Women in the Wilderness: The Story & The Mission
Welcome to our very first blog post, aka Story from the Wilderness! We are SO excited to introduce another outlet to share our journey with you all. Ok, so before we get into how this all started and our mission, a quick note on the BLOG! We created this space in order to share bigger stories and help our ~ incredible ~ followers feel more involved. Social media is an awesome tool, but sometimes we just need more SPACE (Dixie Chicks reference fully intended here). While we ride our 40-day pack trip this fall, our plan is to share in the way our subtitle actually suggests: straight from our field notebooks to this blog. For now, we’ll share anything that we feel is relevant to our project and to you! (ok PHEW, now onto the juicy stuff)
The Story
So, how did we come up with the idea for Women in the Wilderness? Personally, I get this question a lot and I feel like we hardly get the chance to share it with bigger audiences. To get started, you’ll need a little bit of backstory (don’t worry, I’ll try to keep it brief): myself (this is Katherine, by the way ;) ) and Caroline met at a ranch in Wyoming where we worked as wranglers. After the summer, she and I stayed good friends and I worked for this same ranch for a few years seasonally before getting hired full-time as the Head Wrangler (I will never get tired of telling people my job title). Ok, back on track: so a few years later, Louisa came to work at the ranch as a wrangler, making me her boss at the time (fun side note). We became good friends and Lou came back the following year to work as a wrangler again. That summer, she came to me with an idea: to do a female version of “Unbranded”. (In case you haven’t heard of it, Unbranded is a documentary about 4 guys who train their own mustangs and take them on a pack trip from Mexico to Canada.) Lou asked if I wanted join and I obviously said HELL YEAH. We started planning and quickly decided we should add another woman to our team. A few weeks later, Caroline came to visit me at the ranch and I told her about the idea. She was immediately interested and invested and joined the team.
We started planning and, I have to say, I had NO clue where to start. Lou and I decided to work on the route…that was a lot harder than anticipated. We gained contacts, slowly but surely, and spent a lot of time researching the issues facing wild horses. It was really pretty overwhelming at first but then, the MAGIC started (ok not actual magic, but it SERIOUSLY felt like it). All of these different pieces started falling into place. I won’t list them all here but one of them goes like this: my dad works for a gardening company in Vermont and his manager is a horsewoman so he told her about the project. She told my dad that she has a sister named Julia who lives in Lander, Wyoming and works for NOLS teaching students how to do pack trips. So she put me in contact with Julia and she is ALL IN. Like, wants to come on the trip, teach us how to pack, help us with our horses, EVERYTHING. She has become absolutely instrumental in the outcome of this project. Other serendipitous things fell into place, like our director, producer, and sponsors. And now here we are, almost THREE YEARS LATER, getting ready to go on our trip this fall.
Caroline & Katherine goofin’ around at the ranch the summer they met
The Mission
So, what’s the goal of Women in the Wilderness? Originally, our plan was to ride this really awesome BIG pack trip, film it, and teach people about the wild horse issue. These are definitely still some of our core objectives but since then, it has evolved bigger than I ever could have imagined. We realized the importance of showcasing women in the outdoor industry, inspiring young women to defy gender stereotypes and artificial boundaries, and the complexities of the wild horse problem. This leads us to our current mission, which is:
…to unbiasedly educate as many people as possible about the issues facing wild horses in the American West and ultimately, inspire action to help find a solution to this complicated issue. During the process, we also hope to inspire others to challenge artificial gender boundaries and pursue their own dreams, especially young women.
Ok, so a really jam-packed mission! But, in plain terms, we want our audience to be able to walk away from this film feeling like they can have an educated conversation about the issues and potential solutions. That’s the main goal. A secondary, but almost equally as important goal, is that our audience feels inspired to take on big dreams like we did, ESPECIALLY young women. We’re doing this for the wild horses but thinking of all the young girls we can reach really just ties it all together for me, and I think it does for Caroline and Lou, too.
Ok, that does it for our first Story from the Wilderness! Do you have a bURniNg question that we should write a blog on? Leave a comment below! We love to hear from our followers and we want to start conversations, even if they’re tough, so don’t be shy!
xoxo, Katherine & the Wild Women 💕