Adventures in Dirt and Honey

24 years of detours led me back to women, wilderness, and bees

May 29, 2026

* Cue (Golden Girls Icon) Sophia’s voice in your head *

“Picture it… Alaska… 2002… a beautiful young woman has a dream! An idea! A desire! A vision! To bring women together in the outdoors to challenge themselves physically and emotionally, meet their growth edges in a supportive community of peers, and bring back the nutrients they absorbed in retreat to the ‘front country’ to reintegrate into daily life with a new perspective and clarified values.”

She looks wistfully into the distance.

“The young woman leaves her rural Alaskan fishing village for the big city. Bend, Oregon. She had enrolled, via paper application, in Central Oregon Community College’s Outdoor Recreation Leadership Program. It was there that she would spend two years honing her skills in white water raft guiding, ropes course facilitation, group dynamics expertise, situational awareness, risk management, mountaineering, map and compass skills, back-country skiing, winter camping, Wilderness First Aid, and was also forced to learn and lead at least 7,000 icebreaker games.”

The cringe of icebreakers brought her back into the moment.

“That woman, Rose, was me.”

So – what HAPPENED in the last 24 years?! How did I become a bee scientist/ nonprofit leader/ vanlifer/ dogmom and not a guide/ climber/ rafter/ skier/ vanlifer/ dogmom?

Life. My friends. Life.

It jigs and jags you.

I went back to Alaska to intern as a guide at Packer Expeditions in Skagway, with the intent of 1) Returning to Bend, 2) Completing my associate’s degree in Outdoor Rec Leadership, 3) Starting my degree at OSU’s Cascade Campus in Outdoor Leadership, 4) Returning to Alaska, Odyssey-style, to open a lodge in Hyder with my dad where he would guide hunting trips and I would lead women’s retreats.

Here’s what happened…

1) I fell in love. With Skagway, the community, and a man named Colin.

2) I finished my degree remotely.

3) This never happened.

4) Hyder became overwhelmed by grizzly bears, leading to a fatality, and I couldn’t in good conscience start a retreat lodge here. My dad eventually sold our land, and the dream fizzled out.

My love of outdoor leadership, and wicked-cool skillset led me to join Search and Rescue, the Fire Department, and eventually EMS in Skagway. I burnt out on guiding, or perhaps the toxic and misogynistic nature of the guiding industry and traded in my hiking boots for a corset.

Yes. You read that right.

I dressed as a “lady of the night” and worked behind the historic bar at the Red Onion Saloon, where the ghosts of soiled-doves-past were as fed up with the men in Skagway as I was. I was happy, and in good company.

Unfortunately, the bar closed when the last cruise ship of the season set sail.

Fortunately, I landed a job as the Education and Outreach Coordinator for the Taiya Inlet Watershed Council, and my love for conservation and the nonprofit world commenced.

For the sake of word-count limits, I’ll have to save the details for my memoir.

So – fast forward four years.

Here I am graduating from the University of Montana with a degree in Resource Conservation, minor in Environmental Studies, with a focus on community collaborations.

(I dreamed a dream of working for the Blackfoot Challenge, a rancher-led community-based conservation nonprofit focused on Montana’s Blackfoot Valley.)

But times were tough, it was in the wake of the Great Recession, and no one was hiring. EXCEPT – the UM Honey Bee Lab, where I interned, and they loved me enough to create a full-time position for me.

And here is where I omit sixteen years of heartache, strife, challenge, glory, blood, sweat, and tears that I will serve up in my memoir.

In short – I burnt out on academia and started a nonprofit focused on honey bees and beekeeping education and morphed into MY DREAM JOB of bee conservation in western agricultural spaces.

I’VE MADE IT!

I’VE ARRIVED!

I’m about to have my best bee season yet; working on five vineyards, four cattle ranches and three bison ranches across four states.

But don’t you worry, dear reader, I have not forgotten where I came from. I have not forgotten the years I put in to becoming a competent leader in the outdoors. I have not forgotten my passion for creating safe spaces for women in nature. I have not forgotten my affinity for building community for and with other women.

So, it’s time to circle back.

It’s time to gather up all of my tools and my passions and my skills and my connections and bring you along with me.

This spring I launched my first “Beetreat.”

A unique and one-of-a-kind women’s retreat where my team of badass women community leaders and I facilitated a day of rest, knowledge and skills building, nourishing food and wine, and connection with the bees and each other.

I plan to do one Beetreat a year. Pretty much for the rest of my life.

The first few minutes of “Beetreat: Ashland” was be a culmination of 24 years of dreams, hope, work, luck, and synchronicity. I am forever grateful for all who showed up as their full selves and dove into this retreat with me.

Next year (2027) will be “Beetreat: Montana” at the J-L Ranch in Centennial Valley. We will have four days and go deeper into rest, rejuvenation, bees, and nourishment.

The price will include farm and ranch-to-table meals, lodging in a lovely rustic cabin, art supplies (to take home with you), honey bee hives as therapy animals, bee monitoring gear, and retreat facilitation.

This is an exceptionally special opportunity; I’ve been working at this ranch, monitoring bees for the last three years. It’s a remote jewel of the West that not many people know about, and I’m so excited to share it with you.

More information and registration coming soon.