Allison Fowle has always been an introvert. So the idea of spending an entire summer in the wilderness was highly appealing.

But during her time in the mountains of Idaho, she began to rethink her appetite for solitude.

On this episode, she shares the story of her final days in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. During those final days, something happened that shook her to the core and changed her thinking on “alone time.”

Linda Strader was one of the first women to become a wildland firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service. Her book Summers of Fire documents that experience, and she joins me on this episode to talk about it.

We explore what it was like entering a male-dominated field in the 1970s, and we talk about the tough realization that being liked is not the same as being respected.