I didn’t start Wilder Path with a five-year plan. I started it after my corporate hustle went belly up and I found myself in a late session with a brilliant client who whispered, “I don’t sound like myself anymore.” The room went quiet in that specific way rooms do when a truth slaps. I knew that feeling in my own bones. In the way I was hiding behind the corporate grind. In the way I felt completely and utterly stagnant. Mosquito water.

So I began paying attention in the exact way I do on a river: watching the current, falling over a rock, examining what was under said rock. In coaching, that meant listening for the tells and checking out what got in your way. What was beneath? How do I navigate around it? Over time the work turned into a kind of fieldcraft: presence, pattern-spotting, patience. I turned to clients to map the stories they’d inherited about who they “should” be, then trace the edges of who they really were. Sometimes the change looked big on paper [titles, teams, pay]. Sometimes it was smaller and ultimately, braver: a sentence so clear, they had to smile when they realized it rang true. The you, you.

People ask about results, so here they are: I’ve coached over 3,000 people. I’ve logged 10,000+ hours. Clients have created more than $50M in salary gains. I’m proud of that. But the metric that sticks with me is the moment someone speaks with utter conviction about who they are and what they do. They look dumbfounded by the clarity. They smile at the confidence they never thought they could accept.

That’s why I’m here: to be a lantern you hold while stepping off the paved route. Not a performance. Not a pitch. Just you, clearing a path and choosing to be just a bit wilder. Let’s adventure together.

I found fly fishing the way most good things find us - one quiet morning, one crappy cast, and one totally enthusiastic and gesticulating Dad shouting YOU HAVE A FISH!! YOU DID IT!

I’m sure you might be able to relate in some way, with this 😅

Since then I’ve grown up on the water and began guiding with Calmwaters Fly Fishing, co-hosting the show The New Fly Fisher, and chasing clean lines across some of the most cherished waters on Earth. My favourite moment isn’t the grip-and-grin, dating profile-esque ‘fish photo’ - it’s the breath right before the take, when you’re fully there and fully you. The moment where you almost black out and just let instinct take over. You never saw it coming - just like most things in life.

Wilder Path exists because the river changed how I work. It showed me that confidence is a reaction and conviction is the cause - the belief and utter dedication in knowing that something really is there. So I built fly fishing into my coaching as a staple wild experience: a moving classroom where you learn focus, presence, and how to make a beautiful choice under pressure. All you need to do is put yourself out there.

Earth To Alyx

I started with the dial on Auto-Portrait and a camera that felt more like a dare than a tool. I took pictures of water droplets on leaves because I didn’t know where else to point the lens, trying to be “artsy” like the girls who already seemed to know what they were doing. Some frames were fine. Most were proof that I was still learning like a newborn, awkward fawn. 

Then I met Jamie - my Helios. He’s a trained photographer, and he showed me how a camera keeps its secrets - how a telephoto lens can fold the world toward you until a fox isn’t “out there” anymore, it’s here, breathing the same air. The first time I looked through that glass, the planet tilted. Distance softened. My attention did, too. I stopped taking pictures and started creating them - allowing the lens to become my alternate universe. The wilder way. 

That’s when Wild Reflections found me. Certain creatures began to feel like mirrors: a loon with my friend's affinity for music [a musician and coach], an indigo bunting who hunts the stars [for the couple who always adventure together] and a conquering chickadee for a woman who is braver than most. I’d choose the animal, wait for the moment, shoot the photograph, and then write the story of why - folding their courage back into the image and gifting it as a piece of he(art). Watching someone recognize themselves inside a creature never gets old; it’s like handing them a compass to their wildness that had always been unknown.

The bravest frame I ever developed, though, wasn’t of wildlife - it was of my own voice. I asked to show the work. I asked to sell it. I embarked on a wilder path of my own and my stomach flipped. My hands shook. I did it anyway. That single ask cracked open doors I didn’t even know were there and led me toward a business I hadn’t yet named.

Enter Wilder. The same fieldcraft that changed my photos [presence, pattern-spotting, patience] now lives in my coaching, and the Wild Reflections are woven straight through it. I want people to see the wilder version of themselves and keep seeing it when life tries to shrink who they are. When they look up at that print on the wall, I want them to remember: this is me, uncamouflaged, untethered and wilder in every way.

My first time on The New Fly Fisher wasn’t some big debut. It was a two-minute YouTube extra because my dad’s fly-fishing company (Calmwaters) was being filmed and they thought I could help. The day before, I’d said goodbye to a relationship that had hollowed me out. I was the heaviest and most depressed I’d ever been - a shell of who I once was. I remember standing behind a tree between takes, wiping my face, breathing hard, and then stepping back out because I couldn’t let my dad down - the man who always shows up for everyone. 

I did the segment. It wasn’t perfect, but it was totally and utterly me. I believe I actually said the phrase “looking like a hot little bug”, to remind everyone they need their fly (hook) to wiggle around in the water. Hello, embarrassing! But hey, I had nothing to lose. I was there, right? And then something amazing happened: the crew felt like instant friends, the kind you end up really keeping. We wrapped in June 2020. In January, the owner and producer of the show called and asked if I’d be a co-host. After just two minutes on YouTube. After feeling unworthy and picked over by carrion. Millions of people watching me? Who cares. I said a very timid “okay,” because sometimes that’s all you can say while your self-worth takes a deep, hitched, chaotic breath.

Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to tell stories that aren’t about me at all: about guides and lodges and waters that remake you if you let them. Northern Saskatchewan for big, mean, toothy northern pike. The Northwest Territories for arctic grayling that carry galaxies on their backs. New Brunswick for stubborn, beautiful Atlantic salmon. Northern Ontario where brook trout burst like fire through water. And finally, windy Wyoming for not only my dream of finding a cutthroat, but for the quiet, ridiculous wish to live out my Sundance Kid dreams.

Hosting taught me Wilder lessons that I just keep learning: presence (show up, even when you’re shaking), pattern-spotting (notice what’s working and keep doing that), patience (give the weather [and yourself] time). It’s ABSOLUTELY NOT glamour. It’s early mornings, weather you never thought you would experience, rewrites, re-ties, and choosing to be kind when you’re just so freaking tired. It’s telling the truth about the people who make world-class experiences happen in hard conditions because they love the places that raised them.

If there’s a point to this story, it’s simple: when life feels too heavy to lift, lift the smallest corner. Say “okay” when yes feels too big. Show up once, then again, then one more time. That’s how you find the understory - the quiet, rooted part of you that’s been there the whole time, waiting for you to step into the frame.