Navigating Rough Waters and Tough Conversations ‘Traverse Talks’ Episode 36 – With Outdoor Writer and Guide Emerald LaFortune

Sueann Ramella: So you, in this space, you do a lot of writing about the outdoors and bringing attention to issues. And now I wanna talk about you and your exploration of yourself as your identity, specifically your sexual or gender identity, are you queer are you non-binary?

Emerald LaFortune: So, I identify as a woman. It’s felt really grounding and right to me, with a lot of love towards all my non-binary royalty out there. For me, I identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community as a bisexual woman and I include queer in that descriptor as well. And it was sort of an adult onset realization for me. So it’s been interesting over the last five years to really piece that apart and examine it. I think there’s a lot of bisexual and pansexual erasure in our media and our culture and so it can sometimes be hard to put your finger on that label. But one thing I’ve really learned from that LGBTQ community is being able to embrace fluidity and change. And I think labels are helpful in that they help us find community and help us understand our own experiences. And also a label isn’t or shouldn’t be a shackle. At least when you’re discussing something like sexuality.

Sueann: That’s very insightful. But when you have conversations with people of a different generation or different background, how do you explain what fluidity means?

Emerald: You know, this sort of comes up [since] I live now in rural Idaho, which is an interesting space because on one hand you still have the internet in rural Idaho and especially the younger generations are really understanding themselves in much more broader ways, but on the other hand, it’s not as much a part of the conversation. And I think if someone’s in the outdoors space sometimes I think when people want to latch onto binaries, a lot of that’s white supremacy, dominant culture, all of those things that take a lot of work to dismantle. A lot of it is fear of the unknown. And when you think about folks who do outdoor sports, whether that’s elk hunting, fishing, whitewater rafting, spending time in the mountains … the whole point of those things is to move into a dynamic-unknown landscape, right? So, if you can kind of make the parallel for them of like, “Hey, I know you’re used to moving into spaces that are uncomfortable, moving into spaces you don’t understand.” A lot of it is just building trust so they can hear you when you start to bring that up. But sometimes that can be a parallel that people can hear of, like sometimes they’ll say, “You don’t strike me as somebody who’s scared very often. Why does this bring up fear for you?” And a lot of it, for better or worse, is just living your example and folks being around someone of that lived example. Whether that happens in a TV show or in their real life.

 Sueann: Hmm. I never thought of it that way. Because you have a whole group of people who have been very uncomfortable hunting elk or, as some of our friends recently told me, surrounded by wolves. Hearing them howl and knowing, yeah, you ain’t gonna be able to do much right now. So yeah, that’s a really good point. That parallel … how did you figure that out? 

Emerald: Hmm, maybe trying it every other way and having it not work.

Grief Is Like Water:

Sueann: You mentioned grief and we are just talking about growing up in your family exposed you to the outdoors and these wonderful moments. And your dad passed away when you were a teenager.

Emerald: Yeah, 19.

Sueann: 19. So if you’re comfortable Emerald, I’m wondering what should people understand about a teenager or a young adult losing a parent?

Emerald: Mm, mhm. I think that it’s interesting. [I] grew up in Moscow and went to college at University of Montana and I was really focused on building community around the outdoors, that’s who I wanted my friends to be. And I ended up with this amazing group of girlfriends who all connected based on the outdoors. And then it slowly started coming out that almost all of us had lost a parent at one time or the other. So I’m about a junior in college at this point and finally sort of looked around and thought about the context of my friendships and realized that a lot of us had lost a parent really early. And that’s all to say that even if I think about that group of us who had all lost parents as children or teens were all super different in the way that we wanted to talk about it, in the way that we processed it, in the way that our families sort of reformed after. So I think the first thing is just that everyone’s experience is really different and that I think you’re allowed your experience regardless of what it looks like. For me, personally, a counselor that focused on grief was really helpful. I’m also a verbal processor so therapy works really well for me, whereas I think for others it doesn’t feel quite right.