Meet Lauren

MY FIRST CHAPTER

Growing Up on Skis

My love for exploration first took shape on the ski slopes. At two years old, I clipped into my first pair of skis, and it wasn’t long before my entire life revolved around it. At just 12, I made the life-changing decision to leave my hometown, friends, and family to pursue my ski racing dreams. I trained year-round, traveled across North America, Europe, and South America, and spent every waking moment working toward one goal: becoming the best athlete I could be.

Ski racing took me to incredible places. I was waking up to snow-capped peaks, training beneath endless alpine skies, and navigating winding roads through mountain passes. But every trip was structured and every day accounted for, with little room for detours. The sport could be incredibly frustrating, but there was nothing quite like the rush of competition or those moments when everything finally started to click. Skiing wasn’t just a sport. For most of my life, it was a defining part of who I was.

Competing in college brought a very different pace to ski racing. After years of the sport being so intense, stepping back from that level of pressure allowed me to enjoy skiing in a way I hadn’t in a long time. But something I had known was coming for years suddenly didn’t feel so far away. Graduating from college also meant retiring from ski racing. For as long as I could remember, there had always been another race, another season, or another goal to work toward. Suddenly, there wasn’t. The thing I had built so much of my life around was gone, and I wasn’t quite sure what came next.

A NEW CHAPTER

The Trip That Changed Everything

Travel had always been a big part of my life, but I didn’t always experience it the way I do now. Ski racing had taken me around the world, and in college, I spent six months studying abroad in Europe. I loved exploring new places, but I was much more drawn to cities and everything that came with them. The outdoors had always been part of my life through skiing, but traveling specifically to experience nature wasn’t something I thought much about.

Not long after graduating, I said yes to a spontaneous road trip that would take me through 14 of America’s National Parks, and I bought a camera to bring along with me. Yosemite was the first National Park I ever visited, and seeing a place like that for the first time shifted something in me. I had spent years traveling and thinking about all the places in the world I wanted to see, yet somehow I had barely scratched the surface of what was out there. I remember being amazed that places like this had been here all along, and I was only just discovering them.

For the first time in a long time, I felt completely alive. I felt free to explore, follow my curiosity, and simply see where the road took me. That trip sparked an entirely new sense of adventure and a desire to experience as much of the world as I could. Suddenly, I wanted to know what else was out there that I didn’t even know existed yet.

I came home from that trip with more photos than I knew what to do with. I loved them and wanted somewhere to share them without flooding my personal Instagram, so I created a separate account with a pretty simple thought: surely someone out there would want to see these too. I figured I’d share my photography, let those people find me, and that would be that. I had no idea I was starting something that would eventually become such a big part of my life.