to hardly any food because the yaks had to be fed because there was no food for them, and they were supporting other climbers and people and stuff.

So we could hear avalanches all the time. You know, you're just in this little valley, and there was nothing we could do. We just had to stay and wait.

We had gone to Everest Base Camp just before that. Once that hit, we just stayed there. But we went from Pheriche up to Kala Patthar, 18,200’, then back down into Everest Base Camp.

It was so overwhelming because the women, they were beautiful women, are in the biggest North Face tents there were and they had pools of water in them. And the Sherpas were filling big bags and buckets of water and putting them in the pool. And these women were all clean and wearing makeup. They had “baths” in their tents!

I walked into one of the tents, they've got Mary Kay, they're all... And I hadn't taken a shower in weeks.

Jeannie: That's so crazy to me. Do you think those women asked for that, or do you think the porters just assumed that they needed this princess treatment? I can't imagine if these women went to climb Everest, that they were thinking they were going to get hot baths in their North Face tents.

Jan: Right? Yeah. There was one girl named Kelly. She had the tenacity. You could see she could do it, you know.

Jeannie: Well, and who knows what Dick Bass was promoting. I'm super curious because they may not have known what they were in for.

Jan: Well, then that big storm came. And we were supposed to go to 20,000’ with a friend from Jackson as well, and go up over this pass. All of that was canceled because there was too much snow. So I think that one of the reasons that they didn't make it to the top was how much snow there was in avalanche conditions and everything else.

So they did not make it, but it was really interesting to go to Everest Base Camp. I was kind of blown away. It was so dirty and messy.

Jeannie: And you know, even then, they cleaned up a lot of it, but still.

Jan: Oh, yeah. I think they've cleaned it up a lot more now. I just remember being so blown away by what it was, what the whole thing looked like, and the people who were there. There were flags from all nations, and it was really cool. It was great. It was interesting. But we didn't spend much time there. You know, we were there for a little while, and then went back down to Pheriche.

We were on a year-long journey, and we were just seeing how far our money was going to go. I was with my husband at the time, and Nepal kind of ate us alive as far as weight loss and sickness and all that, and each of us had lost 25 pounds, and we needed to go someplace to recover.

We had friends at the US. Consulate for Health, but they didn't have the right drugs, and they sent us to Bangkok to get the right drugs for my husband because he had a bad kind of amoebic dysentery, I don't remember exactly what it was.

But anyway, Brian and I took, oh gosh, we walked from Everest Biggest Base Camp to Jerry where you got the bus into Kathmandu. We walked all the way up.

Jeannie: That's a journey.

Jan: It was, it was quite a journey. It was pretty amazing. And we had our own tent and stayed in our tent, instead of being in tea houses, because we were thinking that we would stay healthier that way, which didn't really work.

But from there, we went to Thailand, and we were in Bangkok for a little bit. And then down to Koh Samui, which was in Koh Phangan. We took a supply boat out and met this guy who was opening up a resort. He was Thai, and married to a Thai woman. He said, hey, if you come and stay at this resort, you can stay there for free. I'll trade you baking lessons for Thai cooking classes.

So we stayed there for weeks. It was wonderful, really fun, really interesting. You know, to develop a female friendship with this woman. I remember saying to her, hey, you want to go swimming? And she said, well, we don't swim.

And I said, well, you could try. You know, we could go stand in the water and look at stuff.It was the first time I recognized the cultural difference, like completely dressed, you know, pants, pantaloons, long sleeves, the whole thing. I ran and got covered because I didn't want to be disrespectful.

Cat: Let's back up for a minute and I'll tell you about how this whole trip came to be. So after Jan and her husband, Brian, got married, they left Jackson and moved to Seattle and bought a house.

They remodeled that house while both working full time jobs. The following spring, the house sold and they took $20,000 and decided to travel for a year. They bought one way tickets to Kathmandu. Anyway, so here we are in Koh Phangan. From there, they went to Northern Thailand. They worked at an opium rehabilitation clinic in the jungle, in the Bermuda Triangle.

They traveled down through Malaysia to Singapore. Ultimately, they went to New Zealand and reconnected with some Kiwis that brought their bikes over from the US. They bought a car there and hiked, biked and fished for three months and ultimately gave their bikes to those Kiwis.

After the year-long trip came to an end, Jan and Brian decided to move across the country to New York. They wanted kids and they wanted to be closer to family.

Jan: From the time the girls were really young, the Adirondacks were a wonderful place to go. We would take boats to islands and do island camping. It was always with just moms and kids.

We would have these wild, fun, crazy adventures in the mountains. We had this thing called the camping fairy where the kids had to build homes or places for fairies to stay in the woods. So they would become very elaborate with these fairy houses. Then the camping fairy would come and bring treats, which was, of course, always us, and it was like pennies where it was a piece of candy. To this day, my kids are 35 and 32, and they still build fairy houses.

Eventually, the pull of the western rivers and mountains was too strong. We made our way back to Bozeman in 2001, when our daughters were in third and seventh grade. You know, it was so much easier to be here. We would do trips down to the desert, we did the Middle Fork, we did the Main, we did all kinds of river trips. And with friends, of course, we did the Grand Canyon.

Cat: How have you imparted empowerment and confidence to your daughters?

Jan: This is such a funny thing that you're asking me this, because yesterday, my oldest called and she was sick as a dog. She just said, Oh, Mom, can you make me some special chicken noodle soup?

I said, Sure. And I said, you’re not going to believe what I'm doing. So I was telling her about trying to put some bullet points together and trying to think about my life and stuff. And then her sister came in.

I literally cried because I had no idea the influence I had on them. Like Elena, she's now 32, she seemed kind of lost when she was done with high school.

And I said, You don't have to go to college. Why don't you take a gap year and find something that you feel really passionate about? And she said, well, I found this NOLS course. They're going to India. They're going to Nanda Devi. I totally encouraged her. When she came home she said, I want to be a nurse. I want to be a nurse. I want to do this in the world.

At the same time, Kayla was a senior in college. She was in psychology. I encouraged her to apply for an internship that was something outside the box. You don't have to do what the University of Montana says. You can find things online. Go search something out. Go find something. So through the University of Oregon, she found this program in Phnom Penh in Cambodia. It was a six month commitment and it was the Cambodian people re-establishing their professional people in their country; lawyers, doctors, nurses, dentists, because of Pol Pot. Everything had been destroyed during that period of time. So Elena was gone from August till December. Kayla left in December. Then Elena and I went to Cambodia in March, and we travelled a bit and then the three of us traveled together.

But yesterday, they were both saying that the fact that they were able to go halfway around the world where they couldn't talk to anybody…you know, I remember saying goodbye to Kayla. The first night she arrived and she had to go to work the next day. And she was so afraid to put the top down on the computer because she was going to have to be alone. And by the time we got there in March, it was absolutely amazing.

I mean, the friendships, the people, the people from all over the world, the things that she was doing, the differences she was making with kids...tere was no money for any kind of drugs or anything and a lot of the kids had psychological problems, ADD and ADHD.

She was choosing peppermint oil and lavender because you could get all kinds of essential oils over there. And it was working. It worked. She had these twins that were off the wall crazy.

Jeannie: Not many moms would send their kids off to Cambodia at that time and say Hey, go do this. This is great.

Cat: Yeah. When you say it, it sounds like, of course, I encouraged this and that. And that's so foreign to me from the parenting I grew up with.

I think it's really cool. It seems like the biggest thing that you instilled in them was this fearlessness, as well as an openness to what there is to learn in different parts of life.

Jan: Yes. From the time they were young, we always did trips. Brian did a lot of, not Doctors Without Borders, but Operation Smile. When we lived on the East Coast, he went to Guatemala. He went to all these different places and so the kids were watching their dad do that too. So we each tried to teach them about the world.

They're both remarkable people and doing really well. And who would have known that a mom who had so many horrific things happen to her could end up having two girls like that. They've given back big time.

Jeannie: That's a testament to how much you healed yourself and found yourself. I don't know if it's hard to talk about, but you said you moved back home when you wanted to have a family. But how was that journey for you?

Jan: Horrible. I couldn't wait to get out of there.

Yeah, it was really impactful on the girls too. My mom and dad would come and visit. They lived in Rochester, and would visit. I told my mom, you can never leave my children alone with Dad ever, ever, ever. Please don't ever let Dad drive those kids. I would say that to my mom, but I never realized that the kids years later asked me, Mom, why were you so afraid of Grandpa? Why were you so afraid to leave us with Grandpa? Why wouldn't you do that? I didn't know the answer. I just knew that something was wrong.

So because my kids showed me the pathway to realizing that I had a lot in my body that I needed to talk about, I eventually got to that pathway. Kayla went off to grad school for marriage and family counseling, and she wanted to do a course in internal family systems.

So that smart girl said, I know this really cool therapist in Bozeman who does internal family systems. Wouldn't it be fun if you understood what I was learning and went to her? And I said, yeah, that's a great idea. And that's how it happened.

Cat: Wow…How was your relationship with your mother?

Jan: It's been complicated. My dad got cancer and of course took care of him. They lived here, went through cancer treatment here. I was a dutiful daughter. I didn't know what else to do. I had always been dutiful. And I had always done the right thing. I had always been so, as I put it, fucking responsible.

Jeannie: Good old Catholic guilt. We never actually get over it. We never fully recover.

Jan: I'm recovered now.

Jeannie: I'm impressed.

Jan: But my mom got Alzheimer's, and she was living in Florida. Of course, with Hippolos, I didn't know about it until she came for one Christmas. She had flown from Atlanta to Bozeman, and when she got here, she was just trashed. And I started recognizing, something's wrong with mom.

So I went through all the processes of getting a diagnosis and finding out that she had Alzheimer's. We moved her back to Rochester, because that's what she wanted, and put her in a kind of step down unit of assisted living. I made seven trips a year, and I was managing everything, because of course, I'm the oldest, and I had the power of attorney and she was running out of money.

The thing I haven't told you about is, in 1999, I started doing Pilates training. By 2003, I had gotten my comprehensive certification and opened up a studio here in Bozeman.

Jan: I had been invited to join a group of 10 people for advanced teacher training. So I was able to put those things together starting in 2014, ‘15, ‘16, to go help Mom and do Pilates training at the same time. I eventually decided that the best thing to do was to move Mom here.

I never really got angry at Mom until after she was gone. She died in ‘19, having had a massive heart attack. I was at Big Sky that day, and my phone was in my pocket going crazy.

When I finally went into the bathroom and looked at my phone, I was like, Oh God. So a girlfriend drove me back to the hospital here, and I got there around 2 in the afternoon, and she passed at 10:30 at night, which was perfect. But through counseling, I was able to work through all of the hardships.

My mom is the reason I'm strong. Because she wasn't. She was abused. I remember plenty of things that happened to her. And I remember it was hard for her. She should have left him.

I can't tell you how many times we should have died because he was driving and she would allow him to drive drunk. We’d get pulled over and he would know all the police because he was a volunteer fireman and he would get away with it time and time and time again.

Cat: Wow.

Jan: Yeah, it was bad. Honestly, I've gotten to the point where I'm able to say that my mom's weakness became my strength.

Jeannie: Pretty powerful.

Jan: So I'm not mad anymore. I'm not even a victim, I'm a survivor.

Jeannie: Do you feel like your daughters’ strength allows you also to be weak and vulnerable in a healthy way now?

Jan: Yeah. Well, it's so much more well-rounded now. I wasn't a very good mother in the beginning, I have to say, because I wanted to control everything because I was so scared that something would happen. And it's not like there was anything wrong with their dad.

He's a wonderful guy. But I was just terrified. And I didn't know why I was so terrified.

Jeannie: Where did that switch flip? Because it seems like one of the threads of this conversation is the strength that you gave your girls and also the confidence you instilled. And it seems like at some point you must have let go of that need for control because you let them really go.

Jan: I did. Yeah.

Jeannie: They got to the wilderness and into wild places and fully became themselves.

Jan: Internal family systems was later, but I did go through counseling and I always knew something was up. I just needed the right counselor to get to the bottom of it. But I recognized that control was how I survived, and it wasn't fair to not trust that they were making decisions for themselves that were good.

I couldn't protect them constantly and just let them become themselves, if I was going to be so controlling. This is probably way off what we were going to talk about.

Jeannie: No, this is the goods. This is something you've gone through so much. It would be easy if you didn't tell us any of this to think you just kind of landed in the right place as a woman at Jackson and have all these great times. But to know what you overcame and to know how the wilderness and rivers and mountains and people that you surrounded yourself with, how that helped you heal.

Cat and I are probably thinking let's just drop everything and go travel at this point. We missed that, you know.

Cat: 100%.

Jan: Trust me, I still feel the same way. I can't wait for the next adventure.

Jeannie: I want to go on one with you, Jan.

Jan: Yeah, I would love that.

Jeannie: But thank you for your honesty and sharing the vulnerability of your story. It's really heartfelt.

Jan: I never would have considered putting this out into the world. And maybe it won't be something that you want to post. But I think that even the opportunity to talk about all this is great. Even with you two, as strangers, but being people that I know love the outdoors, I know have a passion.

Cat: I think Jeannie and I both aren’t interested in hearing stories about an objective or beta on some project or this or that. What is so much more interesting is your story and what makes you human. It's so cool that you did this badass thing being the first female river guide in Jackson.

But yours is the story of who you are at your core and everything that brought you to that moment. And everything that happened afterwards is really what makes that thing about you way more interesting to me.

Jan: Thanks, Cat. I appreciate that. It's a journey, and I'm glad I'm finally to a place where I'm okay. I can talk about it and not just fall apart. I'm stronger. I was able to go back home and scream and yell and jump on Dad’s grave and call him all kinds of names and say you'll never, ever, ever affect me again.

I think the only thing that was always with me, was that once I learned about nature, once I started getting outside, once I started getting on a bike, once I started being on the river, I never stopped.

Cat: Speaking for myself, I think that part of why I'm so interested in all that has happened in our guests' lives, whether they're professional athletes or not, is because I think there are so many of us who struggled growing up or continue to struggle, that find solace in the outdoors. Whatever medium it is that we pursue in the outdoors, I think those of us that get really deep into this outdoor life, oftentimes find a sense of comfort there that we've never found anywhere else, or an ability to feel powerful in a way that maybe we never did before.

Jeannie: I think you're right about that.

Jan: Yeah, I am very grateful that I have the capacity to still keep doing these things. I'm going on a trip this summer with the girls to the Bob Marshall for eight days, and then we have another trip back to the Winds.

Jeannie: I also love ending on the note of how wilderness has fueled you. And I kind of joke that I hate the word nature, because we've used it to separate ourselves from wilderness. And nature is us.

Everything you talked about in terms of what fueled you and what made you strong again and what's healed you and your inner nature, has been intricately connected to the natural world. It's like Cat said, it's where we find solace and meaning and hope and connections.

Jan: So true.

Cat: Readers, don't forget to check out our website at broadbeta.com for more great content. We have gear reviews, recipes, stories and more. Please reach out if you have a story you'd like to share with Broad Beta. You can contact us at admin@broadbeta.com.

Jan: I can't wait to hug both of you and meet you in person. I honestly feel like I just got two friends and they're online. Is this how dating works online?

Jeannie: Right. This is why we do this, to meet amazing women and then have new friends to share love.

Jan: I totally love it. Very great to meet you both, and I look forward to the next part of this.