Dog Talk
- February 2013
- Hi Steph Simple Living Dogs Travel
Hi Steph,
I got bored at lunch and started trawling through the internet and stumbled across a video of you free climbing. Although not a climber myself, I was still fascinated and impressed by your accomplishments and your story (through wiki, lol). And so I thought I would take the time to email you just to say it’s great that there are people out there like yourself, that are brave enough to go out on a limb and give your passions in life a try.
I don’t particularly expect a response but I am of the mind-set that people don’t sincerely congratulate each other enough on this world. Anyway in case you do I have two questions I would ask.
1. How did you manage to organise expeditions abroad (reaching remote locations, funding, as woman travelling alone etc.) before you were famous?
2. It mentions on your contact that people can email with regard to dog talk, the obvious question, what dogs do you have? And do they come with you on expeditions. (picture of my dog attached and yes both my partner and I regret letting him under the covers as a puppy!)
And one last thing, wing suit flying looks epic!
Kind regards,
Luke
Hi Luke,
Thanks for your email and your very very very cute dog picture! There is also a constant battle for bed space around here too 🙂 But they’re so cute….!
We have one dog, her name is Cajun. She is about 2 years old, and she was rescued from the Navajo Reservation at Montezuma Creek when she was just a few months old. She had been abandoned by a cell tower, and a friend of mine went out there to work on it and found her. He rescues a lot of res dogs, and he put her up on facebook looking for a home. He just lives a few blocks away from me….at the time, I was just recovering from a two year mourning period for Fletch, my first dog who had died of old age, and it was really time to have a dog again. My two top requirements were that the “new” dog must be female and must be a res dog. I also wanted a grown-up dog, not a puppy, and I wanted it to have pointy ears and ideally look like Fletch 😉 However, Cajun fits only the first two requirements, and she is nothing at all like Fletch, and we love her. We also have a black cat named Mao (named by himself) who moved in one day when Fletch was very old. He is totally adorable, and he is the king of the household.
Cajun comes everywhere with us, in the States. Mao does not leave his territory unless forced 🙂
With the expeditions, in the beginning I worked as a waitress in Moab, and I lived first in my car and then in a camper trailer. I saved all my money this way. When the restaurant shut down in the winter, I would go to Patagonia for two months. It was just the cost of the plane ticket and food while I was there, so I always could save enough money to go. With the Pakistan trips, we got some grant money towards the expedition. When I went to Baffin and Kyrgyzstan, both trips were already planned and then someone backed out at the last minute, so I got to add on with just my travel costs. I just always went places with one or more climbing partners. On trips like that I wasn’t traveling alone because I was with my partner or team. But in the States I almost always roadtripped alone, just because it was easier–but not really alone because I had Fletch.
I’m not really going on climbing expeditions like those now, because in the summer months I like to go to Europe and fly my wingsuit off the mountains there.
🙂 Steph
