Ep. 52 Drawing Strength From Nature with Robyn Ramsay

I'm Lacey Jones with Elevate the Individual. Episode 52 Drawing Strength from Nature with Robyn Ramsay. Today's guest has been to the highest of highs when it comes to outdoor recreation, and the lessons learned through outdoor play have prepared her for motherhood and understanding how to meet her self care needs. I am so thankful she pushed outside of her comfort zone and agreed to meet with me because she shares some wonderful analogies that I believe we can all benefit from in our motherhood journey. And if you haven't already seen this month's issue of Raising Confident Mothers, please check it out to see some fun pictures of Robyn's adventures. So, without further ado, let's dive into the conversation.

My name is Robyn Ramsay and I'm married to Chris Ramsay. We've been married, we just had our 18th wedding anniversary this last Sunday. We dated and we're rock climbing partners. So we actually climbed together for about ten months before we even started dating and got engaged. So I joke with all of the young women that I talk to that if rock climbing is a great way to meet a guy, because if you can trust them with your life, you can trust them with a date. So that's a good way to know that you can start a relationship. So I'm super lucky that I was able to marry my rock climbing partner because we've been adventuring ever since. We kept playing and biking together. Every wedding anniversary we tried to do something big to kind of celebrate. It doesn't necessarily have to be on our actual wedding anniversary because life is messy and busy, but we tried to do something fun to just kind of keep active together. And then we have three beautiful kids. Cassidy is 16, tucker just turned 14 on Tuesday, and youngest Micah is eleven, and he's going on 18, I swear, but he'll be twelve in November. That's awesome.

Okay, so you both met rock climbing, but how did you get to that point? Was that something that you just did on your own or were your families into it? How did you get there?

Chris had been rock climbing since he was a high schooler. We joke with our kids that he only graduated from high school because his grandma bought a plane ticket from the East Coast to come see him graduate. And so his mom threatened his life if he didn't actually get good grades and could walk. So Chris was a rock climbing bum. Him and his best friend Brett would go and climb all over the place in Utah, we're the closest surrounding area. And so he had always been into rock climbing and even when he was, he went on a mission and a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ Latter day Saints and in Chile, and did some rock climbing there as well, just on their like, p days. There's pictures of him climbing with his mission president on the wall inside of the mission president's home because they were all made of stone and rock and stuff. So he tried to find ways to keep climbing even then. So rock climbing was a thing for him always. When I was in high school, we both went to BYU, Idaho and I had a friend at the time that was really into rock climbing, but she couldn't climb because she didn't have a ballet partner and so she talked me into going and I fell in love with it. I'd only been climbing a couple of times at a gym before then because I grew up in Sacramento and there just wasn't a lot of opportunities there to climb and so I didn't know anything about it until I went to college and climbed with her and met this fantastic community. We had a climbing mentor, Dean Lortz, that taught us basically anything and everything we wanted to know and just kind of took us all under his leading and we were able to climb with him and learn all about safety and where to climb. And it was an incredible experience for a teenager. And so I had already been climbing for about a year and a half and we all kind of met at Sticks and Stones in BYU, Idaho and Chris was there one day and I was there and we kind of climb about the same level when we were in college. And so when we climbed together as a group, he jokes that he did it because he thought it was cute, so he was trying to talk to me. If you're climbing way above your partner, then it's not as much fun because you'll go and set a route and then your partner can't actually follow you up where you set a route and it's way boring for your partner. So you tend to climb with people that climbed close to you in level and so a lot of times we would climb together because he was a lot of fun to be with. He was always a gentleman, he wasn't dirty in humor, he always made me feel comfortable and we could just talk about everything and anything. So when we actually started dating, it was nice because I had already met his family, he had already met mine. Yeah, it was super fun. So he's been my boyfriend for life.

Oh, I love it. It just seems so natural too, like the progression of all of it. That's cool. So you've done rock climbing, but I know that you get out there and do tons of stuff. Like, you've mentioned adventures, so let's go into that. What adventures have you done? What sports, athletic, adventurous things do you love?

So, growing up, when I was a kid, I was in Sacramento, California. We did a lot of boating, so I grew up wakeboarding and just spent a lot of time out on the lakes and rivers. My family also did a lot of backpacking, so I grew up doing in the Sierras and the California Sierra, it's just a lot of backpacking ventures. My sisters and I would try to go and escape by ourselves. So I grew up not necessarily needing a guy or somebody that you felt like was your leader. We would just go and kind of get lost in the mountains by ourselves and have these adventures. And I'd always been drawn to the mountains. I love being in tall, high places. I love getting on top of a peak and being able to have this really cool perspective of everything below you. It just really humbles you and makes you realize how small we are compared to just how amazing this world is. And so I've always been drawn to mountains. And then when I met Chris, he introduced me to a whole new world. We'd been climbing together and then he introduced me to biking. So I got really into road biking and mountain biking and we did a lot of biking adventures together. So we've even one of our anniversary trips that we did together was we biked through Yellowstone. They have a time period where between when they shut it down for snowmobiles and they open it up for tourist traffic, there's about two weeks where just bikes can go through and service vehicles. And so we parked the car on one side and brought credit cards and biked to the other side of the park and slept at a hotel and then biked back. And it was amazing because you get to see Yellowstone, just you and the bikes and the bison and it was really, really neat. And then we got more into mountaineering and have been able to do some amazing things through that, have met more incredible people. I skied a little bit when I was a kid, but we've done a lot more now. Chris had skied a lot when he was a kid in Utah, and so we've kind of started combining our love of skiing and our love of mountains and it's starting to get combine those so that we can do some backcountry skiing stuff, but we've been able to summit things like Rainier together. We've done Adams with Tucker, try to get on top of lots of different mountain points around here. I've taken the kids up to base camp on Rainier. That was pretty fun. So? Yeah. I don't know. What else do you want to know?

First, I'm in awe because I have hiked Mount Tempanogas in Utah during college. And for me, as someone who is probably the opposite in endurance level as you, that was a tough game and the people probably wanted to leave me behind. And so let's talk a little bit about the mind or the mental game necessary and the mental strength necessary to do what you do. Does it come naturally? Do you feel like you've had to develop it over the years?

So I think being a kid and growing up in the mountains, my parents did a great job taking us hiking because I feel comfortable being myself in the backcountry, and I think that's a big part of it. I think some people don't feel comfortable going backcountry because they don't know if something happens, can I administer any kind of first aid? If I get lost, can I navigate my way out? They don't even know point of contact, where do I want to go? What am I interested in seeing? And so growing up, hiking, I think, has really given me a foundation for just being comfortable going backcountry. I've even backpacked with the kids before Chris could go with me. I don't feel like I need another adult, necessarily, but I feel very comfortable being in the mountains. And I want to be careful saying that, because the mountains if you get cocky in the mountains or you think that you know everything or you're safe always, it will always prove you wrong. You'll have some straight animal or just rock movement or snow. Nature is very unpredictable. So I always try to have respect for where I am, but I'm not afraid of being there. And so I think just being able to adapt to your surroundings, being aware of things that are happening around you and being comfortable in silence, being comfortable by yourself. One of my favorite things that I did was I ran with Aspire Running. It's a running group up in Seattle or I'm sorry, in Bellingham. And they have a couple of different runs that they sponsor and help you with. And so one of the runs that they sponsor that I got to do is circumnavigate Mount Rainier. And so you have three days that you get to run around all of Mount Rainier. So altogether, it's 100 miles and 22,000 vertical feet of climbing. And it was so neat because for three days, it's just you in the mountains. Occasionally you would see some hikers and stuff, but you're so back into Rainier that a lot of people don't see those trails because we say the overhead is high, the cost of admission is high. It takes a lot to hike into those places. It's not just a day trip. And so you got to see places of Rainier that not a lot of people get to see. And you get to do it in privacy. You get to just be you and Mount Rainier. And so that's stuff that I enjoy, I think it's part of it speaks to my soul. Some people don't like that. They don't like being alone. It makes them nervous, the silence of it. They don't like it. There's people that always want that noise or busy, and I'm kind of the opposite. Sometimes if there's too much noise or too much busy, I feel antsy or uncomfortable, and I just want to get out and just be around trees and mountains for a little while, which to.

Me, speaks to your own personal recipe for self care. Like the mountains, the trees, quiet, being on your own and trusting and having that confidence in yourself and really knowing who you are so that you can go out there and enjoy these just beautiful, scenic places and challenges, too. Right? Like 100 miles in three days, is that right? Yeah, that's amazing. Okay. Do you feel like and you probably already answered this, but do you have to train for different events or do you feel like just life? This is the way that you live, and you're naturally training for some of these bigger events.

So if I just want to take my kids during the summer and hike mailbox or hike Mount Tenoris or do some backpacking trips that go into Snow Lake, that's just life. I would be disappointed in myself if I felt that I had gotten to the point physically that my kids woke up and said, hey, let's go here. And I thought, Dang, I can't, because I don't think that I can responsibly take you to that. So there's a certain level that I expect myself to maintain just because I want to be able to play with my kids in those places. But then there's bigger things. Like when we did Summit Mount Rainier, when I circumnavigated Rainier, I've done STP a couple of times, I've done another, and those in one day. I did lodaja it's logan to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on a bike that's another 200 miles. That's pretty big. There's a lot more climbing in that one than STP. Those are events that you could technically do those without training. I've been at a starting line up for a half marathon or sorry, for a half iron man before, and I heard the guys next to me talking, and one of them, as we're standing in the water waiting for them to start a half iron man, he was like, Dang, I wish I'd trained for this. There's going to be a lot of suffering in this for you. And that's kind of the idea of training is when you have these bigger events, you may be able to push through the human spirit is an incredible thing. So for me to say nobody can do a marathon unless they train for it, it's not true. There's probably a lot of people that can. It's just how much do you want to suffer and how well do you want to perform and that's the training helps you to be able to truly enjoy yourself without having a higher risk of injury through that process?

Yes. Okay, so let's take all of this and just kind of shift real quick to motherhood. I feel like everything that you just said, we could be like, and we'll plug in motherhood for whatever the event is like the half marathon and the marathon and STP, that sort of thing. But you mentioned earlier that nature is very unpredictable, and so as a result because nature is unpredictable. What did you say after that? I didn't write down fast enough.

Yeah, because it's unpredictable. You constantly have to be on guard. You have to be able to watch and you have to be able to react to your surroundings.

Okay? So I'm like, oh, hey, welcome to Motherhood. Right? Motherhood is so unpredictable. You have to be able to watch and respond to your surroundings and the different situations. Can you draw a parallel or how do you take everything that you've learned in the mountains and in your different activities and apply that to your experience with Motherhood?

We had a moment when we were climbing Rainier, so when we summited Mount Rainier, we did it with one of our really good friends. And Sean Hancock is awesome. He has tons of experience and had climbed Rainier a couple of times. So it was a group of three of us and we were all together and we were coming down, so we had already summited. We're super excited and it had been kind of the chances of us summiting that day were super low. There was a really big thunder and lightning storm that hit the night before we were going to summit, and so we couldn't leave the tent when we wanted to. Normally for a mountain ascent, you have to leave your tent by about 1230 or 01:00 in the morning because the snow in the mountain, the warmer it gets, the more it shifts, the more upset and angry everything gets. And so the goal is to get up, summit and then come back down safely while the snow is still nice and hard and it's not warmed and you don't have the crosses opening up and everything else. So we were within probably ten minutes of having to call it because the lightning and the thunder just wouldn't stop. And finally the lightning and thunder stopped, but it was raining really hard. Well, because we were a three man group, we said, hey, we're all really good, we're really in shape. We know what we're doing. Let's just hike as fast as we can going up to try to get to where it's snowing, because when it's raining, it soaks through your stuff. If it's snowing, it doesn't go into yeah, you can brush it off. So we sped hiked as fast up as we could go. All of the guide groups that day, they made it probably a couple of miles and then had to turn around and go back to base camp because they just moved too slow, so it was just raining too much. So we were able to summit despite this crazy weather, and I'm pretty sure God telling us, probably should have do it, guys, but we were like, we're going to do this. And so we ascended and it was awesome and incredible. And then as we were coming back down, we hit this spot called the Cleaver, and it's made up of loose rock, basically just tons and tons of loose rock. And so we got down past that, and we were about to go through. It's called the ice box, and it's where you kind of just trek along, and there's these huge it's called an ice box because it literally looks like chunks of ice that just drop down. Like somebody presses a button, and they just fall. And so you have to get through that section kind of quick and quiet. So we were prepping and grabbing some food and getting ready to go through the section, when all of a sudden, Sean hears something looks up, and there's this VW Bug boulder that had dislodged and was coming down. And so he said, Get ready to run. And we looked to kind of gauge where the landslide, where the rock fall was going to hit, and then we all sprinted and tried to duck and hope that we didn't get smashed. And so the rocks had all finished. It was quiet. We looked around, and where we had been, there wasn't a trail anymore. It was completely gone. And we were going to go a little bit further and take off some equipment that we had and kind of switch things around and put our crampons on and where I had originally said, hey, we should go there and put our crampons on, chris was like, I don't feel good about that. Let's come back over here. Well, if I had been right and they had listened to me, we wouldn't have made it. We would have gotten smashed by the rocks and probably ended up in a Kravos. But because Chris kind of had a feeling that we should stay where we were, and he didn't like that, then we were safe, and we were able to come down. And it was crazy. Afterwards, we couldn't stop shaking for a second because we were like, oh, my gosh, this just totally happened. And I think there's a lot of times in parenthood that we just have these moments that the rocks are coming down. We're watching our kids. They're not in a good spot, but luckily, we can talk to our buddy. We can talk to I'm very blessed. I have an amazing partner in my life that he can help bounce things off. So if I am overreacting and I'm panicking and I can't move, then he has a really good way of having perspective. And Chris is like, let's just stop. Let's look and evaluate. And that was when the rocks first started coming. Sean was very smart and was like, Stop. Wait. So that we could see where the rock was going to hit the wall and where it would come, because as the rock fell, it hit the wall, and that's what set the landslide. And so if we had just taken off when we first saw the rock, we wouldn't have known which way to run, which way would have been safe and which way we would have gotten smashed. I think a lot of times in parenthood, we just have to watch kind of a disaster and then figure out how to keep everybody from getting smashed. I mean, there's going to be landfalls. The kids are at high school. They can't even go to the bathroom all around them. There's going to be landfalls. There's going to be crosses, there's going to be lightning and thunderstorms, but we just have to know how to react. We can't protect them from it, but we can try to teach them how to when to run, where to hide, how to protect yourself, and sometimes when to call it and say, you know what, we probably shouldn't go up this day again. We probably shouldn't have summited that day because of the lightning adventure, but we made the choice and we made it back down, but we had to pay some price for it. Yeah, right.

There's consequences to all things, but you also have this innate trust in yourself and like you said, your partners that were with you to help guide through that. And so I would venture to say there's also an innate trust in your mothering and your ability as a mother, whether or not you want to acknowledge that, because you're a pretty amazing mom, right? There's this innate trust in yourself. And I would say your Heavenly Father, that you are all a team and you're going to get this child through the situation and yourself through the situation. It's not just about the child getting through the situation. It's about us sometimes, too. I love that analogy. So what is one thing that you've been able to do? I'm going to go two different routes with this. So one thing that you've been able to do with your athletic endeavors that you never thought would be possible, and then one thing in your motherhood endeavors that you never thought possible. And that one's kind of a surprise question I'm thrown at you. So you can ponder on it, but do you have a thought on those at all?

Circumnavigating Rainier was probably my favorite thing that I've done. I didn't think that I'd be able to make it that far or I think that's the wrong way to say it again. It's just that part of me that never takes for granted. Every day that I get to be there. I think when I line up for a race, every time, I hope that I'll be able to finish it. But I've seen enough things that kind of just throw it's. Like you could be 2 miles into a five K and break your ankle or twist it. So I think when I was training for an ear, I had lots of hopes that I would make it around and lots of doubts that I would physically be able to within the three days. There's a little bit of time restriction and so I was really worried about making the time restriction, but that was at the end to finish it and be able to know that I had done it. Chris joined me for the last day, so that was super special because I was able to run with him for the last bit of it. And it's just by far my favorite thing that I've done physically. And I think if you'd asked me ten years ago if I could have done that, I would have said, I hope so. Yeah, I hope I can do it. I don't know. But I hate putting a cap or a limit on stuff and saying that I'll never do that. There's a couple of things, like Skydiving. I have no desire to ever do.

That with you on that one. I can understand that exactly.

But as far as things that are just physically hard, I don't like putting a cap on it. I like just seeing where every time we learn something new, every time we climb a new mountain, it kind of opens up another door, another opportunity, and teaches us a little bit more skills that will help us to continue to learn how to play in this world a little bit more. So I hope that answered that one.

Yes, totally. Before we dig into the next part of it. The motherhood endeavors. So you do all these things, and what do you hope your kids take away from these opportunities and.

Through what.

You'Re teaching, through these experiences? What do you hope they take away from that?

The selfish side of me doesn't do it for them. The selfish side of me does it for me to keep my identity through Motherhood. So I hope that they can see that you get to still be yourself, that you can love people unconditionally, but you don't have to lose yourself in that love. That even though they're busy and I am their biggest cheerleader and I support them a million percent, that I have to make sure that I can still find myself at the end of the day. And I know who I am when I look at myself in the mirror. Because if I lose that, then I don't feel like I can give them the strength that they need to become who they are. Does that help?

Oh, my gosh. I'm like, yes. Amen maybe. Is that your biggest endeavor through motherhood is to maintain your sense of identity through it beautiful. I love it. Okay. Do you have any other thoughts on your biggest motherhood endeavor?

I think my biggest motherhood endeavor is for them to be able to figure out who they are and to be happy with it. I don't even know who they are. They're trying to figure out what they're interested in, what they're excited about, what they're good at. And even Cassidy, she's only 16, and I think a lot of times we expect them to have all the answers, but they so don't. It's like I don't have all the answers. I'm still trying to figure out just every year it shifts, it changes. And so I think my biggest goal in motherhood is for them to know. At the end of the day, I tell Micah three things. My biggest thing that I want him to know is, number one, that God loves him no matter what unconditionally. Number two, that his dad and I will always love him and are proud of him. And that number three, he needs to love himself. And so anytime he gets frustrated, I kind of go back to those three things. So I guess if there's anything in motherhood, I hope that my kids can just know those three things.

Yes. You're nailing it over there, right? I'm digging this. Okay. So is there any other message that you want to leave with our listeners or our readers?

Motherhood is hard and messy. There's phases, I feel like on a lot of it sometimes where I did lose myself and I have to kind of find myself again. That's kind of my joke is if I get super groutchy, chris will be like, have you been on a hike lately? I love it for me to go and kind of search a little bit, and that's my thing. I figured out that that's kind of the recipe for my happiness. If that's not somebody else's happiness, then hiking isn't going to help them. It's probably just going to make them even more miserable, because now they're doing something they don't like and they're not happy to begin with. Right. So I think the biggest thing for us is to figure out what speaks to our heart and then make sure that we take the time to do it, because if we lose ourselves, then we can't help our kids find their way. If we don't know who we are, then how do we expect them to figure out who they are? And sometimes that feels selfish. There's a lot of times that I'm training you're doing these training runs or training rides or whatever else. I am very consistent in weight training to make sure that I stay strong, but at the end of the day, if I'm not who I want to be, then I can't help and support them. I feel like we talk a lot about the lanterns and the light. If I'm not putting oil in myself, then I can't help them out. Eventually you run out and you're stuck outside the door too, because you don't have any either. So just making sure that we're constantly, even when it's hard, even when time is short, try to take time for you at least a little bit a week.

Oh, I love it, love it, love it. Thank you. You hit some really key points in there. And so I am so grateful that you took a chance on this little interview and opened up to saying yes. To it because you really have some deep messages that I think are so valuable for mothers who really are trying to make sure they don't lose themselves in this motherhood journey. So thank you.