Olivia Amber – On Chosen and Unchosen Suffering

Olivia Amber (0:01)

Having to endure suffering through the act of choosing it can make us more empathetic as humans, and perhaps we can allow those experiences to shape the way we take care for each other. And I feel really grateful that I have had such the privilege in life to choose suffering, because I feel like that's just been a way for me to be more empathetic towards myself.

Ed Roberson (0:33)

This is the Mountain & Prairie Podcast. I'm Ed Roberson. My guest today is Olivia Amber. Olivia is a professional ultrarunner, climber and adventurer and a North Face sponsored athlete based in Bishop, California. I met Olivia at The Rut Mountain Runs in Big Sky, where she was on a public lands panel that I moderated. She was also there to talk about her biggest project to date, Norman's 13

Norman's 13 is a route, a link up of all 13 of the Sierra's 14,000 foot peaks. It's more than 100 miles with over 40,000 feet of climbing. And much of it is exposed, off trail, fifth class scrambling. Last September, Olivia did the whole thing in one nonstop push, finishing in about 89 hours and becoming the first woman to complete it. The North Face made a short film about that effort, also called Norman's 13, and I've linked to it in the show notes. And earlier this summer, Olivia and her friend and fellow North Face athlete, Erika Flowers, set the fastest known time on Granite Peak, the highest point in Montana. Olivia grew up in a tiny village in the woods of northern Wisconsin, the daughter of two school teachers who spent their summers road tripping around the country with Olivia and her older sister. She went on to become an all-American Nordic skier at Colby College, and after graduation, she made the hard decision to not pursue pro-skiing. Instead, she began working in the corporate world in San Francisco, where the Bay Area trail running community pulled her in, and she began to make a name for herself in the world of ultra running. Along the way, she's dealt with serious health challenges, including a diagnosis of stage four endometriosis, which she speaks about openly and honestly. In this conversation, we talk about her upbringing and her college years, and about the idea that choosing to suffer is a privilege, because she's become acquainted with the kind of suffering you don't choose. We get into how she thinks about risk and ego on technical terrain, what she looks for in a mountain adventure partner, her upcoming trip to Bhutan for the snowman race, and the Wallace Stegner book she has reread more than any other.

As you can probably tell by now, Olivia is a hardcore athlete, but she's also incredibly humble, down to earth, and very funny, the exact kind of person I love talking to on this podcast. Again, there's a link to Norman's 13 in the show notes, so you should absolutely watch it. But before we get started, I want to thank the people and organizations that make Mountain & Prairie possible. Mountain & Prairie is listener supported via Patreon, which means that listeners like you can support the podcast and all my various projects for as little as $2 per month. The podcast is also supported by a small number of values-aligned organizations on either a quarterly or annual basis. A huge thank you to the Colorado Cattlemen's Agricultural Land Trust, the documentary Mirasol Looking at the Sun, Patagonia Books, and the Rye Resurgence Project for their generous support. And since we're talking about the short film Norman's 13 today, I also want to highlight another amazing film, Mirasol Looking at the Sun. It's a very different kind of story, but like Norman's 13, at its heart, it's also about community and about loving a place enough to fight for it.

Mirasol was directed by Ben Knight, and if you watch adventure films or conservation films, there's a good chance you've already seen his work. He's the filmmaker behind Damn Nation made by Patagonia, The Last Honey Hunter with National Geographic, and Learning to Drown with The North Face, the same company Olivia runs for.

Ben has a rare gift for telling stories with honesty and heart, and on top of that, he's just a genuinely kind and thoughtful person. For Mirasol, he spent time in the farming community of Pueblo County, Colorado, and the story he tells is very, very, very special. The 37-minute film introduces you to the Italian and Hispanic families who've worked this land for generations, from a farmer in his 90s to the young people who will carry it forward. You see what they're up against, growth and development pushing in from every side, and a constant battle to keep water on the land. You also see how deeply these families care about their soil and each other. Podcast listeners may remember my conversation with Dr. Mike Bartolo, who plays a central role in this film. This film is especially important to me personally. It was produced by Palmer Land Conservancy, where I used to work, and back in the early days, I played a very, very small role in helping to raise some of the initial money that got the film started. So it's been a real thrill to watch Mirasol premiere at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, which happens to be the same place where I first met Olivia. It's also traveled to festivals like Telluride Mountain Film and Five Point, and it picked up an award for Best Colorado Documentary. So as you can probably tell, I've been cheering for this film since it was just the seed of an idea. And what stays with me most is the film's message. Mike Bartolo compares the land to an only child, something you must protect with everything you've got. And Mirasol makes it clear that the future of places like Pueblo isn't up to the farmers alone. It depends on decisions all of us make about land and water starting right now.