Community Voices ⎸ Saying yes to strange and difficult things

By Emily Ford
For Project Optimist

When I was an early teen, I told my mom that I wanted to walk the railroad tracks from our house as far north as possible. My mom was a single parent with two daughters and her hands full. I often look back on my early years and feel the deepest gratitude for my mother, so deep that I can feel it in my belly. My mom said yes. I’m not sure if she felt that she had any other choice!

I woke up before the sun. My school backpack packed with saltines, peanut butter, and water, and started my long day expedition. I listened to music on my Zune and wrote short stories about how construction equipment turned into dinosaurs at night. My legs eventually got too tired, and I called my mom for a ride the 12 miles back home to the city. It probably wasn’t safe, it surely wasn’t a good idea, but at that moment, my mom helped me say yes to outdoor adventure.

The outdoors is for everybody no matter who you are, what you look like, or where you come from. No one truly owns the outdoors, so it is for all of us to experience. I learned I had to proclaim this to the world in my mid-20s. My sister and I were brown kids in a white family, and it was normal for us to spend time racing up and down the driveway on a four-wheeler, or go ice fishing with our white cousins and grandparents.

I didn’t know that people still thought that black folks should only be outside for work, not for joy. Of course, this is something my ancestors knew while they worked long days in the south harvesting sugar cane day after day. 

In 2020 amid COVID-19 we all experienced the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In response to that, I found myself in the woods on a 1,200-mile journey across Wisconsin in winter. I wanted to show people that black people contain multitudes, just as any other human on this planet. We are more than you can imagine. I wanted to show the world that the outdoors is for everybody, and everybody deserves to feel safe in nature if they choose to experience it. This adventure was big and felt important, but also a little scary at the same time, and I had to say yes. 

Through the experience of frostbite, slogging through knee-deep snow, beautiful night skies, and the deep kindness of strangers, I showed the world that anyone can be formidable in any situation. 

After coming home, I said yes to a new adventure: skiing across the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and Wilderness (BWCA) in winter of 2022. The BWCA has been under mining threat for many years. It’s over 1 million acres of pristine landscape with lakes that have water so good, you can drink right from the middle of them. I wanted to show that this wilderness also contains multitudes and that people use it in all seasons, not just in summer. It is a beautiful place that only exists if we protect it. 

I was very new to skiing and had never navigated alone without a trail. The lakes in the BWCA can be vast and dotted with islands, and in winter, the snow blankets landscape features, so that it is easy to potentially become lost forever. It was the toughest adventure in my book, but I fell even more in love with winter and the wilderness. 

On one hand, I experienced white-out blizzards that pressed against my body so much that the wind pushed me off course, I fell into a river while fetching water one night when it was 30-below-zero, and I spent days wading through waist-deep snow. On the other hand, I experienced the slow steady pattern of nature: wake up, eat, travel diligently, look around, breathe, sleep. At the end of all of that, I felt like the wilderness refined who I knew myself to be. I was pressed on all sides, mentally, spiritually, and physically. I love this version of myself, I knew this was who I was meant to be. This yes was worth it. 

Now I am a musher in the winter. My partner and I continually say yes to our relationship. We both also say yes to long dog sled races across the Alaskan landscape. We love floating across the snow silently on a dog sled with the pack of our best friends in the middle of nowhere so that anywhere can be home. 

I am currently saying yes to running the 1000-mile Iditarod dog sled race in March 2025. I want to show the world that no matter who you are or what you look like, you can do extraordinary things, and Iditarod is an extraordinary race through the wilds of Alaska. 

I have found joy in saying yes to the wilds of nature. Even after years of adventuring, I feel like I’m at the tip of the iceberg.

Emily Ford is a winter adventurer who splits time between Duluth, Minn., and Alaska. Learn more about Emily at emilyontrail.com.

This column was edited by Jen Zettel-Vandenhouten. It's part of Project Optimist's Biophilia series about nature and design, and it's supported by a grant from Arts Midwest. Learn more here.