Vicarious Pleasure
There are so many people in my Orbit who are doing the most amazing things… So, I’ve been eager to feature of few of their stories and photographs, to share the inspiration of their beautiful adventurous lives - and to show little glimpses of The World as They’ve Seen It.
I would like this to become an occasional series for me. (If you are interested in participating, please leave me a message!)
For today I’m featuring four stories - Karen Olde & Jim Fitzgerald on their climbing trip to the Dolomites; Joe Rottman on just some of his many Antarctica experiences and later nature guiding; Robyn & Simon, a professor and a long haul pilot, and the adventures they have seized as a result; and finally Christopher Park who is one of the most adventurous people I’ve ever known, and has lived on and off the grid his whole adult life embracing a myriad of spectacular off-the-beaten-path pursuits .
KAREN OLDE & JIM FITZGERALD - CLIMBING IN THE DOLOMITES
Karen and Jim have spent their adult lives living joyfully in their McCall Idaho log home (https://www.wanderlush.life/mccall-idaho-log-home) - basically base camp - for their river kayaking, mountain biking, skate skiing and backcountry skiing adventures. Adventures that take them all over the mountain west mostly - including Idaho, Utah, Montana, The Pacific Northwest, Northern California and British Columbia. So, when they embarked on their very first international trip to Climb in the Dolomites in September 2023, (at age 67 and 68) we were all ecstatic for them. They were bitten by the travel bug and the next year went biking in Peru and I’m sure their adventures abroad have only just begun. Here are images from that stunning mountain region in Italy, and now I’m dying to visit there too.
2. JOE ROTTMAN - ANTARCTICA ENGINEER TURNED NATURE GUIDE
Horseman, Pilot, Engineer, Husband and Father Joe Rottman, worked for many years on projects in and around the South Pole. Joe was the head of Engineering Services for the National Science Foundation, taking him every year to work at McMurdo and mostly the South Pole Station in Antarctica for 4-6 weeks each year in their summer. Hired by the Center for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica, his job was to lead multidisciplinary engineering departments in challenging design and construction projects such as helping to put in the observatory in the South Pole. He was also selected to be one of the team leaders for Search and Rescue there.
Evan has always said his Linked-In account description is his favorite: “Expedition guide, kayak guide, lecturer. Skills also include zodiac, scuba, ice travel, search and rescue, wilderness first responder” and this unusual nugget: “Polar Bear Rifle Safety”
Its fascinating to hear his stories of what it takes to live life there - and how hard it is to imagine that in all the time he spent there, he never saw the sun set.
Eventually when his Antarctica work passed, he parlayed this experience into working as a Nature and Kayak Guide on cruise ships in the area and around the world. First he got Zodiak certified in England in 2019, and also became a certified Kayak guide by the American Canoe Association. Once certified he has worked in many locations including Antarctica; several trips in Greenland, upper Canada and Norway; the Great Lakes area; as well as a Seaborn trip starting in Buenos Aires up the coast of the South American continent to the Amazon River in Brazil and into the town of Manaus. Today, he is on a six-month assignment as a mule guide in the Grand Canyon.
Gone months at a time, his wife Andi, a veteran nurse, and daughter Daisy (who just recently relocated to Cambodia to teach English!) hold down the fort and take care of their horses and family. But when together they love to hike, travel and ride together when they can. They have traveled to many countries together and last year Andi and Joe traveled to the Dolomites and Germany together too. Here is just a small taste of photographs of his adventurous life.
Wildlife Photography by fellow explorer Judith Scott.
3. SIMON & ROBYN - A Long Haul Pilot and Professor team up to create an extraordinary life. The world is their neighborhood.
Simon knew he wanted to fly since he was five years old. After one semester of University, he went straight to flight school and he’s been flying ever since. The remarkable thing, is the first time he flew, at age 18, he was flying the plane… He grew up west of Sydney, where few around him ever traveled at all. He flew for Australia based airlines briefly, before taking a job over 20 years ago with an airline based in Hong Kong. Early in his career, a friend encouraged him to travel to Canada with him to chase snow for snowboarding. This trip would change the trajectory of his life.
Robyn is one of my favorite humans I’ve ever met. She grew up in Colorado competing in freestyle skiing in the nineties - competing at a national level at the same time as Molly and Jeremy Bloom. Robyn is one of the kindest most humble people I have ever known - but she is absolutely fearless and limitless in the way she lives.
In the late nineties as a college student studying abroad in Vancouver, BC, she went on a weekend getaway to Banff where she met Simon, and they literally fell instantly in love. They have found a way, against all odds sometimes, to be together ever since, even though they are physically separated for months at a time, by half the earth sometimes. Still they’ve managed to live in three countries together, raise two fantastic kids, show them the world, and chart a course of adventure and exploration with each other.
Robyn is in a constant state of quiet yet formidable pursuits. I have watched her strive, undaunted by the myriad of challenges thrown at her, as she and Simon work toward their goals - and time and again enjoy the fruits of their labors in all corners of the globe.
I met Robyn fifteen years ago when she was earning her PhD in Public Health. It was an idyllic time for them, when her kids were little, Simon was based in the US where he’d fly about half the month making his round trips back and forth between the US and Asia. However, when the kids reached middle school, Simon's base switched from the US to Hong Kong. But rather than panic, they pivoted. This coincided with an opportunity in Robyn's academic career for an international research fellowship as Fulbright Scholar, based at the University of Hong Kong.
They moved to Hong Kong with the kids where they experienced this fascinating safe city and earned an appreciation for living with people from around the world. They led an entirely new way of life and traveled to all over Southeast Asia and Australia to see family. We took our family to visit them in 2016, which was one of my favorite most satisfying trips of my life.
Three years later Robyn returned to the states alone, to allow their kids to go to high school here. The pandemic brought additional challenges. Simon endured lengthy lonely quarantines from half a world away, leaving Robyn alone to manage her job and their high-school aged daughter and son. But with their eyes fixed on their long term goals, and with calm courage over years, they persevered.
Today, those goals are just now coming into beautiful fruition. Robyn has just finally moved into their dream mountain house in Breckenridge and can get a few runs in before and after her online classes. Simon joins them there when he can. Simon still flies long haul routes, but he’s flying cargo now and he revels in being the only human (with his co-pilot) on the big beasts they fly across the oceans. Robyn can sometimes meet up with him in various locations now - and as I write this they are together in Vietnam.
Their younger child Jackson, who graduated from high school in December one semester early, is teaching skiing to little kids this winter, and trying his best to keep up with his mom in the bumps. In April, he will join Simon for a father/son motorcycle trip through Vietnam and Australia and then in May he will meet up with a friend and also Robyn in Europe, before joining his sister Emily at CU Boulder this fall. Emily will also be studying this summer in Spain.
I asked Simon recently if there were any corners of the world he hadn’t explored yet, to which he replied “Heaps!” They are currently making plans for their long awaited visits to these new corners of the world, and shopping for their next home base. Fearless and Limitless yet again.
Here is a summary of their well earned life, with the world as their neighborhood:
4. CHRISTOPHER PARK & LIZBETH ZIMMERMAN - Off-the-grid Season Surfers, Livers of Life!
I met Chris when we were about twelve years old. His father Fred, a minerals geologist, had just been transferred to Colorado (and our neighborhood) from Australia and he and my dad were fast friends. A fellow sailor-skier-traveler, Fred was perhaps my father’s favorite friend of his life, and while we were in high school we were practically like family, skiing sailing and traveling around the west together. Like me, Chris has both a younger and an older sibling.
Chris attended UW after high school which he loved but it didn’t hold his attention - the world called … So after one year he began over three years of constant travel. “ I got a summer job after the school year working on a small, expedition style cruise ship in Alaska. I stayed with the ship and spent 13 months in French Polynesia, then parted ways with the crew and travelled to New Zealand where I spent a season (8 months) skiing and exploring. Then on to Australia. I hitch hiked across that continent and landed in Fremantle during the America’s Cup and found plenty of work to pay for the next leg. After that I travelled through SE Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines all before turning 21. After returning home I returned to school at North Idaho College, then galavanted off to Europe for another ski season in France. Then returned for another year of college at U of ID. Finally, in 1990 I moved to Sandpoint, Idaho primarily because there was a big ski area there. I never got a degree, but I did get quite an education from all that travel!”
After settling in Sandpoint, with a partner, he bought a building right downtown and established a furniture and cabinet making business that thrived. When I turned 40 I went with friends to visit my cousin in McCall, and we decided to also head north to Sandpoint to visit Chris. There I found he had become like the honorary Mayor. A saxophone-playing successful artisan and businessman - he held court in any location he turned up.
He met his like-minded soulmate Lizbeth Zimmerman thirty years ago. They have made a whole life surfing from one season to the next, constantly playing in nature - Skiing, Biking, Sailing (both in water and on land). In 1996 they bought 30 acres in the mountains outside of Sandpoint and built a straw bale house and big garden there. They lived off the grid for many years. They can generate power with a hydro system and they also have a solar array. But a few years ago they brought in grid power and built a workshop. Liz has a ceramics studio and Chris has a garage and workshop. They also have a root cellar and constantly use a wood-fired hot tub “next best thing to a hot springs!” They also have a trail network throughout the neighborhood that Chris has built with a neighbor.
But mostly, as in 6-8 months a year, they explore and live on the road. They travel with seven pairs of skis. In his own words “We love exploring canyons, mountains, deserts and rivers. At some point sleeping in the the back of a pickup and cooking on the tail gate and morning jumping jacks to warm up became less romantic. We began to look for a more comfortable set up. The answer was in front of of me, but remained hidden for some time, until I realized I already owned the perfect vehicle (home). In 2013 I bought the 1997, 7.3 liter, Ford E350 box truck from my partner in the furniture business. It had been our delivery truck. My price… $3k… Turns out enthusiasts LOVE this highly dependable 7.3 engine. Still, we’ve gotten to know plenty of mechanics over the years. We call it “condo dues” I spent the next two years on the conversion into what would become “VanDiesel”, our mobile condo and ski cabin. Converting a box truck has been a good move as they are very dependable and roomy and cost a lot less than Sprinter Vans with more room! By 2015 I had paid off my half of our downtown commercial building in Sandpoint. I was tired of breathing sawdust in the workshop and I sold my half of he business to my partner. Liz and I had modest rental income from 11 tenants, and with no kids, no pets and no house plants… we started spending 6-8 months a year traveling in VanDiesel. We have supplemented our income working with a geology company as field techs, minerals claim staking, forestry work, fire mitigation and grounds keeping. With fewer people, vast public lands and endless possibilities, The West continues to be our favorite playground for VanDiesel. We have spent a few months exploring Baja, British Columbia and Alberta Canada. Long term goals are to spend more time in Latin and South America, but we’ve concluded that VanDiesel is a little too big and too old for long range international overland trail… although we may follow in the footsteps of travel friends who have taken their travel vans all the way to the southern tip of South America!”
Chris’s Dad Fred taught him to sail as a little kid, so he too is now a seasoned sailor. For twenty years, until Fred turned 84, Fred and Chris were crew racing on Lake Pend Orielle onboard a 27’ Choate named Phantom. “Dad loved to race and especially loved to win. He was very very competitive. We had a fast boat and a great crew, so overall we did win a lot of races. I had my own boat too, a 21’ Reynolds catamaran named Bad Kitty, that gave me many years of fast sailing until sadly a tree fell on it one winter. A few years ago Lizbeth and I helped deliver a 49’ Catamaran from Sicily to Malaga and we do our best to make it known that we’re experienced crew if another good opportunity beckons!”
Transporting Tyga from Sicily to Malaga
Cheers to you my friends for living such beautiful inspired lives and sharing the inspiration with us. Carpe Diem!
Brenda Lush