News
ENLARGE
VAIL, Colorado — Writing your own obituary can be a very life-changing, albeit morbid, exercise.
Just ask adventure-seeker and ocean rower Roz Savage. Savage worked in a cubicle as a management consultant for 11 years before she finally put pen to paper and saw her future through two very different lenses.
“I wrote two versions of my own obituary,” she said. “It sounds morbid but it was very helpful. I wrote the version I wanted and the one I was heading for. They were so different I realized I needed to make some changes.”
For years Savage subscribed to a very common delusion, she said — “that money would buy me happiness.”
As a “slave to the salary,” she didn't spend much time thinking about what she could do that might fulfill her on a deeper level. She was married and living in a big house in the ‘burbs.
From the outside, everything looked perfect. Inside, it wasn't.
Just ask adventure-seeker and ocean rower Roz Savage. Savage worked in a cubicle as a management consultant for 11 years before she finally put pen to paper and saw her future through two very different lenses.
“I wrote two versions of my own obituary,” she said. “It sounds morbid but it was very helpful. I wrote the version I wanted and the one I was heading for. They were so different I realized I needed to make some changes.”
For years Savage subscribed to a very common delusion, she said — “that money would buy me happiness.”
As a “slave to the salary,” she didn't spend much time thinking about what she could do that might fulfill her on a deeper level. She was married and living in a big house in the ‘burbs.
From the outside, everything looked perfect. Inside, it wasn't.
Hooked on adventure
It took Savage a few years, but eventually she quit her job, separated from her husband, and, in 2003, went on her first adventure — on an expedition to Peru to look for Inca ruins. She was hooked. In 2004, she began looking for her “next big project.” Around that same time, Savage had what she calls an “environmental ephiphany” and decided she wanted to live a more sustainable life. She also wanted her next project to provide her with a platform she could use to talk about the environment.
“I was trying to find something that would be consistent with these new personal values. Something adventurous, that would stretch me as a person.”
That's when Savage decided to row, by herself, across the Atlantic Ocean. The idea wasn't as random as it might sound. Savage had rowed during college on a fairly serious level, though never across an ocean.
“It seemed the perfect balance between challenging and doable,” she said during a phone interview earlier this week.
Savage, an author and environmental campaigner (she's been named a “UN climate hero”) as well as an ocean rower, will share her adventure story during the kickoff of the Vail Symposium Unlimited Adventure series, which begins Thursday night and runs Thursday nights through March 11. The free event takes place at the Donovan Pavilion in Vail at 6 p.m.
It's the seventh year of the Adventure series, and the first year there's an equal number of women and men presenters, said Carrie Marsh, the Symposium's executive director.
“It shows women are fearless, too,” Marsh said. “We are out there, just as commited and adventuresome as men.”
Certainly, Savage is as adventurous as any of the other intrepid explorers and daring activists who will be speaking during the series.
“Few people have a fearless perspective when it comes to adventure, but Roz is even more special because she's seeking her adventure by herself,” Marsh said.
Adventures done solo
That's right. By herself. Savage raced across the Atlantic in a 23-foot-long, 6-foot-wide, 1,200 pound boat solo. She competed and completed the 3,000-mile Atlantic Rowing Race in 2005, becoming the first solo woman to ever compete in that race and the sixth woman to row across an ocean alone. There were some pretty scary days during that first voyage, Savage said.
“There were really big waves,” she said. “That was the year of Hurricane Katrina and it was seriously the worst weather on record for the Atlantic. There were an unprecendented number of tropical storms.”
The start of Savage's voyage was delayed because of a tropical storm in the Canary Islands.
The rough waters caused plenty of problems for Savage. All four of her oars broke before she even reached the halfway mark.
“I had to patch them up and carry on,” she said.
She also got tendonitis in her shoulders the first week and relied on painkillers the rest of her time on the ocean.
Despite the challenges, Savage found herself back in her boat in no time. In 2008, she became the first woman to row solo from California to Hawaii. In 2009, she continued her Pacific bid by rowing from Hawaii to Kiribati. Come April, Savage will climb back into the boat and attempt to row the final stage of her journey — from Kiribati to Australia.
For now, Savage doesn't have a home. She lives out of her suitcase and will spend the next two months shuttling between Hawaii, California, Oregon and Washington before she sets out on the open, dangerous ocean again. But that's OK. At least when someone does write her obituary, it will detail a life really lived.
High Life Editor Caramie Schnell can be reached at 970-748-2984 or cschnell@vaildaily.com.
If you go ...
Who: Roz Savage, ocean rower, writer and speaker talks about “Storms, Solitude - and Sustainability: Rowing the Oceans for a Greener Future”What: Vail Symposium Unlimited Adventure series
Where: Donovan Pavilion, Vail.
When: 6 p.m. Thursday.
Cost: Free.
More information: Call 970-476-0954 or visit www.vailsymposium.org.
