Heather Hansman is an award-winning freelance writer and the author of “Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow” and “Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West.” Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic and Outside, among others. She lives in Durango, Colorado, right by the river.
SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory – what’s it about and what inspired you to write it?
Heather Hansman: In “Fierce Country” I look at the history of three women — Georgie White, the first female Grand Canyon guide; Anne LaBastille, a mountain guide and pioneering climate scientist; and Dolores LaChapelle, a groundbreaking skier who was also an environmental philosopher — who shaped conservation, climate science and recreation and the ways those things are intertwined, but whose stories were never widely told.
I’ve lived and worked in the outdoor world my whole adult life, both in guiding and in journalism and for me that’s so intertwined with care for landscape. It took until I was in my late 30s to realize that I didn’t have role models in that space, not because women weren’t there but because their stories had been sidelined or pigeonholed or belittled. It felt important to correct that record and shed some light on the people who were there.
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That inquiry led me into an exploration of the history of outdoor recreation in the U.S., how it’s tied up in changing attitudes about land use (and abuse), and whose voices are heard in that space.
I wanted role models, but it turns out these women were too complicated for simple hero stories so instead I found a story about so many intersecting things: climate and public land and environmental ethics, wild adventures, obsession, how gender does and doesn’t matter in outdoor spaces.
SunLit: Place the excerpt you selected in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole and why did you select it?
Hansman: To report on Georgie White I obviously had to go down the Grand Canyon, to understand her love of the landscape and how much she changed it. This scene finds us in Crystal Rapid, one of the biggest in the canyon, where both Georgie and I almost got into trouble.
SunLit: What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?
Hansman: The heart of this story comes from my decades of experience in the outdoor world. I’d been thinking for a long time about the idea of heroes, and why it might be important to have people to look up to, and what the experience of being a woman in that world, which is often male-dominant, was like. I was looking for examples of how to live well in that world, to be committed to something I loved and to take care of the landscape that supported it. These three women showed me how in different ways.
“Fierce Country”
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And these women had surreptitiously showed up in my other work. Georgie makes an appearance in my first book, “Downriver” and Dolores is in my second one, “Powder Days.” Once I started thinking about them the connection became clear.
SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?
Hansman: I’m a journalist, so a lot of the research I’m used to doing involves interviewing people. All of these women are no longer living, so I had to rely on archival research, and tracking down people who knew them. That opened up so many wormholes into the history of recreation and land use, the psychology and physiology of gender, the policy of climate change and more.
I had to sharpen my historian skills, and really practice paring back my research and reporting, to only include what was relevant to the story, which was hard!
SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?
Hansman: All three of these women are complicated. They behaved badly in many ways, and their stories weren’t simple. That was a challenge to portray fairly and in a balanced way, which felt really important. I think we often put heroes up on pedestals. I wanted to show why they were important, but to also acknowledge their darker parts, to show that they were real, flawed people.
SunLit: What do you want readers to take from this book?
Hansman: I want readers to turn a skeptical eye to the stories they’ve been told about who gets to be outside, I want them to try to find joy in those places, and I want them to see that these women were on the right side of environmental history, even if it might not have felt like it at the time, because they were trying to protect the places they loved. That feels important right now.
SunLit: This book is about women outside. Do you think it’s really different to be a woman in that world? What did you learn about that?
Hansman: For a long time I tried to prove to myself and others that it wasn’t different, that I could do anything my male peers could do and that there weren’t social constraints holding me back. But no matter how hard I tried, that never felt completely true, either.
And in working on this book I got to dig into why. There’s a long list of reasons, from the way young children are exposed to adventures and risk — for instance, boys are much more encouraged to try risky things repeatedly — to how women in positions in power are treated, to how sexual harassment shows up in the backcountry.
There’s also the fact that fewer women’s stories are told, so it can feel like you have to be starting from scratch all the time. Learning that history and psychology helped explain the confusing feelings I had, and helped me understand the implicit barriers we face.
SunLit: Tell us about your next project.
Hansman: Right now I’m really thinking about getting this book out into the world, but I have some ideas in the works about stories closer to my home in Durango, and I’ve been toying with the idea of fiction.
A few more quick items
Currently on your nightstand for recreational reading: I’m having a Willa Cather summer, so all of her books
First book you remember really making an impression on you as a kid: “Harriet the Spy”
Best writing advice you’ve ever received: Easy reading is hard writing, which I think is paraphrased Maya Angelou
Favorite fictional literary character: Maybe still Harriet the Spy. I love a complicated woman.
Literary guilty pleasure (title or genre): Cowboy romance
Digital, print or audio – favorite medium to consume literature: Print forever
One book you’ve read multiple times: “Raven’s Exile,” Ellen Meloy
Other than writing utensils, one thing you must have within reach when you write: A warm beverage
Best antidote for writer’s block: Motion! Running, swimming, walking around the block
Most valuable beta reader: My mother, still.