Profiles

Real stories about fascinating people working in trades across America. 

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Profiles

McGee Creek Pack Station: Sierra Nevada, California

Jen spent her teenage years doing everything she could to be at the pack station as long as possible during the season. She would figure out what schoolwork needed to get done, complete it early, and get to the pack station by late May and stay well into November until the first snow finally drove both her and the pack stock out of the wilderness. Susie not only shaped Jen’s life, but the lives of the other young women who would not have been hired as packers by other outfits. These traditional outfits would only hire women to cook or do day rides. Male owners of the eastern Sierra outfits dubbed the McGee Creek packers ‘Packerettes.’ A title worn with pride by the McGee Creek crew.

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5 Min
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Profiles

The Jackie Robinson of Car Design: McKinley Thompson Jr.

McKinley Thompson Jr., a Ford designer who helped pen the first-generation Bronco, was the first African American designer hired at Ford Motor Company after graduating from ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California with a degree in transportation design in 1956. “McKinley was a man who followed his dreams and wound up making history. He not only broke through the color barrier in the world of automotive design, but he helped create some of the most iconic consumer products ever…designs that are not only timeless but have been studied by generations of designers.”

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5 Min
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Profiles

Rainshadow Organics

Every day, Sarahlee Lawrence and Ashanti Samuels, the owners of Rainshadow Organics, a 27-acre farm located just outside Bend, Oregon, bring their passion into their fields to raise a crop of over 250 varieties of vegetables and grains, along with a wide array of meat and poultry. To ensure the fertility of their land, they use sustainable organic farming methods, ones that were common before the advent of commercial farming. “We focus on creating healthy living soil that gets stronger every year, not weaker,” says Lawrence.

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5 Min
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Profiles

The Brothers Nielsen

For as long as either David or Robert Nielsen can remember, trees have surrounded them. In their youth, they romped among the towering white oaks, western hemlocks, and grand firs that surrounded their home on San Juan island just below the Canadian border. When their family moved to Bellingham, Washington during grade school, they spent their time hiking and riding dirt bikes through the forests bordering their town. So, when they both decided to go into logging after high school, no one was surprised. Chances were, a little of the sap they played in had soaked into their souls.

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5 Min
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Profiles

Elizabeth Losey: First Female Refuge Field Biologist in the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Biologist Elizabeth Losey knew what she wanted to do with her life. “My favorite workplace was right in the middle of a marsh, listening to the birds and finding waterfowl nests and ducklings,” she said. But in 1947, such a career path did not yet exist for women. Losey—despite holding a Master of Science degree in wildlife management and conservation from the University of Michigan—couldn’t seem to land a job doing field research. She soon realized the disconnect. Potential employers, organizations like the Michigan State Game Division, were uncomfortable with the idea of a woman sleeping overnight in the field, even if that woman was a qualified scientist who didn’t mind using an outhouse.

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3 Min
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Profiles

The Tree Publisher: Erik Linton

Erik Linton has been a full-time artist for five years now, and has spent much of that time looking at the things around us that are easily overlooked. He tries to present those things in unfamiliar ways in order to enhance our appreciation of them. “Working with these trees, I’ve begun to view myself as a publisher as much as an artist: I’m merely taking these stories that have been written by the trees, some nearly a thousand years old, and sharing them”

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5 Min
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Profiles

Horniest Tavern in the Northwest: The Lyman

Situated upon the banks of the Skagit River, next to the North Cascades Highway, the hamlet of Lyman has for over a century been the home to a varying selection of loggers, miners, fishermen, hunters, rivermen, and other jacks-of-all-trades. One thing most of these folks have had in common is they could, at one time or another, belly up to the wooden bar at the Lyman Tavern. They unloaded their worries to barkeeps, enjoyed some good conversation with neighbors, and eyeballed the occasional traveler passing though.

This is the part of America that, too often these days, seems to be disappearing. The local watering hole that served as the social hub, the place where—before we all became interconnected—one went to connect.

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5 Min
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Profiles

Why We Must: On Diversity in the Outdoors by Eddy Harris

“It’s easy to imagine that Black Americans don’t ski, don’t fly-fish for trout, don’t camp out, don’t kayak or surf, and don’t appreciate nature – don’t do a lot of things. Somewhere along the way, the Black experience, at least in the eyes of so many people – Blacks included – became an urban phenomenon, as if living in cities precludes the desire and possibility of re-creating in the great outdoors and appreciating the natural environment.

I have done all of those activities, and then some. I fish, I camp, I hike in the woods, I hike in the mountains. I even like opera. I have canoed the length of the Mississippi River twice. If there is a reason we don’t see Blacks taking part in a lot of those activities, perhaps it has more to do with economics and exposure and less to do with the activities themselves.” – An excerpt from Why We Must, by author and storyteller Eddy L. Harris.

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5 Min
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Profiles

Our Stewardship Imperative: The Great American Outdoors Act

OR HUNTERS, ANGLERS AND THOSE DEDICATED TO FINDING ADVENTURE IN WILD COUNTRY, OUR PUBLIC LANDS AND WATERS ARE MORE THAN BACKDROPS FOR THE OUTDOOR TRADITIONS THAT HAVE SHAPED OUR HERITAGE; THEY’RE THE CATHEDRALS OF FELLOWSHIP IN WHICH WE GATHER WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY — PLACES WHERE WE CAN ALSO FIND SOLACE AS WE GET OUR BOOTS DIRTY AND SOULS CLEAN.

Sportsmen and women have a collective obligation to the stewardship of our natural resources and a duty to pass on this unique American legacy to the generations that follow us. Fortunately, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do just that. Right now, Congress is poised to consider the Great American Outdoors Act, H.R. 1957.

read more about this legislation and how you can do your part to protect the future of our nation’s public lands.

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5 Min
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Profiles

Charley’s Andean Mountain Climbers

When you first meet a llama, it can be disconcerting. Four long, lean legs merge into a barrel-like body, from which an impossibly long, lean neck protrudes, with a small head perched on top. Two banana-shaped ears stick straight up, each operating independently, like separate radar stations, continually pivoting this way and that as they take in their surroundings. All of this is covered in a shaggy fur that makes the entire creature look like a mad muppet experiment gone wrong. It can throw most people for a loop.

But after a few moments with a llama, all your uncertainties melt away. These highly social Andean mountain climbers quickly make friends with all they meet. This coupled with their sure-stepping stone grabbing hooves, long legs, and bigger bodies, make these Camelids perfect for hauling gear into the wilderness. That’s what drew Charley charley Rosenberry to them almost three decades ago.

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5 Min
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Profiles

Matt Mendes of Spin the Handle: Chasing Reservation Chrome

Before Matt Mendes guided on the Deschutes River, he drove the Green Monster. It was 2002, and Mendes was 13 years old; the job was his first on the river. The Green Monster, an old Ford F350, nicknamed for its paint job, belonged to his maternal grandfather, Al Bagley, a revered fly-fishing guide and a member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. The tribe governs the 1,019-square-mile Warm Springs Indian Reservation, located in Oregon’s high desert and bound to the east by the Deschutes, one of the country’s premier steelhead and trout destinations. In 1997, Bagley became the tribe’s first fly-fishing guide, capitalizing on its exclusive access to 22-miles of the Deschutes’s west bank, per an 1855 treaty with the United States government. The business was gangbusters from the get-go.

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5 Min
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Profiles

Filson x White’s Boots: Unfailing Quality Built on Legacy

Modeled after the boots worn by USFS hotshots, Filson and white’s boots have teamed up to build a limited-edition boot: the fire hybrid. Manufactured in Spokane by white’s using our tough tin cloth, they’re a perfect pairing of two iconic pacific northwestern brands, each with over 120 years of experience constructing unfailing gear. We sat down with white’s boots president, Eric Kinney to learn more about white’s legacy of craftsmanship.

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5 Min
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Profiles

Rancho de la Luna Mezcal: An intoxicating new jam from rock icons

Rancho de la Luna sits on a hill surrounded by the otherworldly desert landscape. The unassuming adobe home has hosted sessions with many of the true legends of rock and roll since 1993 and is the full-time residence of studio cofounder and music icon David Catching. Three decades’ worth of liquor (and stories) are soaked into the sand here, but for a bottle to bear the Rancho de la Luna name, it would need to be truly special…

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3 Min
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Profiles

For Clint Mortenson, Horsemanship is the Key to Happiness

If you’ve watched a Western film in the past two decades, chances are you’ve seen Clint Mortenson’s work. Mortenson made the saddlebags that Pierce Brosnan carried in Seraphim Falls, the belt worn by Woody Harrelson in No Country for Old Men, the saddle used by Tommy Lee Jones in The Missing, and the title character’s holster in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Most recently, Mortenson has been training actors to ride horses for The Harder They Fall, an all-black Western produced by Jay-Z for Netflix.

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5 Min
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Profiles

Bianca Shannon: A Life Built Around Horses

In New Mexico’s cowboy country, Bianca Shannon turns heads. She rides a one-eyed horse, her silver nose-ring glinting in the sunlight, multiple tattoos peeking out from beneath her Oxford shirtsleeves. If you ask, Shannon may expose her inner right forearm to reveal the ink she got right before she left New York City to move to Santa Fe in 2014: a wrist-to-elbow rendition of a Leonardo da Vinci horse sketch. She describes the tattoo as “a kind of yearning for what I really wanted to be doing with my life.”

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3 Min
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Profiles

Longest Acres Farm: multigenerational Vermont homestead

Deep in the hills of central Vermont lies Longest Acres Farm, a 220-acre, multigenerational homestead. Delivering directly to the consumers, the homestead raises farm-to-table chicken, pork, beef, and other products sent directly to customers across the Northeast, including top chefs throughout Boston. In light of recent global events, Longest Acres Farm changed their business model from selling exclusively to restaurants to now serving families in Boston and Vermont. In April 2020, we checked in with Kate for an update on life on the homestead. This is her story.

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5 Min
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Profiles

Lael Johnson – Olympic Peninsula Fly Guide

Lael Johnson is a fly fisherman and guide on the Olympic Peninsula. His passion for the anadromous fish of Washington’s coastal rivers is contagious. He loves these fish, these rivers, and the people he is lucky enough to experience them with. Filson Contributor Ben Matthews spent a few days on the river with Lael to ask a few questions about guiding, steelhead, and life in general. If you’re interested in heading out on the river with Lael yourself, check out his website and book a trip. You won’t regret it.

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5 Min