The Weekly - May 12, 2020 - 4

First Words
S K I L L S

d

The Mindset
IN 2011, JENNIFER PHARR DAVIS,

or Odyssa as she is known on the trail,
set the fastest known time on the
Appalachian Trail, completing the
2,185-mile trek in 46 days, 11 hours
and 20 minutes, a record that stood
until 2015. In 2019, she opened Blue
Ridge Hiking Company, a retail store
that was born as an extension of her
guiding business. We all know that
running an independent specialty
retail shop is a tough undertaking,
but Pharr Davis did it because she
loves the trail and sharing her passion
and experience. And, as she told The
Weekly in her #weareCommunity
video interview (page 8), she has relied
on the same determination she found
when setting records on the trail.
In these unprecedented times,
I think so many of us in the outdoor
industry are turning to the skills
and mindset we have honed in the
wild. I personally spent many years
learning how to be self-sufficient
working for the U.S. Forest Service
building trails and fighting fires

in my 20s. I learned
a sense of ethics at
Wilderness Ranger
Rendezvous and later
working with conservation groups to try
to propose a national
monument in Idaho's
Owyhee Canyonlands.
I have learned how
to assess danger as
a backcountry skier,
mountaineer, and
canyoneer. These life
lessons are coming
into play now.
My wife and I
have taught our children these skills and
ethics while camping,
traveling, and adventuring, and, during
this crisis, they have
responded by drawing on them to
deal with difficult days of shelter-inplace. The risk assessment we know
from avalanche training applies to
the precautions we take when we go
to the grocery store. The outdoors
has taught us, like it has Pharr
Davis, to keep going even when that
seems impossible.
As this crisis continues and
becomes more complex, I hope we
can all dig deep into our outdoor
mindset. I hope we will be able to
support each other as we would in
the wild. Most of all, I hope we can
all still get out-responsibly-and
find both rejuvenation and inspiration in the outdoors and then apply
those gifts to help this industry and
this world heal.

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4 THE WEEKLY / OUTDOOR RETAILER SUMMER 2020

Jennifer Pelkey

A N D R E W KO R N Y L A K

O U T D O O R
https://www.idahoconservation.org/owyhee-canyonlands/ http://www.outdoorretailer.com/contact-us http://www.OutdoorRetailer.com https://blueridgehikingco.com https://blueridgehikingco.com
The Weekly - May 12, 2020

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