The Wilderness Inside

Over the last ten years, Shelli has hiked 26,000 miles—roughly one full trip around the Earth. Her extended time in the backcountry has given her a rare perspective on design. In this episode, we unpack a unique wilderness experience she’s created, called an “Epic”. Through the conversation, we come to know the wilderness as a platform for transformation.

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or on your favorite platform.

Key Insights & Takeaways

The wilderness can be a powerful platform for transformation.
Real transformation isn’t pretty, consider designing for fear, vulnerability, discomfort and adversity.
We are lacking modern day rites of passage. This unmet need presents a rare opportunity for experience designers.
Replacing the familiar with the unfamiliar can dislodge a person’s attachment to their identity, priming them for growth and change.
Embodied metaphors (metaphors paired with live actions or landscape terrain) are more memorable.
The physiology of walking combined with dialogue-driven exercises stimulates creativity and active participation.
Embodied metaphors (combining physical activity, and/or landscape features with conceptual metaphor) are a powerful tool for reflection and understanding.
The wilderness offers an accelerated emotional arc of personal growth — some people experience in a week what might normally take several years to unfold.

About our guest

In this episode, we speak with life coach and founder of Epic Life, Shelli Johnson. Shelli founded Epic Life to provide coaching, consulting and guided adventures to help her clients create their most epic life.

Shelli is a true renaissance woman, an entrepreneur, speaker, writer, nutrition consultant, multimedia publisher, endurance athlete, and wilderness first responder. She is a CPCC (Certified Professional Co-Active Coach), and is also a member of the International Federation of Coaches (IFC). Shelli is also a graduate of the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), the world's leader in outdoor education and wilderness instruction.

A few highlights of her own epic adventures include a myriad of mountain climbs—the Grand Teton, Fremont Peak, and Gannette Peak to name a few. She has completed a 44-mile Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim of the Grand Canyon, and a 50-mile traverse of Zion National Park, each in a single day. Shelli finished the Run to the Sun from sea level to 10,000', on Mt. Haleakala in Maui, and has skied 50 miles in a day at the Equinox Ski Challenge. She has also hiked Spain’s Camino de Santiago with her husband and three boys.

In 1994, Shelli and her husband started the Yellowstone Journal, an independent newspaper dedicated to Yellowstone National Park. This business, after being expanded to include the Webby Award-winning YellowstonePark.com, two national magazines, podcasts and e-newsletters, was sold to Active Interest Media.

Shelli received a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from the University of Montana, with a minor in Marketing.

Shelli, her husband, Jerry, and their three boys, live in the frontier town of Lander, Wyoming—in the foothills of the spectacular Wind River Range.

Connect with Shelli Johnson