Profile: Kristi Miller Lauerman

By Dawne Belloise

Kristi Miller grew up in La Crosse, Wisconsin, the youngest of three siblings and the only girl in a neighborhood full of boys. With two older brothers and about a dozen neighborhood kids who all seemed to be boys, she learned early how to hold her own. She was a tomboy by default and by choice, and never was interested in dolls. She was always outside and always moving playing football, kick the can, kill the carrier. Those long, unsupervised days of the essentially unsupervised 1970s shaped her sense of freedom. Her father was a firefighter and Naval reservist who painted on the side; her mother was a homemaker. When Kristi was in sixth grade, her parents divorced. She chose to live with her mom while her brothers stayed with their dad.

In high school, Kristi thrived on motion and challenge, playing basketball and doing 100-meter hurdles, but her favorite was running track. Kristi earned straight A’s and admits that while she was actually “really good at playing the game,” she still got into a bit of trouble now and then. She graduated high school in 1991, and just two weeks later, she bolted from her hometown to explore.

From as early as third grade, Kristi thought she might want to teach in some way. Perusing through help wanted ads, she spotted a listing for a nanny in Rye, New York. On a whim, she applied and was hired. She had never been to New York City before, and arriving from Wisconsin was quite the culture shock but the Grateful Dead were playing Madison Square Garden for nine nights and that was a bonus. In the city that never sleeps, there were homeless people camped out on the streets that she was trying to navigate for the first time, and the subway felt overwhelming. On the way to the Dead show, Kristi had been warned that the subway wasn’t safe at night, so she left the show early that first night. When she figured out she could actually handle the streets and subways of New York, she returned the next night and stayed late.

That year’s experience in New York became a doorway to the wider world adventures. “It was a great introduction because I had a home and I loved being a nanny. I was super active and it gave me the opportunity to meet people,” she explains.

She met other international nannies and went on backpacking adventures through Europe, traveling through 12 countries, spending a month in London living on about 10 dollars a day. “It’s the way I lived my life. We’d work in the market in London performing with Devil Sticks and selling them,” she says and explains that Devil Sticks are like juggling sticks. “It was kind of like being on tour. It was really fun and I loved hanging out and being a free spirit.” It was 1992, and she was living the life. After a short return to Wisconsin where she found work waitressing and working at a bike shop, Kristi noticed an ad at an outdoor shop for someone looking for a hiking partner for the Appalachian Trail. She called the number, met the stranger and spent eight days hiking with them. That trip changed everything. “That’s when I realized I was a mountain girl,” she says. And she headed west.

Kristi moved to Winter Park, Colorado, where she decided she wanted jobs that not only taught her about life but that also meant something to her. She earned her EMT certification, worked on an ambulance and became a volunteer firefighter. During that time, her boyfriend was caught in an avalanche while they were backcountry snowboarding. They were inexperienced and without beacons or proper gear. He survived with just a broken leg by digging himself out, but the experience left its imprint and was the impetus for Kristi getting certified and joining Search and Rescue. Kristi also worked construction, wanting to learn how to build houses. In the early 1990s, there weren’t many women on construction job sites. But she had a mentor who took her seriously and taught her everything, from hanging cabinets to changing oil. She learned to drive a forklift, run saws and did plenty of grunt work. She felt it was practical, empowering and aligned with her belief that skills opened doors.