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“Whatever I can do to help dispel the cultural trance that says life ends at a certain age… well, excuse me, but bullshit on that.”
That’s Scout Wilkins, a lifelong outdoor guide who has kept adventure in her life for 70 years and counting — and in this campfire-story episode, she shares seven lessons the wilderness has taught her. If her stories light a fire under you, we’re hosting a full Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim hike on October 10th, 2026, for women 50 and over!
Scout Wilkins is a lifelong adventurer and guide who has been guiding since she was 11 years old — backpacking, horses and mules, rivers and canyons, winters as a ranch hand, a fire lookout tower in eastern Oregon, and these days guiding in places like the Zion Narrows. She has taken what she learned in the wilderness and mapped it over to the human-built environment: her trainings work to free people, systems, and cultures from being trapped in the idea that there is one right way.
Scout’s seven campfire lessons:
- Lesson 1: You don’t know what you don’t know — don’t let your ego get in the way of learning (the Bessie Greener story)
- Lesson 2: Appreciate life’s richness in all its chapters — check the expiration date you stamped on your own life at 13
- Lesson 3: Guiding and nature are about relationships — leave no trace on the land, but you can leave a trace on people
- Lesson 4: We’re all going to earn our idiot badge at some point — take the lesson when it’s pinned on
- Lesson 5: We are animals, more primal than we think — get to know your animal self before survival is at stake
- Lesson 6: You’ve got to do it to learn it — you cannot think your way into a great life
- Lesson 7: Shit will hit the fan — lean on your own adventure stories to guide you through it
Listen: Follow on Spotify | Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Amazon | Pocket Casts | iHeartRadio | other platforms
Check out these resources:
- 🌐 Scout’s personal coaching and guiding: TravelingLIGHT.life
- 🎲 WordTrails — Scout’s game to nurture an improvisational life
- 🏜️ Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim, October 10, 2026 — women 50+
- ➡️ The Cairn Project on IG
- ✨ The Cairn Project’s newsletter
- 🥾 Become a Trailblazer
- 📅 Summit Scholarship Foundation
Like this episode? Leave a 5-star rating and review on your podcast app!
You can help us close the gender gap outdoors and beyond:
- Become a Trailblazer. Your Adventure Fundraiser makes wilderness experiences possible for girls and women.
- Check out the Summit Scholarship Foundation.
- Send this episode to the Bessie Greener in your life — or the 22-year-old who needs one.
Make sure you subscribe to the See Her Outside Podcast so you don’t miss a story!
Follow on Spotify | Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Amazon | Pocket Casts | iHeartRadio | other platforms
What can 70 years of outdoor guiding teach the rest of us? In this campfire-story episode of the See Her Outside Podcast, lifelong guide Scout Wilkins shares seven lessons from a lifetime outdoors — from boarding her first horse with a feisty 93-year-old named Bessie Greener in Halfway, Oregon, to guiding families through the Zion Narrows today. Scout has been guiding since age 11, with a resume spanning backpacking, horses and mules, rivers and canyons, ranch work, a fire lookout tower in eastern Oregon, and even flying planes.
Scout’s stories tackle something rarely discussed in outdoor media: aging outdoors. As a 70-year-old woman, she wants to dispel the cultural trance that says life ends at a certain age. Her mystical 60th-birthday visitation reframed aging as accelerating richness — packing more life into every day, week, and month. For any woman doing “sad math” about how much adventure she has left, Scout’s lessons on appreciating life’s chapters are the antidote.
The episode also digs into practical outdoor leadership: why guiding is about relationships more than rules, how her “idiot badge” moment with a wealthy family and an intercepted text freed her from perfectionism, what a near-suffocation in a snow-sealed tent taught her about our primal animal selves, and how a spiral dive during her private pilot exam gave her the solid “animal no” that later kept two clients off Angels Landing as thunder rolled in.
Whether you’re an outdoor guide, a woman over 50 dreaming of a Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim hike, or a 22-year-old who thinks she knows everything, these seven wilderness lessons belong around your campfire. Listen to See Her Outside, stories from women who adventure, wherever you get your podcasts.
