It Ain't Over (23 page)

“I’m a born roamer,” she says. “Chalk it up to an abundant amount of curiosity and an extreme fear of boredom.”

Lori-Ann was a fourth-generation nurse who had started working in hospitals when she was just 14. To many, nursing is a secure job, but it’s also one that fit Lori’s restless temperament perfectly. Hospitals everywhere need nurses, so whenever she got the itch to move, she would look for a job in the Southwest desert, or the Rockies, or wherever the Southern California native had never lived.

“The length of time I spent in any one place varied,” she says. “On the short side, I’d stay until my curiosity was satisfied; longer stays usually meant
I had something to keep me there: coursework, a nursing contract, a boyfriend (several), or even a husband (two).”

But change was always the most important part of the equation. That is, until one day when she was in her late twenties, and her perception of change . . .
changed
.

Lori-Ann was working at a hospital in Arizona when a doctor friend invited her on a fly-fishing trip to the Deschutes River in Oregon. Tall and athletic, Lori-Ann had always enjoyed the outdoors—skiing, surfing, and playing beach volleyball—but she had never been fly-fishing.

Drifting along the wide river, tucked between the fir-covered cliffs of the eastern Cascades, Lori-Ann was struck by the beauty and serenity of the remote location. But what was truly life-changing about the trip occurred when Lori-Ann caught her first fish. It was a steelhead, a rare sea-run rainbow trout that spends two or three years in the ocean, then returns to fresh water to spawn. In this case, the fish would have left the Pacific, traveled up the Columbia River, then up the Deschutes, before encountering Lori-Ann, who had come all the way from Arizona and had stood hip-deep in the river for four hours before they met.

“Here I was, holding this amazing creature that had found its way hundreds of miles from the ocean to the river to me,” says Lori-Ann, “and I was blown away, by both the marvels of nature and the randomness of the world. I felt so present, and had such a deep connection to that fish—and to nature.”

Before coming to Oregon, Lori-Ann had been reading
The Power of Myth
by the philosopher Joseph Campbell and had been intrigued by his teaching to “follow your bliss.” When she caught that steelhead, Campbell’s words echoed in her head:

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.

Fly-fishing, Lori-Ann discovered, was her bliss, and she began looking for nursing jobs that would allow her to actively pursue it in her free time. She also knew that learning a whole new skill would be somewhat humbling and that she’d have to ask a lot of questions.

“I called myself ‘The Queen of the No-Pride Club,’ ” she recalls. “I decided to learn fly-fishing from the very best. This required finding the right instructors and allowing myself to let go of any need to control—and to
listen
. For an alpha female, that is incredibly challenging. But as I continued to fish, I kept listening, and kept discovering.”

As Lori-Ann’s fly-fishing proficiency grew, so, too, did her reputation among locals. Eventually, Orvis, the venerable Vermont-based company that is the go-to source for all things outdoors, certified her as its first female guide. The last step before certification is to take a client onto the river; in Lori-Ann’s case, her test client was Leigh Perkins, the owner of Orvis.

“I was late picking him up,” Lori-Ann recalls, “which left me a wreck until I finally blurted, ‘Leigh, it’s making me too damn nervous knowing you are the owner of Orvis, so I’m going to pretend you are one of my regular fishing pals and go from there!’ He said, ‘That’s a great idea, Lovely!’—he calls me ‘Lovely.’ So we fished all day and then sat down to dinner at nine p.m., still wearing our waders.”

Lori-Ann’s rising reknown as “the fly-fishing nurse” began creating even more opportunities, some completely unexpected. Such was the case when Universal Studios called—out of the blue—and offered her a gig teaching
Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon how to fly-fish for the movie
The River Wild
. Then Martha Stewart called—she wanted to do a story on fly-fishing in her magazine and needed Lori-Ann’s help.

“Talk about amazing,” Lori-Ann says. “Seventeen people from the magazine—art directors, photographers, stylists—made this expedition to the Wind River Wilderness, south of Jackson Hole. We hiked 11 miles and fished the creeks and lakes in the area, and we had a blast. There were a lot of bears out that year, and one got into my tent. So I had to move and ended up sleeping next to Martha. There’s the makings of a movie in there!”

Though Lori-Ann continued to work as a nurse, which she still considered her “profession,” fly-fishing opportunities kept cropping up. “I held an Orvis class for three women,” she says, “one from New York, one from Texas, and one from Jackson Hole. They spent two days with me having fun and learning a ton. When it was over, they walked into the Orvis Store in Jackson, Wyoming, and each dropped two grand because they wanted to buy ‘everything Lori-Ann had.’ Being an astute businessman, Leigh had me start the Women’s Schools for Orvis.”

The classes were a hit from the very beginning; the first one attracted 27 students. That gave Lori-Ann the idea of offering her own tours specifically geared to women, so in 1994 she and a friend cofounded Reel Women Fly-Fishing Adventures.

With so many stars aligning in her new career, Lori-Ann decided it was finally time to set nursing aside. For the next dozen years, her life was devoted to guiding, trips, schools, trade shows, speaking engagements, and traveling the world to fly-fish. “I had always been looking for that new magic place,” she says. “I began to realize it was right where I was!”

Then in 2009, Lori-Ann got an offer she couldn’t refuse: She was recruited to interview for the job of director of fishing for El Pescador Lodge in Belize,
a tropical outpost along the northeastern shores of Central America. El Pescador is a beautiful, Orvis-endorsed, saltwater fishing nirvana, where well-moneyed enthusiasts pay $6,000 a week to pursue a grand slam of bonefish, tarpon, and permit fish. The resort interviewed 175 men for the position. “No women applied, not even me. Then a guide friend said, ‘Lori-Ann is the one for the job,’ and I got it.”

But even after they’d made her an offer, she had her doubts. “I wondered whether an outsider like me would be welcomed by the guides, all of whom were men, and a pretty macho bunch at that. But all my friends screamed at me, ‘No way are you
not
taking it! This is the job you were
meant
to do!’ ”

Today, Lori-Ann works at El Pescador eight months a year; the rest of the time she guides trips around the world.

“It’s not a profession I ever imagined myself doing,” she says. “But it goes to show you: Pay attention to what falls out of the sky. We work and work and work, focused on goals. But sometimes the best opportunities are the ones we don’t expect.

“I loved nursing, but even with all the moving around, the job had become predictable. Fly-fishing never is. When you’re there wading in the water, there’s only one constant: the thrill of catching a fish. Everything else—the people, the day, the fish themselves—is different. And that is the bliss I’ve been wandering and searching for all of my life.”

Mary Petersen, 46

Fremont, Nebraska

“M
iss Prim and Proper.” That’s how Mary Petersen imagined her friends and neighbors saw her—the single mom who raised two kids on her own; the exacting math teacher for whom the most important equation in life is
x
²
+
y
²
= 1
; the diligent professional who put in long, hard nights and weekends getting her master’s degree. That’s Mary Petersen.

Or at least that
was
Mary Petersen. About ten years ago, after nearly two decades of being hardworking and conscientious, she’d had her fill. Her son and daughter were teenagers. “Every day they grew more independent of me,” she says, “and eventually it dawned on me that the same thing was happening in reverse:
I
was growing more independent of
them
. And that was a good thing. I began to think that it was time I did something for me.”

It didn’t take Mary long to figure out what. Ever since childhood, she had been drawn to motorcycles. “I always loved that experience when you’d hear the pipes or an engine rev and it sounded so powerful, and you couldn’t help
but spin your head around to see it. There was also a sense of freedom I associated with it, the idea that whatever else was going on, you could just get on your bike and ride.” When she saw an ad for a motorcycle safety course that was being given nearby, she thought,
I can do this, and I can do it on my own. I don’t need a male to do it with me. I can go to the class! I can make it happen!
”

Perhaps to gain a little moral support, Mary showed the ad to a neighbor. “I knew what I was doing,” she laughs. “She’s what I call an ‘encourager.’ ” Within a couple weeks they were
both
taking lessons.

“They taught us everything,” says Mary. “How the engine works, how to make repairs, and lots and lots of safety.” Mary proved to be an apt pupil—the instructor even commented that the math teacher was also an excellent student. But her performance in the classroom did not immediately translate into success on the road.

“I was extremely confident during class,” she says, “but once it was over, I knew I couldn’t just jump on a bike and ride. It wasn’t all glory and freedom, but a massive amount of responsibility.”

At first Mary struggled with the weight and power of the motorcycle on the road, but bit by bit, she asserted herself and took control. She bought a Honda Rebel 250, a reliable cruiser-style bike with a standard engine but a fairly light weight of 325 pounds.

“I’m a relatively tall woman, so I looked a little awkward on this smallish bike,” she says. “My neighbors kidded me, but I didn’t mind a bit. I loved coming home from work, getting on the bike, and practicing.”

The next big change came when a couple who were also motorcycle enthusiasts asked Mary to accompany them on a jaunt. They also invited a friend named Mark. The two hit it off, but Mary didn’t have a lot of time for dating. Mark was persistent: He offered to take her out on his cycle to show her some of the safely paved country roads in the area. She couldn’t resist.

“Mark and I were having a fine time,” Mary recalls, “but suddenly the paved road turned into gravel, which is always dangerous. Mark slowed the bike to a safe crawl but before we could adjust, a dog charged out of nowhere. Mark stayed cool and executed the most impressive Harley U-turn—on gravel!—with this dog barking and biting our ankles. I was hugely impressed.”

Impressed, maybe, but in no rush to start a relationship. Only after a year, when her son was in college and her daughter in high school, did Mary and Mark have their first real date. Four years later, they married.

“I tell you, riding a couple hours through the fields outside of town lowered my blood pressure quicker than lisinopril,” Mary says. “And on the way home, I’d make sure to rumble past the skate park, and I’d wave and holler
to my students there. They couldn’t believe that Ms. Petersen wasn’t home grading their quizzes but was wearing leather and wraparound shades and roaring around town.”

Now she and Mark go everywhere on a motorcycle—his. “What I had to admit to myself,” says Mary, “is that as much as I like riding motorcycles, what I really love is riding
on
motorcycles—sitting on the back, feeling the engine, free to look in every direction and take in the whole view.”

Every summer, Mary and Mark take a big excursion. They’ve been to Yellowstone, Big Horn, the Grand Canyon—all over the West.

But Mary also comes to New York occasionally to visit her son. One recent trip, he surprised her by taking her to a trapeze lesson. “I could see these slender poles going up, up, up, and against the open sky they looked impossibly high. Awaiting my turn, I was trembling with fear, thinking
You’ve got to be kidding
. So I asked my son what on earth made him think I would do such a thing. He answered, ‘Mom, you’ll try anything once.’ ”