OM STORIES
Introducing the OM Adventure Scholarship!
The year end gives us time to reflect on the year, and take a big breath to settle the mind and return to a positive state of being; whether we experienced something tragic, enlightening, or downright dull.
Happy New Year!
The year end gives us time to reflect on the year, and take a big breath to settle the mind and return to a positive state of being; whether we experienced something tragic, enlightening, or downright dull.
With the New Year, comes the view of the horizon. It’s time to look forward to a better future and plan to take action.
At OM we look at the New Year as an opportunity to reengage, reignite, and re-imagine the future.
To start, I and the Executive and Advisory Boards will be having a retreat on MLK weekend. We will be reflecting on our accomplishments, examining our current state, and planning for a big future! These are exciting times at OM! And in the spirit of reigniting the spirit, I am excited to introduce a brand new program:
Introducing the Outdoor Mindset Adventure Scholarship
!
The power of the outdoors to lift our spirits, to clear our thoughts and center our state of being, in history, was a gift that only gods could give. For many of us, the time we spend outside and in nature defines our character and how we view the world. We may dream of climbing that special peak, travelling to that amazing place and living that once in a lifetime experience. These experiences bring strangers together and friends closer, with memories and feelings that will be shared for the rest of their lives. It is at these precise moments when you take a deep breath and say, “this is what life is all about”!
Outdoor Mindset thrives on those moments and understands that the impact these extraordinary experiences have on our health and wellbeing is priceless! OM never intends to compete with the gods, but perhaps we can help provide the funding for you and a friend to get closer to experiencing a special peak, an amazing place and a once in a lifetime experience – an item on your bucket list that you have always wanted to complete.
Our goal with the
is to help support OM’s mission to enhance the quality of life of our members, engage our members and encourage our community to connect with one another and get outside and live big!
El Chalten, Patagonia. Put it on your Adventure Scholarship
bucket list!
OM will be awarding at least one Adventure Scholarship per quarter. We will be awarding
at least $500
per Adventure Scholarship! Applications will be accepted starting today, and applicants will be given u
ntil February 12th
, to submit. Applicants must be an OM member, and the Adventure Scholarship must be used for an outdoor activity with at least one other OM member. Keep in mind, anyone can become an OM member and it’s FREE! And most importantly, the Adventure Scholarship awardee must have a great time!!!
Please click here to view the official rules and apply. Good luck!
Don’t forget to Participate, Engage and Promote!
I can’t wait to see you outside and look forward to sharing more exciting news in the coming months!
~Sean
Starting the Year Off Right
Happy 2013 OM'ers!
Well, in keeping with the spirit of the New Year, I must start things off on the right foot by being truthful in admitting defeat in the 2012
Chili Cook-off that was at the end of October 2012. Yes... it's true... Kyle's Two-Step Texas Chili took first place this year, bringing in lots of votes (aka Texas money brought up to CO by the Martins!) As promised, here is the winning chili recipe. I could've re-typed it, but I thought the pictures and comments in the original recipe print-out were too good not to share! (Don't forget to add more beef!!!)
The 3rd Annual Chili Cook-off was a great success, raising over $8,000 for our programs and members. I huge thank you goes out to everyone who attended, donated, or participated in our silent auction which had some amazing items this year. The chili was good, the beer was good, and the auction was great, but the people who come are always the best part!
That same weekend, amidst the chili cooking and preparations, we even held a mini Board Retreat, where the OM Board of Directors did some planning for 2013. To say the least, we are extremely excited for the upcoming year and the future of Outdoor Mindset. We have some great ideas for enhancements to our programs to further serve our Members and get everyone outdoors. So stay tuned!
2012 was a great year for Outdoor Mindset, as well, with just under 200 Members who are affected by a neurological challenge and have a passion for the outdoors. Our
Meet-Up Groups
launched this year, with great momentum in both
Boulder, CO
and
Hanover, NH
. We've also made some amazing 1:1 connections through our
Guide Program
, where Members provide great support and inspiration through their relationships. Our Members continue to amaze us with their stories and spirit!
We have so much to be thankful for this past year, and moving forward for 2013 but we can not say it enough: Thank you so much for your support and for tuning in for updates! Now get outside. :)
Back to resolutions, football, and winter fun,
Jill
Sometimes you just need a giggle!
Life can be stressful… I don’t think anyone would deny that statement. With a dog post-ACL surgery waiting for me at home in a cone (which she hates!), the expenses and stresses of moving to a new town, and what seemed to be a slew of lame things happening to my friends weighing on my mind, I was walking home from work one evening when I passed the Bozeman Center for the Arts and noticed a strategic piece of graffiti that brought a smile to my face. Someone had spray painted a ‘F’ in front of the word ‘Arts’ on the sign outside the building so that the sign read “Bozeman Center of the Farts”. Immature – yes. Vandalism – also true. Funny – without a doubt! I found myself laughing the rest of the way home, and
MAN IT FELT GOOD
. For me, sometimes I just need a good laugh to help turn my mind and my day around, and I know the others on the Board of Directorsfor Outdoor Mindset feel the same way. That is actually one of our main values
we wanted preserve when creating Outdoor Mindset, to incorporate humor in all that what we do. We want to make people laugh and smile, despite any other neurological craziness going on in their lives. Sometimes we can be quirky… would anyone agree with that? I mean have you seen the video we submitted for the
Cultivate Wines Non-Profit video contest, The Give
(Oh yeah, and also, please vote for us here every day from now until June 30th so we can win some moolah to spend on our Members!) I don’t think you could NOT crack a smile when a suited up Kyle Martin comes rolling down the road towards the camera and then almost runs right into the thing (right at the 1:15 mark for anyone who may have missed it. Your welcome, Kyle.)
So please, try to have a giggle. Sometimes you can’t just go out and find it when you need it, so let it find you, too. No matter what’s going on in your day, in your week, or even in your BRAIN, try to find a smile or some laughter somewhere out there because I promise it’s going to make you feel better.
“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”
- E.E. Cummings (<< See, it's not just me that thinks so... this famous guy backs me up)
Laughing all the way,
Jill
Still in the Game
Greetings Outdoor Mindset friends - I hope you all had a fabulous weekend!
Everyone always needs a bit of inspiration on Mondays, and I have just the story for you. Today we have a guest blog from Outdoor Mindset Member
Don, who is an avid lover of the outdoors and the sport of hunting. Don also has debilitating Multiple Sclerosis. Don's attitude, similar to that of Outdoor Mindset's, is that nothing is going to stop him from doing what he loves, and he's broken down many barriers and hurdles to make that happen. I love the title Don has given his blog - Still in the Game - because that's exactly what he is... still in the game, and a major player at that! Don't ever forget that you are ALL (neuro challenge or not!)
always
still in the game, and take strides to make sure you are a major player, just like Don.
Still in the Game
It's been several years since I've put together my story so when I was asked by my new friends at Outdoor Mindset to write something up for their blog, it took more serious thought than I expected. I do my best pondering in the woods so I'll head out to a little strip of high ground between our food plot and a pond. That's where I'll begin my tale.
As I absorbed the peace that is so often my companion when I'm in the outdoors, my thoughts turned to the road I've traveled to get to this point in my life. A person never knows which way the path will lead. We encounter many forks along the way, some of which lead to good stuff, some bad. Either way we live, learn, and move forward. Sometimes the path is smooth but often it's just plain rough and feels uphill all the way.
Finding out you have a serious illness makes a pretty nasty bump in the road. Living with the progression of that illness is rough. When we are faced with something like that, a person has two choices. We can either give up and crawl under a rock or we can play the hand we are dealt. I choose to play.
My struggle with a physical disability started in 1996 when I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. My world was shaken. Suddenly my future was uncertain. I was 31 years old with a growing family and a solid career path teaching and counseling that I truly enjoyed. Thinking back, there really was no choice. It simply needed to be faced and that was that. My wife Leann and I waged a silent battle against the disease for some reason not wanting to burden any family or friends unless we absolutely needed to. That time came all too soon and by 2004, I could no longer function well enough in my job and needed to go on disability. My mind was fine but I was down to one usable leg and one arm. Combine that with dizziness and fatigue and I wasn't doing my students much good anymore.
Going on disability felt like giving in but there were no other options. Thankfully I had some time to prepare things so I could still be in the woods and not trapped in the house! Still… I needed some serious soul-searching to find a new direction. I began to help Steve, a buddy of mine who worked for Babe Winkelman Productions. Babe helped me get started with voice-recognition software and I communicated with folks calling in looking for information about hunting and fishing opportunities around the world. I
would put them in touch with outfitters who could offer the services they were looking for. Interesting work and I met lots of great people but I knew it wasn't the direction I was meant for.
I was visiting with Steve and he made an interesting suggestion. He said that since I was already researching ways to stay in the woods or on the water maybe I should use my computer knowledge and find a way to share that information with others. I asked him to tell me more and he suggested I build a website to share some of my information. He said "you can't do things the way you used to but what you do is a far cry from sitting on the couch watching hunting shows and wishing"
At that time, information about the outdoors for someone with a disability was all but impossible to find. My wife and I sat down together and figured out how to put the information I had gathered for myself in a format that others could use. It wasn't long before we had a small working website named
with some basic tips and tricks I had found to be useful. One thing led to another and the site grew almost faster than I could keep up. I'd research things and talk with outfitters during the day and my wife would get home from work and we would add them to the site. Soon it was all I could do to keep up with the calls and e-mails but I was loving it. I had a direction and was doing some good!
Meanwhile, MS was taking its toll on my body. I kept losing ground and wasn't far from being bedridden when the drug Tysabri became available. It was risky because the main side effect was death but the alternative was spending the rest of my life in bed. I couldn't do that as long as there was any option at all. I took the chance and never looked back. So far so good and it's been about six years as I write this story.
As always, there are good days and bad days. I always used to tell people that I would hunt as long as I can pull the trigger. When that day came and my hand could no longer squeeze hard enough, it hit me hard. I came back to the house feeling about as sorry for myself as was possible. Imagine how pleased I was when I got my first sip and puff trigger and could do it with my mouth! It's been five seasons now in which I harvested my deer without lifting my hands from my armrests.
That gives you an idea where I'm at. I am a quadriplegic so things are different than they were when I was able bodied but I've become so much more than I ever was before. I can’t walk but I can and do have a positive impact on so many people. I firmly believe the quote "that which does not kill us only serves to make us stronger". What happened to me could happen to anybody. Whether it be an accident, illness, or other catastrophe, the issue is not what happens to us but what we do with it. If you are new to the game, come on in, and we'll make the most of life together!
Don
Chapter 2
I blinked and somehow more than ten years have passed since I wrote that blog for Outdoor Mindset.
My original intention was to add a few paragraphs to bring the story up to date. However, there have been so many changes and so much water under the bridge that I cannot bring myself to modify the honest feelings I wrote in that story. I will have to simply sit down and write chapter 2 to bring my readers up to date. While I truly appreciate your attention and your patience when I become long-winded, I will do my best to keep this as brief as I am able. I can certainly understand the difficulties faced by directors when they try to portray a good book during an acceptable runtime for a movie.
Overlooking the Chagress River in Panama
Tysabri kept my MS under control for another year and a half after the end of chapter 1. My worst fears were realized when the side effect of death suddenly became imminent. With only a year to live, I was forced to expand my search for a cure beyond our borders. My family, my friends, and the whole hunting community came together to send us on a trip to Panama for a life-changing stem cell transplant. That brought into my life an unforgettable year of miraculous improvements to my abilities. Among the changes were things like motion returning to my right arm that had not moved in seventeen years, improvements in vision, thinking, and the list goes on and on but that’s another story. Suffice it to say that the changes were awesome in a disease that allows for no improvement.
Shooting from my standing frame
As the positive changes happened, there were several changes in my family dynamics and I found myself divorced and living on my own dependent upon a team of caregivers working hard to keep me in my home. Just a few years after the successful procedure, I once again got very sick. My kids traveled home to stay by my side during the terrible life-and-death struggle with Guillain-Barre. For weeks, I lay in a hospital bed without vision and struggling to communicate through lips that were paralyzed. Thankfully that storm finally passed and I began to focus once again on my struggles with MS. We traveled once again to Panama for another stem cell transplant with the hope it would counter the effects of the Guillain-Barré. My second treatment brought a new set of exciting changes to my life. My body’s ability to control its own temperature returned to normal and my strength and mental clarity improved dramatically.
Fishing boats in Panama are not very accessible
Throughout the roller coaster ride that has become my life, I learned to do my best to keep up the good fight and to enjoy the blessings that come along as part of every day. My little girl is all grown up now but she travels home from Washington to spend every deer season with her dad. That gives me some of the finest moments life has to offer throughout the year. I still shoot with my faithful mouth control for both crossbow and gun. I have found it is more than just possible for a quadriplegic to consistently harvest nice whitetails, turkeys, pheasants, and even to catch some pretty great fish. I manage my own team of caregivers and lead a happy and fulfilling life still trying to leave world a little better then I found it.
My daughter and I in the deer stand
I am most defiantly still in the game. If you are as well, give me a shout. I love to hear and maybe share your story. If disability is affecting your ability to enjoy the outdoors, give me a shout. I’d love to help.
My first Tom from a wheelchair
Is that just the dose of inspiration you needed on a Monday? Now get out there, get involved, and get cranking on something awesome.
Jill
Hold on to your seats!
Outdoor Mindset Chili Cook-off 2011 - YUM
Well, they say a thank you is "Better late than Never" and I truly hope you all agree with that statement because we are almost 2 months past our 2nd Annual Chili Cook-off which was on October 23rd at Avery Brewing Company... and we owe everyone who came or participated in any way, shape, or form a BIG THANK YOU, because this event was a huge success for us. 
room) and were absolutely fabulous. These guys both came out special for this event, so we can not thank them enough!
