By Claire Smallwood

What it all comes down to is being a part of something bigger than ourselves. I am enjoying my second season of guiding for CASA Tours in Chile and as each day develops into another new adventure, I am learning some incredible lessons.  

The first thing that I want to say is that sometimes it’s really hard to translate the words that roll so easily off our tongues (in the mother language) because the sentiment, at times, is so overwhelming, that the basic building blocks of verbs, nouns, adjectives crumble to over-stimulus. The saving grace of travel (and that which is the culprit of most people’s addiction to travel) is the very language of “stoke” if you will; and it seems to pick up the pieces.

The second thing is that explaining SheJumps in Chile is a challenge in and of itself, but this is where the language of stoke comes into play. The very idea of a nonprofit dedicated to something other than solving many of the world’s greatest problems is, at first, an awkward thing to think about. It is for me at least because thanks to my travel, I am always trying to understand better how to have others perceive me (or rather, how I present myself to them). I somehow think that the more people I can meet down here, and have them see my SheJumps skis and feel how excited I am to be living this life, that this interaction alone is what can suffice for a definition of the organization and will help to grow our cause.

Because the truth of it is that SheJumps will most likely not be able to have any programs down here for quite some while. With that said, it’s not impossible to plant the seed of inspiration for our future projects. I guess what makes me feel funny about talking about SheJumps down here is that I get a lot of looks like “so what?”

The American culture that SheJumps was hatched in is a funny one for this question, because from a very early age we are expected to have a plan and make decisions that are pretty much derived soley from our DNA. The master plan is, theoretically, decided and therefore risk-taking is relegated to hair-style choice and footwear.

So what is SheJumps if it’s not celebrating what so many women have already discovered is in their DNA? There are many females I have met from all over the world who simply live SheJumps because its what was initially shown to them. And by “shown,” I mean to say that they come from a world where to live is to live outdoors because that’s what you do.

SheJumps is now craving to also exist for those who aren’t so lucky. SheJumps also seems to be moving pretty slowly on this task for the simple reason that we are too busy SheJumping our own lives away, finding the next great goal or adventure and trying to not become desk-jockeys who could really grow the organization into what it could be.

So this is just to check in with our supporters and let them know that we want to hear not just about how you SheJump, but how we can really start getting to the people who stare at you standing in line for coffee with mud crusted to your calves, or in my case, wandering around the Santiago subway with skis on my shoulder.

And while I’m planting seeds, how about a SheJumps trip down here next year with yours truly as a guide? Hmmm….

Check out Claire's adventures in Chile here.