Ever wondered how I came up with the unlikely idea of starting a thoughtfully clean company making adventure soap?
I don't often get the chance to tell my story. At the Tiny House Living Festival in Colorado this June, Tiny House Magazine editor Drew Odom asked if I'd share it in their publication.
Of course I said yes!
I can't print the full article yet, but here's a taste...
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From Van Life to Social Entreprenuership
an unexpected journey that led to Redbudsuds, a thoughtfully clean company
excerpt from Tiny House Magazine Issue 57 by Yours Truly, AHM
As you may know, I have an insatiable hunger for adventure, and I’m drawn to the idea of simple living like a hummingbird to the color red. But I’ve learned—and keep learning—hard lessons about adventure and living simply. 1) Simple should never be confused for easy, and 2) adventures are almost never what they appear. Like that time I took a road trip and to discover my life purpose.
It all started with a van and a dream.
The Dream
2012 was the year the dream began. We had sold all our stuff, paid off our student loans (what?! yes.), moved out of our house, quit our full-time jobs, finished our seasonal ones and were ready to hit the road. We could hardly believe it: we had three months of open sky and rock climbing destinations ahead of us. We had such high hopes for this trip we even named it Agidasin, Ojibwe for “on top of a rock.” It was a climbing trip and a quest for perspective. It seemed perfect.
What my husband and I thought was Chapter One of our Awesome Life was barely even the preface to the introduction....
Here was our plan. A 1998 Chevy Astro van we dubbed Goliath would be our home and our portal into the cross-country adventure of a lifetime. On the inevitable “rest days” and rainy days, we’d figure out what to do with the rest of our lives. That’s right. We knew with all the spare time we’d have, we’d surely get it all figured out.
Three months turned into two years. We worked hard in the summer and winter, then played hard in the spring and fall. Most of our time was spent in the woods, on lakes, or climbing up sheer cliffs. As we became further distanced from “normal” routines and technology (that’s right, no smartphones), it became easier to listen closely to the land around us... and the quiet inner nudges that get silenced all too quickly by the fast pace and chattering obligations of modern life...
The Dark
We were listening, but we didn’t hear any answers. Believe it or not, there were no clear voices telling us the meaning of our lives.
Try as we might to get things figured out, we actually felt even more confused. We had grown so accustomed to our jobs defining our worth that it was hard to just “be free” for months at a time....
[After our stint on the road ended, I still found myself grasping for a clear path forward.]
And then I remembered an important lesson from climbing.
The First Step
It was the moment I first saw myself as a “real climber.” I had my sights set on the aptly-named route called First Step. The start of the route is thirty feet off the deck. To get there, you have to scramble up the backside of an enormous boulder. From the top of that boulder, you lean out several feet over the thirty-foot drop to reach the starting holds on the headwall. All you have to do is lean out over the void, and once you’ve started leaning, there’s no going back...
Want to read the rest? ;)
Snag your copy of the latest Tiny House Magazine at http://tinyhousemagazine.co.
Cheers!
Lisa