This episode of She Explorers is brought to you by Oru Kayak.

They design folding kayaks that can go virtually anywhere,

thanks to their lightweight and folding design.

Later in the episode, we talked to Elena Pressprutch, an outdoor photographer and a

self-described weekend warrior about how she took her Oru Kayak on a 50-mile trip on the

John Day River.

I'm Gail Strav and you're listening to She Explores.

Before we get too far into today's episode, I want to share a voice memo I received in response to episode 23, mental health and the outdoors.

This memo centers around a unique kind of anxiety, and I was especially drawn to the lesson at the end.

I hope you appreciate the listener sharing her very personal response to the episode.

Another aspect of anxiety is losing a parent.

I lost my mother to genetic breast cancer in 2009 and it's strange to think about my life at that

point because a relationship was butting with this man in college and I think I mourned through my experiences with this man more than I overtly mourned for my mother.

It's hard to explain. She was dealing with breast cancer on and off for seven years.

So I think when it was finally time for her to die, it was almost a relief for everyone for us and her because we knew that she was finally

happy she was finally free of this physical suffering in this life. So because

it was more gradual I didn't necessarily mourn her in the ways that I feel like most people

would assume. But looking back I definitely feel like I mourned her in strange alternative ways.

So I think there's a lot of anxiety built from that or even something that filters through my bouts of depression every once in a while and how I analyze

my loss of a mother and just the genetic cancer itself I have that same mutation.

And so now I have to translate what I witnessed her go through into my own life.

Will that manifest itself in the same way? Will I die this will that

...