Today we’d like to introduce you to Mary Hueske, of Women Out West Tours, a new adventure tours company.
Hi Mary, thanks for sharing your story with us! To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory?
Hey there! Well, Women Out West uses the power of Nature to help women reconnect with what lights them up. We know that Nature is an unlimited source of play, awe, and joy, all powerful life catalysts which can for help women ground more deeply in themselves and start moving in their next best direction. Humans heading toward their best iteration is our goal, and we believe that elevating women elevates the world!
Our true backstory is captured pretty well in what we call the “origin story” of Women Out West Tours. Can we add that to the written copy of this interview?
(Women Out West’s Origin Story excerpted below for our readers)
“One (biggish) birthday, I took myself on a 10-day solo walkabout in Southern Utah. Caught up in the culture of performance and exhaustion, I felt disconnected and always hurried. As a single mom working full-time with two active boys, I hadn’t been alone for ten days straight in over 20 years. I hadn’t explored true wilderness by myself, ever. I didn’t expect to come back with life-altering messages from the Universe, but I did.
Every day, magical things happen.
The less I “did,” the more I experienced.
The less I planned, the more amazing things just dropped into my days.
And I mean, literally, APPEARED.
I met phenomenal people. Bumped into cousins, I hadn’t seen in 25 years. Saw the full Blood Moon rising over a far mesa, ECLIPSING, just as I climbed out of a canyon. ON MY BIRTHDAY. I was filmed by a fellow biking across the country for climate change, then shared my campsite with him and heard my words come from his mouth, “You wouldn’t BELIEVE the amazing things that are showing up in my life. DAILY!”
I wandered through the jaw-dropping beauty of the high desert. Felt incredibly small in the vast world I was exploring. And in that smallness, that insignificance, there was release. Release from the obligations, expectations, self-definitions, and crazy pace that didn’t serve me or move me toward my best self.
A lightness of being started nudging out the harried, self-conscious, worried parts of my soul.
I sensed I was doing a dance with the Universe, God, Spirit (insert your “higher-than-thou” here). The more I stepped back, the more meaningful experiences came my way. The slower I walked, the more time I had. I felt closer to my essence than I’d felt since I was an intrepid 7-year-old gleefully building forts in the woods.
When I returned, my life began to shift. I began to play with space and time (winking at the Universe). Filled my days less and trusted that what was to show up would be better than what I could’ve packed in. And it did. I returned to that high desert again and again to walk that internal and external terrain. It was my touchpoint and my compass.
Years later I don’t stress as much about connection or lack of time. I’m still dancing with the Universe/God/Spirit. I’m also divining ways to connect other women to this sense of awe, light-heartedness, and their phenomenal potential to step toward their best selves.
My conduit was the high desert. Nature is a profound catalyst. It’s what I know and what I offer. Come with us, exhale, breathe, and feed your joy!”
Thanks! And yep, that pretty much sums it up!
So, would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I think most people would say that being a solo entrepreneur is tough. And exhilarating. And wonderful. And tough. You have a vision, and your gut intuition moves you forward to the exclusion of all else, sometimes. For me it’s been a massive trust fall in a way that I’ve never experienced. I mean, I was in the medical profession for 30 years. You go to work, do your job, do it well, then go home. This is not that! Nothing prepared me for this ride!
It’s burning the midnight oil, figuring out how to build a website, writing copy, sourcing photos, learning SEO and business tactics, networking, networking, networking. And it’s NOT how I imagined sliding into retirement! But the Universe had another plan, and really, I’m pretty thrilled!
I experienced a massive internal shift while out in the remote high desert of Utah. This led to a shift in my life and perception of purpose. I’d say that I’m happier, calmer, more grounded, and overall feel more plugged in. This is what I hope to bring to others. Seeing these kinds of shifts in the conversations with and faces of the women who’ve come on my trips makes the long hours worth it.
So yep, not always a smooth road. Long hours, social connections falling away for months at a time, bank accounts nearing a zero balance, the discomfort of finding my voice in an entirely new field and being fiercely unapologetic for being imperfect at it all.
I have to say that the challenging times have been offset by the connections I’ve made with other entrepreneurs, local business owners in the places we love to go, and the collaborative effort I’ve witnessed between so many in these small towns we visit, to help each other succeed. This is seriously a joy to see.
Overall, it’s been incredibly rewarding beyond anything else I’ve done. I love finding peace, silence, calm in Nature. Love scouting the next place to take people. Awe, Joy, and Play are three foundational concepts in every tour I build.
I get to watch the triumphant faces and more confident body language of women who’ve just done things they never thought they could do, or share things about themselves and their dreams of the future and how they now plan to take steps toward that! I know I’m plugged into something greater than myself, and I’m thankful every day.
As you know, we’re big fans of Women Out West Tours. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Sure! We’re a woman-owned and run business which provides all-inclusive, small-group, outdoor adventure tours and retreats for women. We take folks to awe-inspiring destinations, offer unique lodging, and give really personalized service. We work to create more meaningful conversations, deeper connections, and build in lots of laughter and FUN.
As I mentioned before, we know that awe, joy, and play are all powerful life catalysts, and we build a reverent but also playful approach into all of our trips. Trips built from “the ground up and the heart out,” is one of our mottos.
Just a few more things… we welcome solo travelers and help them feel community. We offer outdoor adventures to groups of best friends and family constellations, mom-daughter dyads, and also to work/corporate groups. Nature is an awesome classroom, and after 3 years of ZOOM, holy crap the joy that we see on faces turned to the sun with feet in the dirt… it’s amazing!
Oh, we also build custom tours for groups of 6-8 women, for 5 or more days.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
Transformational travel comes to mind immediately. It’s a genre in the travel industry that’s growing really fast, and seems to be really needed post-COVID. The main tenets of transformational travel are providing experiences which connect humans more deeply with themselves, with each other, and with the cultures in which they visit or the ground/land upon which they walk.
In a transformational travel model, we also approach the “journey” differently. There’s a preparation for the journey – what we step away from, opening ourselves to new experiences, what questions or goals we might bring into the journey. There’s the journey itself – where we go, how we get there, what we find, and how it changes us. And there’s what happens after the journey is over – what we come home with and what shifts occur in our lives that might ripple outward, too.
People seem to be seeking different experiences in their free time, especially after the overall contraction of COVID. We had a lot of time to think and reassess our choices of profession, social structure, hobbies and habits. I encounter so many women who’re asking, some for the first time, “Are these really the rules I want to live by? Is this it? How can I become more aligned with a greater purpose?”
Engaging in travel differently is one of the outcomes of that reassessment. Real connection, deeper conversation, more expansive understanding that comes from stepping outside your comfort zone. It’s a more, dare I say, existential approach. And for the benefit of everyone. Help one human step closer to purpose, and find joy in the process, and the ripple effect is felt in their families, communities, and wider out into the world.
At Women Out West, we offer nature immersion as a means to reach those deeper levels of connection. And we see other travel companies, doing the same. We also see and predict more women-specific travel companies popping up, collaborating, and becoming serious players in the world travel market/environment, which is awesome!
Pricing:
- Scheduled Tours range $2200-2600, based on occupancy and location
- Custom Tour pricing varies by location and length of Tour
Contact Info:
- Website: https://womenoutwesttours.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/findyourexhale/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/womenoutwesttours/
Image Credits
Women Out West Tours
