Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Amy Rose
28 Plays3 days ago
After a serious car accident, Amy decided to turn her back on her old life and embrace reconnecting with nature. Join us for our conversation about the joys and challenges of reconnecting with nature!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Outdoorsy Educator Podcast, where stories become lessons and every journey has something to teach us. Every week I sit down with people from all walks of life to hear their adventures, explore their experiences, and uncover the insights that have shaped them along the way.
00:00:21
Speaker
Whether it's from the outdoors, the classroom, or any other path, each conversation offers a fresh perspective on learning, growth, and what it means to truly connect with the world and the people around us.
Guest Introduction: Amy Rose
00:00:40
Speaker
And on this week's episode of the Outdoorsy Educator podcast, we have Amy Rose. Amy, how are you today? I'm good, thank you. are you? Yeah, doing very well. I really appreciate you making the time for me today and for our listeners. Why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself?
00:00:59
Speaker
I guess I... don't know what I'm saying. It's difficult to put you on the spot. That's such a broad question. Yes.
00:01:11
Speaker
I guess in terms of this, i am somebody who decided to uproot my whole life and move into a cabin in the forest to try and heal a brain injury. And it's been a very interesting adventure.
00:01:21
Speaker
Yeah, and that's that's how we connected. I found you on Instagram and I found your story very inspiring in ah in a big sense, but then also in a small sense, which we'll get into because the things that you do day to day are things that we can all do if we want to live a slightly different lifestyle.
Amy's Early Life
00:01:38
Speaker
Why don't you take us back a bit? Because I certainly don't want to tell your story for you. How could I? But I know you had a different life before the brain injury that you mentioned. Yes, it was very different, but it didn't really start out that way because where I'm living now um is where I grew up. So my parents are, well, I guess my mom is still out there. She lives kind of nearby. That's where i went to high school. And so it was a very isolated life as a teenager. Yeah. Right. kind of grow in the woods But I always had a wood stove and everything like that.
00:02:16
Speaker
my mom moved me there as a teenager and we just had raw land on the lake. So we ended up getting a sawmill and actually milling the trees off the property to build the house and lived in a converted garage with an outhouse while we did that.
00:02:33
Speaker
Right. So it's not really anything new, but then being a bored teenager, I wanted to experience more of the world and the city life and do all of the things that I thought I was supposed
Life in Northern Alberta
00:02:46
Speaker
to be doing. of course. ah So I ended up moving to a few different places and I ended up in Northern Alberta in the oil sands.
00:02:57
Speaker
Right. Yeah. So... Yeah, so there's kind of a big city up there and it's about 40 minutes south of just these massive um oil mines.
00:03:13
Speaker
So I lived in that city for five years and I rented and sold heavy equipment to oil companies. As you do. who doesn't? Right? That's right. Yeah. And I thought like, okay, this is what I should be doing with my life. This is deemed as success. I was driving super nice cars and had a membership to the spa and was addicted to Starbucks.
00:03:38
Speaker
Right.
Realizing Material Success Isn't Enough
00:03:40
Speaker
Right. And miraculously, that probably didn't make you truly happy is what I'm guessing. No, it really didn't. It was kind of just this endless chasing for something external. So everything was external where...
00:03:58
Speaker
all of the validation I got and all of my sense of self-worth I put onto these things. And so that gives you kind of this massive sense of anxiety doing that because you have to keep it maintained. So even if you hate your job and you don't like what you're doing and everything else, you're like, well, all of my worth and everything in my life is tied to this thing that gives me this status or whatever it is. And it's this like empty pit. Yeah.
00:04:26
Speaker
Right. Yeah. as And I'm guessing it's never like you've you've alluded to this. It's never enough. You know, right. I've made it. There's no making it because there's always another level. There's always another thing to be sold. And yeah, yes.
00:04:43
Speaker
They're happy for about five minutes and just like admiring this nice car in the driveway. You're like, okay, I made it. I'm good. And then that's maybe a couple of months. You're like, well, I could just work more over time and I could get something even nicer and sacrifice more of my time.
00:05:00
Speaker
Right. And you're just chasing forever and ever and ever. and it's, you never satisfied. Yeah. Yeah, because no car's ever going to maintain that level of happiness or house or anything like that, I find. no Yeah, yeah. It's an endless, endless wheel of, have as you said, having to work more and more and more.
Desire for a Simpler Life
00:05:22
Speaker
yeah the the The fascinating part of your story is how you left that. I'd love you to tell us your story, how you sort of transitioned away from that life. So I don't know exactly when it happened or if it was a slow progression, but I started wanting to revert back to the life that I had as a teenager. And I think it was the exposure to where I was at and slowly understanding what was going on and what was happening to the planet and what was happening, watching myself and everyone around me just chasing money and all the stuff.
00:06:01
Speaker
Going against our own morals, essentially, and just existing. And like, I would even say it for myself. I was just existing in this surface level, massive ego.
00:06:13
Speaker
And there was no depth to anything. um so I started wanting something different and slowly, i don't know what happened. I started like turning into this hippie while living in the oil field.
00:06:28
Speaker
There can't be too many hippies, I'm guessing, in the oil field. I can't even really pinpoint it, but all of a sudden I was like teaching it or searching out kind of spiritual practitioners and doing Reiki. And then all of a sudden i had this room in my house where I was doing yoga and it was full of plants. And I was trying to look like grow lemons in my bedroom.
00:06:49
Speaker
and Did you still have that have the really nice car at this point? Because the yin and yang of that, yeah, I think that's kind of fascinating. yeah So I started leaning this way and then I'm like, I don't want to buy plastic stuff anymore. So then everything in my house started transitioning to like anti-boblasticity.
00:07:06
Speaker
plastic and everything needs to be reusable and everything needs to be health conscious. And all of a sudden there's glass ketchup bottles that like my ex-husband hated this whole time. He's like, what is happening?
00:07:20
Speaker
I just felt this pull to go back home and It was relentless. Like i I don't, I don't understand it. Sometimes I would wake up at four o'clock in the morning, which is this pull to get in my car and drive back to the mountains.
00:07:36
Speaker
And it was so strong and I just kept ignoring it, but it just got louder and louder and louder. So i was trying to find ways that I could do it. And thought maybe I'll buy a piece of land, just put an RV on it. So I have somewhere to go.
00:07:52
Speaker
And just, kept perpetuating and I didn't understand why. and I was telling everyone, I'm like, I'm just going to move back to the forest and I'm going to live this happy little life and grow my own food and probably have chickens. and they're like, she's gone insane. Right.
00:08:07
Speaker
Um, So it was kind of bizarre how it all played out because that started happening. And I was so desperately trying to find this way back home. I was also trying to, I guess, get away from my marriage at the time.
00:08:21
Speaker
um i was unfortunately in a pretty violent and scary marriage. here um So i think that was part of my escape plan.
Life-Changing Car Accident
00:08:33
Speaker
But what's really interesting is about... Two days before my accident happened, i was having a lot of issues at work. For some reason, my performance wasn't doing well, probably because I didn't want to be there. Right. And I had a phone call with my brother where he was saying, like, just come back, like, just move.
00:08:53
Speaker
Just move back. And i said, well, I can't. I have to i have to pay for my Audi. yeah I have to make my Audi payments was my... My thing.
00:09:03
Speaker
And i was working seven days on, seven days off. i was able to go on vacation all the time. i was able to justify it, but I did not want to be there.
00:09:14
Speaker
And then what happened is i was in an accident where I was making a left-hand turn and I got completely demolished by a very large truck. Yikes. Goodness me.
00:09:26
Speaker
Yeah. So that took away all of the things that I didn't want anymore, where all a sudden i I couldn't do my job and didn't have Audi payments anymore.
00:09:39
Speaker
Right. Those went away. Everything went away. So all of a sudden it was just this hard reset and my slate was wiped clean. And all of a sudden I'm sitting there going, okay, do I take this opportunity?
00:09:55
Speaker
Like, do I go? And i ended up going and staying with my mom for a while. I was recovering because I had my hands in like two different casts. as Wow.
00:10:07
Speaker
thank you Brain damaged at this point without really knowing it. I just knew something was off. So I went to stay with her so she could kind of take care of me for a while. And while I was there, i just got this.
00:10:20
Speaker
feeling to join the local Facebook group for that town. And as soon as I did, someone posted this little house for rent and it was in my price range. It had a greenhouse. It had a garden. it had glacier views. It had fruit trees. What more could you want?
00:10:37
Speaker
And I thought, okay, I'm going to, I'm just going to go look at it. Right. um So I did. And I interviewed and they called me two days later and they said out of 19 people were picking you.
00:10:50
Speaker
That's fair. The way you say it reminds me of when people go to the animal shelter just to look. Like they already know in their heart. You know you what's going to happen. Yeah. Like I know what's happening here. Yeah.
00:11:02
Speaker
So then I made mountains move to um make that happen on my own, which was terrifying because it was okay. I'm leaving everything that I know.
00:11:16
Speaker
I'm escaping this marriage and I'm going out completely on my own on disability with a brain injury, but I'm going home. Yeah. But it's good now I found a way to do it.
00:11:27
Speaker
Right. And that the way found you almost. um Yeah, was going to say, like, no, I did not intentionally turn in front of a truck. Right. I'm glad. to And how long ago was that? When did that happen?
00:11:40
Speaker
That was in February of 2019. Right. So it's quite a while ago. Quite a while. I was just thinking, and ah and i hope this I hope this isn't appropriate it isn't inappropriate to ask. How do you view the accident now? Like, obviously, it's terrible in so many ways.
00:11:57
Speaker
But do you see that maybe it was almost course correcting or there's some goodness that came out of it? how How would you view what happened to you on that day? I would 100% view it as either my own manifestation or some kind of divine intervention or both.
00:12:14
Speaker
Because I say this all the time. I said the accident saved my life. Right. That's it's the way you were talking that was coming through. So I wanted to ask how you you felt because, of course, most people, including myself, think how terrible, how tragic. And of course, there was, you know, you get hurt and that's not good. But it does sound like there's so many wonderful things that came out of this.
00:12:40
Speaker
Oh, 100%. It put me on the exact path that I was hoping to be on, which it came at a cost, obviously. um so a lot of my time now is, i guess, just working with the cost that came with it, which is challenging, but also rewarding, which is strange to say.
00:13:02
Speaker
Right. I imagine that's a good metaphor for the way you live your life on the land as well. Very little, I imagine, is easy. But i also imagine... Nothing is easy. Nothing is easy, yet very rewarding, I would imagine.
00:13:16
Speaker
Yes. Yes. um Do you think when you talk about the Audi and you know, and that's just kind of a representation of your life, I'm saying in my head and what you're working towards. Do you think the modern society has really lost its connection to nature and how do we get it back?
Advocacy for Reconnecting with Nature
00:13:37
Speaker
I'd say 100 percent. Yes. um I don't know necessarily how to get it back. It's something that I've been trying to, I guess, subliminally do through my posts. Right. Because i will I don't want to tell anybody how they should be living their life or that everybody should be living the way that I'm living.
00:13:58
Speaker
But it can at least show people that there is still that option. And i think the biggest thing that I come up against is people are now becoming afraid of nature.
00:14:11
Speaker
which is bizarre. Interesting. what What's brought you to to say that? That's a really interesting thing to say. Right? yeah ah A lot of the messages I got in a lot of the comments, because there's always, aren't you afraid of bears? Aren't you afraid of animals? Lately, it's been ticks because I'm just out in the woods all the time. And the fact that I do have to sterilize my drinking water, i'm out hunting in the bush, and in their minds, it's like all of this will cause you harm
00:14:42
Speaker
Isn't it funny? Isn't the human mind interesting? Because, of course, if you flip it and you said to somebody living in the woods, hey, we've got this great idea. We're going to sit you in a metal box with wheels and send you at 70 miles an hour down some concrete. where Oh, and there's lots of other people. But as long as they look at the lights, it's okay. That doesn't seem scary, right? yeah but There's so many scary things in cities. I'm in the city right now. I'm on the outskirts of it. And just going anywhere is terrifying.
00:15:13
Speaker
which Right. It's funny how quickly we shift. I've interviewed many long distance hikers and it's funny how quickly they they adapt to being in the woods and then struggle to adapt when they go into town. Even just looking to cross a road, they can feel this surge of stress that they hadn't felt in in weeks. Right. And everybody is...
00:15:38
Speaker
always on edge here, i find. And like making sure i'm like, is my car door locked? Is the house locked? Am I, can I go for a jog down this road? Like, right.
00:15:49
Speaker
Is this okay? Because there seems to be a lot more threatening things here, but that's just my opinion because I'm used to just being in the trees with the bears Right. It doesn't sound so scary when you say it like that. um and So as you said, everyone is different and and you're certainly not trying to tell anyone how to live their lives. But if somebody came to you and said, look, Amy, I would love to reconnect with nature. You know, I live in suburbia. I have a nine to five. I have the mortgage. And the what might be a good starting point for somebody who just wants to course correct a little bit and try and get back to nature?
00:16:30
Speaker
Say find one of the walking trails and pretty parks where you live, because I'm realizing that those do exist in the city still. And go for walks every day without your phone.
00:16:43
Speaker
I like that a lot. i have to I just went for a walk before we sat down and talked. is i've got I'm very fortunate. I have two lovely parks with huge trees and things right by my house.
00:16:54
Speaker
And I have to be conscious not to pick up my phone or take it out my pocket. Oh, just see if that email came through. just and it' it is a sort of wake-up call.
00:17:05
Speaker
You have to be conscious of it now. which is, i say it's embarrassing. We all do it. you know The vast majority of people are just so connected all the time. It has to be a conscious choice to disconnect.
00:17:19
Speaker
Yes. Well, I mean, they make it so that it's addictive. Right. like i'm I'm addicted to notifications. I can't have them there. They have to be cleared. i' always like, is there a new one? It's like, right it's programmed to mess with your dopamine. Right.
00:17:32
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's people paid a lot of money to make sure that we get that dopamine fix and constantly crave it. Yeah. it's ah Yeah. i i Other than my texts, I have all my notifications off for that reason, because I know every time it dinged, I would want to look and see what it is.
00:17:51
Speaker
Right? It's like a little thought machine. It makes all these like pretty noises and colors and sounds. Right. it I don't know if you ever saw the TV show Lost, but it reminds me of some of the experiments they did on the island there. but i mean, that shows, I don't know, 15 years ago now. But we've almost become that in a lot of ways, like just addicted to that that little dopamine hit all the time.
00:18:16
Speaker
but yeah, I'd say, like, people give themselves some grace because if you're addicted to your phone, it's programmed that way. But you can... break away from it if you want to.
00:18:27
Speaker
It can be done. Yes.
Challenges of Amy's Lifestyle
00:18:30
Speaker
What misconceptions, if any, do people have about you now that you're living a very different life than what you are?
00:18:38
Speaker
Um...
00:18:42
Speaker
I don't know. ah Sorry. I was, was, I was, when I was just thinking about the conversation we were going to have, I was wondering if people might think, oh, she can't enjoy that. Or, you know, or you didn't really want, I don't know. I was just thinking that when you have such a lifestyle shift, people might get the wrong idea or a misconception.
00:19:05
Speaker
I mean, and I don't think all of their misconceptions would be entirely wrong because there's the two sides to everything where, you know, sometimes I find it to be really peaceful, but on the flip side, that can be really lonely.
00:19:17
Speaker
ah Sometimes I'm actually really sad about my circumstances and there's a lot of grief around it. And it is, it's a struggle sometimes. And sometimes I do wish that it was easier and that I could just, you know, turn up a thermostat and go to a grocery store.
00:19:34
Speaker
Right. So it it's I exist kind of in both places. so Yeah, I think I'm very much guilty of this. So, I mean, I've done, you know, multi-day hikes and all that is where I'm sleeping in the tent overnight in bear country. So I've got a little glimpse of it, but I'm one of those people I'm sitting on my couch going, oh, I could do it. I could do it because I'm sitting on my couch in my air conditioning in my brick home.
00:20:02
Speaker
It's very easy to think that. um i think I think we forget how many creature comforts we all have. Yes. And once they're removed, it's really interesting because even if I feel like crap and I don't want to get up, um well, my bathroom, first of all, is outside of the building.
00:20:21
Speaker
Right. So it's 20 feet from the building. And if it's minus 20 outside, i need to shovel four feet of snow to get there. And then on my way back, I need to chop wood and make a fire when I get inside. And there's there's no avoiding it.
00:20:38
Speaker
Right. In order to survive, you have to do these things. You can't just yeah yeah flip a switch and your house heats up. No, and there is nobody there helping me. Right.
00:20:49
Speaker
so Kind of on that note, what are you still learning about yourself? I was assuming that living in out in in the mountains, in the forest, or in the woods, wherever what we want to use, you're constantly learning. So i was trying to think of something that you have recently learned, either either physical how to do something or something about yourself.
00:21:11
Speaker
Oh, gosh, both all the time. Right. Thank I think the the coolest thing that I've learned about myself is that I'm capable of more than I thought I was. love that.
00:21:24
Speaker
Yeah. And that covers like all bases because like admittedly, I was somebody who I think was almost like codependent in relationships and was always needing a partner, always needing somebody there and felt that I needed something.
00:21:43
Speaker
that in order to be okay. And then I didn't have that anymore. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna, I have to figure out myself. And so that was an important component was building my relationship with me, but then also just creating community and a lot of deep friendships and having everything kind of spread out, if that makes any sense.
00:22:05
Speaker
um And then the other thing was, especially with the brain injury, i was constantly told everything I can't do. And right that includes me telling myself things I couldn't do.
00:22:17
Speaker
and initially I had, i think, higher levels of fear and anxiety, which is something that the brain injury can do. So there was a few years where I did nothing.
00:22:29
Speaker
I was afraid of everything. i was like borderline agoraphobic, just, I didn't want to move. And Then I realized over the past few years through doing these things that you actually can recondition your brain, your nervous system, yourself. You can train your mind, you can train your body, it's entirely possible to actually be able to do these things.
00:22:58
Speaker
Right, I think as humans sometimes we don't give ourselves almost enough credit to be able to do things like that. It's hard work, takes a lot to work, but it can be done. Right. No, I started calling it intentional suffering.
00:23:13
Speaker
I quite like that. I've never thought of intentional suffering, especially especially suffering for a greater good. I love that. yeah because the more you put yourself through, the more you can handle. But it's also, you know, don't put yourself over the limit too far because then you're setting yourself back. So a lot of my time has been spent going, okay, where are my limits?
00:23:36
Speaker
What are they? Like, what what can I actually do? And then finding that limit and going, okay, how can I modify? Right. Yeah. So this is my limit, but that doesn't necessarily mean the end of
Redefining Success
00:23:49
Speaker
the road. You can you can pivot, you can do something else.
00:23:53
Speaker
Yeah. just Just fascinating. um I feel like I could talk to you for hours. i have three final questions as we come up come around the the corner here to the home stretch of the interview. um Success.
00:24:07
Speaker
I mean, that's kind of been most of this interview is how your i think your view of success has changed. um How would you define it now in your current your your current place where you are?
00:24:20
Speaker
How define success? How do you feel perhaps you've had a successful day now as opposed to five or 10 years ago?
00:24:33
Speaker
going to have to think about that one. OK. Yeah, not a problem. We can move on. We can think about it. Maybe we' ah I'll type it in the show notes afterwards because, i think as I did say, I didn't pre-forewarn you about any questions. No, and I like to give so much context to questions.
00:24:51
Speaker
Yeah, no, no, I'm all for it. um I'm going to hit you with two more. The first one is, what book would you say has been one of the most impactful on your life?
00:25:04
Speaker
I think the one that sent me on my path, and I had this conversation with someone the other day, was actually The Four Agreements. the Oh, that rings a bell. you tell me a little about it?
00:25:16
Speaker
Because I know that name.
00:25:19
Speaker
It's hard to explain it in like the full context, but I think I attribute it to almost that feeling where I made the switch in my life okay and realized where I was at and what I was doing. Because the book starts out of how we've all been conditioned from childhood.
00:25:36
Speaker
And all of the thoughts and ideas and everything that we have come from our parents or come from other people. And so it's like, what happens when you step outside of that? Like, who are you really? What is your dream? Who, who are you? What are you doing?
00:25:52
Speaker
And it kind of pulled back the veil on what i knew reality to be. so it's kind of like those things where it's like, now I'm woke. It's the awakening for that. And then it has some really good principles on how to guess, live your life a little bit differently.
00:26:15
Speaker
So that was that was my that was my starter. That one pulled back the veil. and then I went, wait, what else is there? And it just started this whole trajectory. I love it. The four agreements. I will look that up um when we finish here. My final one of these three questions is I'm going to sort of paint the picture for you.
Amy's Influences and Inspirations
00:26:36
Speaker
It's the summertime in the far in the mountains where you are. And if you could choose somebody to come and live with you in the mountains, they bring their own tent, they're set up on your land, And they could stay a while and just live alongside you, chop the wood, do what needs to be done, and you get to pick their brain, talk to them, learn from them. And it could be anyone, dead, alive, famous, somebody you know, anybody who's ever existed. Who would you like to spend some time chopping wood and doing all the chores around your cabin with?
00:27:10
Speaker
Oh, my gosh. I don't know. There'd be so many people. Right? Yeah. And again, I've put you on the spot here, so it's not a problem. um I've had some people who have said, you know, ah a parent who has passed away or a close friend that they miss all the way to David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, Gandhi.
00:27:30
Speaker
People have gone all over the this the the gamut with this. You know what? Now that you've said that, I guess this will be like a more vulnerable thing because it just triggered it. But I think um I would bring my dad out there and he passed away in 2021.
00:27:48
Speaker
But he was a lot of the reasons why I am the way that I am. Like he was an adult bow hunter, fisher, ah took me camping as a kid.
00:27:59
Speaker
kind of all of those things. A lot of the things about me came from him. but he... ah was I guess sick his whole life for the majority of it. He died from alcoholism.
00:28:11
Speaker
So in the end, he really wanted to come out and spend time with me and go hunting with me, ah but never got to. so I think it would be cool to have him out there and give him that opportunity and put him back in the wild. That's beautiful. what Well, a lovely way to end. And if people would like to talk to you, ask you questions, visit your online store. We should mention that too. Where can people find you?
Connecting with Amy Online
00:28:35
Speaker
They can find me on my Instagram, which is the hillbilly witch. I also have the hillbilly witch.com, which is where I sell my tallow skincare. Fantastic. Well, Amy Rose, I cannot thank you enough for this time we've spent together today. Thank you so much.
00:28:51
Speaker
Thank you.
00:28:55
Speaker
Thank you again to this week's guest and I hope today's episode was as enjoyable for you as it was for me and perhaps even inspired your next adventure. If you did enjoy the show, please be sure to subscribe, leave a review or follow us wherever you get your podcasts. You can find more information at theoutdoorsyeducator.com or follow us on Instagram, TikTok or Facebook. Until next time, thank you so much for listening to...
00:29:23
Speaker
The Outdoorsy Educator Podcast.