By Jamie Hale
oregonlive.com
PORTLAND, Ore. — Listen to Erica Nelson recount some of her thrill-seeking adventures, and at one point you can only shake your head.
How else would you respond to someone who tells you about their two-month cycling trip around the Baltic Sea? Or his 14,000-mile motorcycle trip along the Pan-American Highway? Or the week-long dog sledding excursion she casually organized at the end of a backcountry ski trip in northern Sweden?
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When Nelson, 50, isn't traveling the world, she's taking on a different kind of adventure: working as a captain for Portland Fire & Rescue — the only woman currently holding that rank. But at the end of the year, she will retire from her job at Station 27, leaving behind a successful, hard-earned career in what has traditionally been, and still is, a male-dominated job.
“This career has suited me so well over the years. It’s almost like this job and I found myself,” Nelson said. “One of the beautiful things is the lifestyle it has allowed me to live. »
But, as she tells it, lifestyle and work have never been so distinct.
One of the rare
At Portland Fire & Rescue, Nelson is one of the few.
Of the approximately 690 people who make up the ranks of Portland Fire and Rescue, only 54, or about 8 percent, are women, according to department spokesman Rick Graves. Those numbers are currently fluid, Graves added, because the department is in the midst of a “significant wave of retirements.”
Nelson said she was heartened to see a number of “really strong, dynamic, intelligent women” rising through the ranks, including several to the rank of lieutenant and battalion chief. Although women have thrived at Portland Fire & Rescue, including former chef Sara Boone who retired in 2023, there are still challenges to working in a male-dominated space.
A 2017 study found that female firefighters face a number of disparities, including harassment, ill-fitting safety equipment and inadequate training. The study, by researchers at Kansas State University and the Center for Fire, Rescue, and EMS Health Research, linked these issues to recruitment and retention problems among female firefighters.
“This factor constitutes a major public health problem as women are among the responders who protect communities throughout the United States,” write the authors.
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Nelson declined to talk about the specifics of her struggles in Portland, but was clear about the main obstacle she faced.
“I always run into doubt,” she says. “In this profession where you can sometimes doubt yourself because of your gender and your size, it is essential to have this self-knowledge about my own abilities and my confidence.”
Strength through adventure
Through all of her adventures – construction work in Antarctica, ice climbing in Colorado, three rafting trips in the Grand Canyon – Nelson asked herself the same questions: “Am I really capable of this? Can I really do this?
She said she's driven by curiosity, by what her body and mind can do, and by the places and people she meets along the way, but ultimately it's the simple physical challenge that attracts him.
“What I do in the adventure world is I often push my own physical limits,” Nelson said. “I also bring it back to work and knowing how capable the body and mind are of doing the work.”
In her life as a global adventurer and in her work as a firefighter, Nelson has faced intense and physically demanding tasks that require impeccable preparation to stay safe. The challenges she faces, such as mountain biking on the Great Divide, have come in handy when she fights fires on the outskirts of Forest Park.
“It’s confidence. Just self-confidence,” she said. “It’s the confidence that I know I have what it takes, that I know I can do it.”
But being a firefighter proved to be more than just physically demanding. Nelson said it's often the emotional challenges, an often unspoken aspect of the job, that hit hardest. Being on the front lines often means encountering people who are most vulnerable, and especially as someone who places a high value on personal interactions, Nelson said the job has often been a stressor.
“Most people experience tragic trauma in their lives, and it's something we do several times a month, several times a year,” Nelson said. “It’s truly a gift to be able to witness life in all its fullness, in its full spectrum, but with it comes heartbreak.”
For her, thrill-seeking trips are also mental health breaks, she says, opportunities to get outside and take a deep breath (or very deep breaths). And although she once took a meditation retreat in Bhutan, her motorbike trip through Nepal was quicker.
Financial planning for public safety retirement
Upon retiring at the end of December, Nelson will waste no time transitioning into his full-time life of adventure.
In January, she will surf in Costa Rica. February will be his annual ice climbing trip to Colorado. March is for skiing and April for mountain biking, then May to July will be a Balkan bike trip.
Nelson said she has a spreadsheet with about 200 trips she would like to take, including sea kayaking, long-distance canoeing, kiteboarding and telemark skiing. At just 50, she figures she has plenty of time to tackle the list.
On top of everything else, she said her travels often prove that women can lead this kind of adventurous life, another field often dominated by men. As a firefighter, she said she is always excited to interact with the girls, opening up a potential avenue that may not have otherwise existed in their minds, and during her adventures she has similar interactions.
“Seeing young girls and young women, their eyes light up when they see me, because all of a sudden they’re imagining it,” Nelson said. “We need to see more people doing more things: women on motorcycles, women traveling alone, women in non-traditional roles. We need it.
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