Submission by Uyen-Phuong Nguyen, a member of the 2024 BIPOC Guide Development Program.
There are certain forks in the roadmap of your life, where the path you’re about to take has large implications for how the rest of life’s journey will take shape for you. By making a single choice, you turn down countless other opportunities, you choose not to invest in these versions of you that ~could~ exist. However, by making certain choices with intention, you choose to invest in yourself, to bet on yourself, to say, “I’m the author of my own story, and this is the story I choose to write”.
My family is a tight-knit clan of Vietnamese folk, refugees of the war. I was the first in my family to be born in the United States, to go to college, to get a secondary degree. My family had a lot of hopes for me: some white collar job, perhaps a lawyer or doctor or engineer, and then to find a nice Vietnamese husband. My given name reflects the hopes that my parents had for me – loosely translated, Uyen-Phuong means “New Directions”. I achieved a lot of what they wanted for me – I attended an Ivy League university and worked as a software engineer for 2 years after graduation.
But – something felt off. I felt hollow. Though my job was well-paying and prestigious and provided stability, I couldn’t help but feel that I was missing something. Thinking about the limited time we have on this earth and how to best spend it, I decided to quit my job and become an outdoor instructor. I worked in the mountains of North Carolina for a season, leading backpacking, rock climbing, and whitewater trips for various populations ranging from LGBTQIA+ courses to veteran courses. I absolutely loved my work and felt fulfilled, but I went from making a software engineering salary to making, well, not quite that. I needed to transition out of guiding and instructing because I couldn’t afford to stay in the field anymore, especially not when I had family members who depended on me. Salt in the wound came from when they didn’t understand why I wanted to be a guide.
“We immigrated to this country for clean, running water, for electricity, for an easier life. Why do you throw that away?”
And to be fair, it’s a good question. Guiding can be tough. You’re in the field for days, perhaps weeks at a time. You’re hauling heavy loads up and down the mountains, you’re responsible for the welfare of your climbers, and beyond that, you want them to have a good time. You want to facilitate a good experience for them, but there are so many factors out of your control: weather, their fitness and experience level, their attitudes. Why do we guide?
For me, the answer to that comes from seeing my climbers go beyond their comfort zone, to achieve things they never thought were possible. A regular day for us is a trip up Kulshan, or perhaps up Tahoma. Those trips are our bread and butter, we know those mountains well because we respect the mountain, we put in days, years, honing our skills and learning how to be a guide. But for our clients, those can be bucket-list, lifetime achievements. They *are* lifetime bucket-list achievements. For people to come from pancake flat Nebraska, from the humidity of Florida, from all over the world, to climb our mountains is no small feat. I love seeing people achieve their dreams. I love seeing people grow into themselves, to see what they’re capable of. We can achieve so much more than we know.
And that’s why I became a guide. I want to help facilitate these experiences. And, beyond that, I want to see more guides who look like me. I am who I am because of my mentors, the people who paved the way before me. Female guides who could keep up with, and outpace the men, back when I was growing up. This summer, I learned from a diverse group of guides who identified as BIPOC, as female, as queer. It was radical. Though they were in the minority, the simple fact that they were there, taking up space, leading the charge, and teaching our cohort, the next generation of guides, was in itself the most powerful thing I took away this summer. That could be me. That *is* me.
I’m still trying to figure out how guiding fits into my life, and how I can make it sustainable. The fact is, there are so many barriers to entry in the guiding world and its no surprise that not many guides look or feel like me. The gear is expensive, the mentorship can be hard to find, and you have to live in a space that allows you to practice and get mileage. Due to systems of privilege and oppression that have been in place for generations, it can be hard to break through. And, once you do break through, it can be hard to stay and make it work for you. But it’s because of programs like this that the narrative is slowly changing. In the Guide Development Program we get free mentorship and training, gear support, and an amazing cohort of humans to cheer you on and grow with you, each with their own powerful, unique story. I already know that choosing to join this program in its second year has altered the course of my life, and I don’t say that lightly. It feels like I’ve lived 5 different lives, with many career and geographic changes. Amongst all the changes and choices I’ve made, a few stand out and have anchored my next moves. Joining this Guide Development Program has been one of those.
If you have any questions at all about the program, or want to have a conversation about guiding and how to make it work for you, or literally anything at all, please reach out! I want to be a resource, and I remember reading these posts during my application process and feeling a bit less lonely, and a bit more hopeful. All the best, and see you out there.
