Peggy Fulda
Field Guide
Joined Open Sky: September 2008
In Wilderness Therapy since: 2008
Interview with Peggy
June 2009
Q: If you were able to meet anyone (living or dead), who would it be and why?
A: The first person who pops into my mind would be my dead grandmother, Gabrielle. I'm her namesake, and I've grown up hearing all about how I remind people of her. I'd like to see if she lives up to my imagination.
Q: What are a few of the defining moments in your life and why?
A: Probably the moment I stepped off the plane in the Czech Republic for the first time. I was spending the year as an exchange student in high school. It was the first time I'd been out of the country, and the first time I realized people live way differently than I do. It was also the first moment when I felt really independent in my life. Even from the very beginning of that year-long adventure, stepping off the plane I started to realize that I had the skills to navigate through whatever challenging and crazy unknown situations I may find myself in.
Q: Who has been your greatest inspiration and why?
A: Probably my auntie Chris. She took me into her home and family, though we're not blood related at all. She has been a huge role model and friend to me, showing off all the humanity and craziness that comes hand in hand with strong womanhood and pursuit of passion and ideals. I've been really lucky in my life to stumble into great and loving mentors who have been vital to my development and education. Chris (and many others) led me to want to be that person, that confidante and guide, for others. She taught me that there are gifts so huge and so cosmic that we can never repay the person. Sometimes all we can do is work to put goodness back out into the universe instead.
Q: What are your unique gifts and/or experiences that help our students?
A: I've spent long periods of time living in a bunch of really different places, at home and abroad. I've got a great BS detector, and I also know the merits of sitting down, shutting up, and listening to others around me. I'm learning how and when to ask for help. I have been a lot of the places and experienced a lot of the same things as our students, and not that long ago. I think my biggest gift to our students is the reality that I work alongside them, and am learning a lot of the same lessons. I leave the field after a shift of work and often feel like I've done as much heart and soul work as they have. I don't have all the answers, or many of them, and our students teach me as much as I try to teach them.
Q: Why do you work in wilderness therapy?
A: The short story is because I wish someone in my life would have been brave and perceptive and in-tuned enough to my life to send me to a place like Open Sky when I was a bit younger. The longer story is because I need the freedom and perpetual challenge of living and working outdoors. Wild places have been vital in my own development and recovery, and working here reminds me of that. I believe in the work that we do, I've seen it intellectually, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
Q: Why do you think wilderness therapy works?
A: Wilderness works because it gives us the time, space, and energy to figure ourselves out without a handy escape hatch from which to flee.
Q: What do you think Open Sky students need?
A: Our students need to know that they are loved. They need to know that they are exactly where they supposed to be in this moment, doing exactly what they should be doing. Our students need boundaries. They need to laugh and play silly games and look horrendously awkward to each other, and do it anyway. They need some crucible experience which pushes them far past comfortable, one that they will look back on years down the road and think "Yea, I remember when I was on solos and it was snowing and my shelter fell over and I thought I was going to freeze but I got through." Our students need something hard, so they know they can get through hard stuff the next time.
Q: What do you like to do for fun when you aren’t working in the field?
A: For fun, I like to play music and drums. I love to travel by train, people watch, and get heinously lost in new places. When I'm not working in the field, I often spend my time learning and practicing yoga, cooking and eating good food, reading in torrents, waking at all hours and writing like crazy, and watching a whole lot of embarrassingly bad television. And I'm learning to whitewater raft and play the guitar.
Q: Anything else you want to tell us about yourself?
A: I feel incredibly blessed to be a part of this organization.
Professional Experience
Scholarship Coordinator
Lewis & Clark College, Music Department, Portland, Oregon
Birch Trail Camp for Girls
Wilderness Trip Leader
Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement Program
Intern
Czech and Slovac Heritage Association
Elementary Teacher
Lewis & Clark College Outdoors
Student Coordinator and Assistant Trip Leader
Campus LINC, Lewis & Clark Intercultural Network for Connecting Students
Campus Mentor
Education
BA, Sociology & Anthropology
BA, Foreign Languages (Russian & Spanish)
Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon
Graduate coursework in Ecopsychology
Lewis & Clark College Graduate School of Education & Counseling, Portland, Oregon
Semester Abroad
St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia
Wilderness First Responder (WFR)
