One 16-year-old’s inadvertent quest to find herself in to find herself in the most remote location in the lower 48 states

At 10,000 feet elevation the sun determined when Sierra D’Amours went to bed and when she woke. For thirty days in the Absorka Mountain Range of Wyoming, D’Amours knew how many hours she had to get back to camp based on the sun’s location. The mountain ranges crest by same sun was her alarm. Now, back at sea level the days are getting shorter. The tides of the Great Bay tickle the banks of Jackson’s boat lading in Durham, New Hampshire as D’Amours and I walk out to a bench seated at the end of a small peninsula surrounded by calm waters. It’s six o’clock and it’s already impossible to see much besides the separation between water, trees and horizon as well as TV flickering in a house across the water. The light is distracting.

Sierra D’Amours, named after mountains, decided at the end of her junior year of high school she wanted to spend a month in the wilderness, where the greatest piece of technology she would own was a headlamp. Two months later she’d leave for the Wyoming-Montana border where she’d spend thirty days not hiking, but climbing and backpacking, both of which she had never done before. Her mother said no, with an entirely rational fear of letting her child get into something she was ill prepared for. But her dad, a Bostonian whose favorite song is Beyonce’s Single Ladies, said, “Sure, if you can pay for it.”

She couldn’t pay for it, but when it comes to matters of adventure and finding oneself nothing stands between D’Amours and her audacious heart.

“I didn’t see any reasons why I couldn’t,” she said. “I didn’t put any limitations on myself at that time, I just thought ‘well, why not?’” She borrowed $4000 from her dad and sold her Dave Matthews Band tickets in exchange for a plane ride.

Two months later D’Amours found herself at her aunt and uncle’s house in Jackson Hole, Wyoming borrowing their hiking pack which soon would hold fifty pounds of gear, most of which she borrowed from her aunt as well. On her head was a red bandana; she wore zip-off hiking pants, a Dri-Fit shirt and a pair of hiking boots, which were waiting to have their virginity stolen away from them. This is what she’d wear for the next month, but she didn’t mind.

And she still doesn’t. As we sit along the banks of the bay D’Amours is drawing circles in the dirt with her feet. She’s wearing a flannel and the same heavy Doc Martens she wore a month ago when I saw her last. She has new pants though, black Levis. I mention I like them,

“I realized I didn’t have any pants and it started getting cold,” she said. “I went to Savers [a thrift store], but they didn’t have any that fit me. So I had to buy these at Marshalls.”

D’Amours is in her third year at the University of New Hampshire and her second year as a studio art major. She worked at a local pond over the summer renting canoes, but she had to give that up when it started getting cold. She worked at Hannaford Supermarkets for two years straight but gave that up too. She worked leading Outward Bound hiking trips for incoming freshmen but gave that up because she liked being in her thoughts when she hiked and leading groups didn’t quite jive well with that. Now she looks after the art studio with a fellow student who, according to her text last night, got her “drunk off Whiskey and let her fall asleep on the floor in the pottery room, where she woke up at 7a.m. covered in clay and headed to class.” She signed up to work as a nude model for a drawing class but hasn’t had to actually participate yet, she might give that up too. In the same text she told me she took her French midterm in 15 minutes. Yesterday she told me she got a 102.

Ever since D’Amours arrived back from her National Outdoor Leadership adventure through the Absaroka Mountains she has become an unstoppable train propelling itself towards finding out what makes her tick. Which is a far cry from the D’Amours her friends in high school knew. A type A, who excelled in science and math but also received the award for excellence in English senior year. She was on the rowing, swimming and math teams and had the occasional stint with the track team. She had a 4.0 GPA and wasn’t in the top ten of her graduating class.  She told me she once went on a fifteen mile run at three in the morning because she couldn’t sleep. Her friends were in shock those who knew her weren’t surprised. Her friend’s also weren’t surprised when she didn’t tell anyone outside of her family she was going to Wyoming. Just like she didn’t tell anyone she switched her major from Environmental Engineering to Studio Art last year.

When D’Amours decided to go to the Absarokas she wouldn’t do it alone. She signed up for a program called the National Outdoor Leadership School or NOLS. NOLS has been a leader in wilderness education for forty-eight years, since its inception. Through a number of different programs, ranging from ten days to a full academic year, students of any ages are brought to remote wilderness locations or on remote wilderness expeditions and taught technical outdoor skills, leadership and environmental ethics. For $6,000 now, $4,000 then, D’Amours functioned under two major principles for thirty days: positive ethical leaders change the world and people thrive when they are challenged.

And challenged she was. As the youngest in a group of fifteen students and three leaders, each with more backpacking experience than her, D’Amours will be the first to tell you she faced a challenge she wasn’t technically prepared for. Of the fifteen original students ten remained to the last day. One got carried out of the Absaroka Mountains on horse back unable to adjust emotionally to the experience and unable to get over the anger he had towards his mother for making him go. Another hurt his knee, another her back. The last one flew out on a helicopter after injuring her back carrying her fifty-pound pack on a technically challenging trail. None were D’Amours but the latter was her tent mate. The first thing “Sierra of Love,” as her high school French teacher called her, learned was how emotionally important your group members are.

“It was a really bizarre experience, having someone there one day and then the next day, when we haven’t even seen cars in fifteen days, all of a sudden this helicopter swooped in and took Carly away,” said D’Amours. “It was an emotional day. You were in this place in the wild thinking everything was so beautiful and then someone gets hurt,” that’s when it became clear to D’Amours how raw and dangerous her fight for survival was.

Despite her level of inexperience in her NOLS group D’Amours was comfortable with being forward. The music fanatic has met more famous singers than she can count on her fingers. After shows she’ll approach them and start a conversation. Brett Dennen has her phone number—they got fries once. On the first day of her trip, close to the Yellowstone River and far away from civilization, D’Amours volunteered herself to be the first small group leader. Her group consisted of, among others, a 25-year-old German Army Officer who had been doing wilderness related work for the past six years and a 20-year-old back-packer who grew up climbing in California.

“Here I was a 16-year-old who has never spent a night outdoors and I thought I could lead this group,” she said.

D’Amours spent the next night preparing a route for her group to take using a map and compass, but she mostly spent the night worrying. The next day she led her group of experienced counterparts into the Absarokas, when she realized she wasn’t alone, creating an emotional connection with all her group members. “I was a little uncomfortable at first, I had to be the decision maker,” she said.

NOLS and life in the backcountry not only teaches you to put faith in yourself, it also teaches you to put faith in others, something D’Amours learned wasn’t always so rewarding. On day sixteen of the trip D’Amours found herself following her group leader over challenging steep terrain. The rocks slid under D’Amours’ feet as she began the 2000-foot decent down a valley just to begin another 2000-foot ascent to cross the valley entirely. She knew it would be challenging with the group’s pots, pans and food strapped on to her already-heavy pack, but it wasn’t until she threw her pack down in order to climb down a 20-foot cliff that she realized her group was in a rut. Her group leader had led them down a path that was steeper than anticipated. Their food supply of pasta, flour and other baking supplies was dwindling and they had to make it to the checkpoint on time in order to get their next horse-back delivery. They had no choice but to climb down the rock face, as the sun would not allow them enough time to go back. The climb down required ropes. They didn’t have any. The word “classroom” implies safety but this was a NOLS classroom. The wilderness has no safety net. Not long after making it down the cliff without ropes, D’Amours sprained her ankle and then continued the 2000-foot ascent because in the backcountry there is nothing to catch you.

“People say you can’t do these things,” said D’Amours, “But there’s really no reason you can’t…I realized any restraints on me are fabricated by myself and others,” she said. People thrive when they are challenged.

*     *     *

“I used to come here all the time, when I needed to be alone,” D’Amours said of the boat landing a short walk from her house. It’s even darker now but it doesn’t seem to disconnect her from her surroundings. She explains the mosquitos on the trail to me. There were so many you couldn’t have an inch of skin showing, she explained, waving her arms around. One night on the trail she wrote in her journal about how annoying they were. The next morning she woke to find three mosquitos squished on the page of her journal after she had closed it. “If you had one centimeter of expos—look at that bird!” she said shifting her body in the direction of a faint white spot drifting across the sky. I wouldn’t have noticed the bird’s graceful creep towards us in the sky if she hadn’t mentioned it. The bird calls out, just once. D’Amours smiles back.

An appreciation for nature is instilled in you when you spend day-in-and-day-out in the backcountry.  Despite the mosquitos, D’Amours now feels a constant connection to nature. This summer she went on a ten-day solo-hiking trip through the White Mountains in New Hampshire. She can still picture the ragged peaks of the Absarokas. She still sees mountain goats and a herd of 100 to 200 elk running over a ridge.

“I had no idea there were so many stars in the sky…Everything there is real–it’s exactly what it is,” she said.

Because of her NOLS experience D’Amours was able to start the process of being herself and becoming exactly what she is. D’Amours remembers the first time she looked in the mirror when she arrived back from the wilderness. After a month she saw a totally different person who was now tanner, dirtier and skinner. Her skin was weathered and her ankle was swollen but inside she felt alive. She felt new.

“I learned what the wilderness actually was,” she said. “People have no idea what wilderness actually is. They don’t know what it looks like, they don’t know what wild animals are, they have no idea how to navigate. They are just caught in this artificial bubble we have made of our lives. They have no idea what experience is. When you’re out there in the wilderness without artificial items around you and all these artificial people and goals that are manufactured and handed to you. You’re forced to face exactly who you really are. There’s nothing else to distract you.”

Since D’Amours finished NOLS she has readjusted to the sound of beeping and electronic screens. She’s paid her dad back, graduated high school and changed her college major. When she looks in the mirror now she no longer has short straight hair but a curly mane with a section of hair shaved and dyed blonde; although she thinks she might want to cut all her hair off soon. She sees someone covered in ceramics clay. She sees someone who drives her high school teacher’s four-year-old to school every morning. She sees someone who takes twenty-minute naps every four hours instead of sleeping the night through. She sees her interior and it matches its exterior. She sees someone who rejects what her 4.0 GPA high school buddies and society expected of her. And it’s okay. She sees some one who is raw. She sees someone who is authentic.

One day in 1867 John Muir, the inspiration and driving force behind the national parks system, woke up and decided to leave his boring home life to walk a 1,000 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. D’Amours can be found in her high school yearbook atop a mountain. Her eyes sparkle reflecting the lake at the base below. Under her photo reads a quote by Muir, “The mountains are calling and I must go,” and so she goes.