The first time I met Heather Hansman in person we were both standing in line for the sole chairlift at Silverton Mountain in Colorado, waiting to be deposited into the high alpine, experts-only terrain. I had a girl crush immediately. I’d long been a fan of her writing and had the opportunity to work with her while I was an editor at Sunset magazine. You can get an idea of a person from their writing, and she was just as bad ass as I’d imagine she’d be based on her storytelling and reporting.
Heather has a knack for creating compelling narratives around important topics in the outdoors. You can tell she isn’t phoning in stories from behind a desk. She’s out there in the field. For her first book Down River: Into the Future of Water in the West, she paddled the length of the Green River, the most significant tributary of the Colorado River, in an inflatable pack raft. Her follow up, Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns, and the Future of Chasing Snow offers a glimpse of skim bum culture as she chases pow from ski towns in Colorado, Vermont, Montana, West Virginia, and beyond.
For her latest book Fierce Country: The Untold Story of Three Women who Ignited America’s Love for the Wild she could have just dug into archives and journals but instead she signed on to be a swamper (basically an unpaid rafting intern) on the Grand Canyon. Heather’s willingness to put herself in the footsteps of her characters is what sets her storytelling apart. Here, she talks about heroes, inequality in the outdoors, and the delicate act of writing a book about women and not having it be a “girl book.”
Your new book shares the story of rafting guide Georgie White, powder skier Dolores LaChapelle, and wilderness guide Anne LaBastille. How did you choose this trio of characters?
“They had really been in the background for a while. Georgie shows up in my first book and Dolores was in Powder Days. I grew up on the East Coast near Walden Pond and Anne was this isolated hermit living in an off-grid cabin in the Adirondacks. She was a guide, writer, and scientist and I found her story really interesting. Each woman had a different idea of how to live a life in the outdoors.”
None of these women are still living. What was your research process like since you couldn’t interview them in person?
“It was very different from my other books. There was a lot more research and history. None of the three had living children. I relied heavily on stories from people who knew them. Colorado River Runners had archives on Georgie. All three women had written journals and letters,
but Georgie was a notorious liar so I really had to crosscheck her stuff. It was tough to know how deep to go into the archives. A lot of the history of recreation ended up being cut from the first draft. There was a whole chunk on sexual harassment in the Grand Canyon that I was sad to take out but it slowed down the narrative.”
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