Wild Women in Hiking- Anastasia Allison

Meet Anastasia Allison, Founder of Kula Cloth ® & Musical Mountaineers

What I love most about Anastasia is her strong vision. She is a master at manifesting the life she wants all while contributing to the well being of our planet. She is such an inspiration- not only because she climbs mountains to play the most beautiful music I have ever heard, but because she saw a need for a piece of gear and jumped in 100% seeing it through from concept to reality and has believed in herself the entire way. The Kula Cloth ® is something that I now carry with me every time I hike. It is such an important piece of gear, and I can't imagine hiking without one now. So let's jump in and meet Anastasia and learn about what she does and who she is.

Jaime: What is a Kula Cloth ®? Why did you start Kula Cloth ®?

Anastasia: Kula Cloth ® is the very first antimicrobial pee cloth for all the places you ‘go’. As a former park ranger and backpacking instructor, I was frustrated by the amount of toilet paper that I found discarded in fragile alpine environments. I started using a pee cloth as a Leave No Trace option, and I was shocked to find that I loved it. I started telling all of my backpacking students about it. One year, my husband went on a 9 day trip to the Wind River Range in Wyoming. I was taking my pee cloth in a spectacular environment as a joke to send to a friend, when I had a sudden idea pop into my head –“Why isn’t this a real piece of gear?”. I realized that I was spending $500 on a tent, but the one piece of fabric I was using as a pee cloth looked like I had pulled it out of a rag bin at jiffy lube. I had no clue had to sew and no experience in the textile industry. It took me a few years of getting over some pretty hefty fears, but I finally launched Kula Cloth in 2018. Since that time, we’ve sold close to 15,000 Kulas. Nothing makes me happier than seeing so many thousands of people adventuring all of the world with this tiny piece of gear.

Jaime: What is your background? Did you like being in law enforcement?

Anastasia: When I was 12 years old, I started volunteering as Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site. My love affair with parks and the wilderness started at a very young age. I went through a quarter-life crisis in college and ended up studying pre-med courses and working at a trauma unit. Ultimately, I came back to my first love, and I went through a police academy and became a Law Enforcement Ranger in Washington State. I was laid off from that job in 2012 and I took a job as Railroad Police Officer with BNSF Railway for about 5.5 years. After a nearly fatal close call, I left my police job in 2017 to pursue my dream of creating my own, adventure inspired life.

Jaime: Who is Mare? How do you come up with your most entertaining marketing campaigns? Are unicorns really your favorite “mythical” animal?

Anastasia: Mare is my sister. When I started Kula Cloth ®, I was a true solopreneur. Initially, I did everything including sewing the product. Eventually, I had a manufacturing team that was making the Kulas for me, but I was still handling all of the social media, customer service, production logistics and fulfillment. Needless to say, it got overwhelming very quickly. When you have a customer, that is not a simple relationship where you send them a product and then you never hear from them again –having customers is an incredible responsibility, and there is nothing more important than nurturing that very real relationship. In my personal time, I love going backpacking and hiking, and it got to the point very quickly where I wasn’t going to be able to do that anymore unless I had somebody to help me answering e-mails and managing the social media aspect of the business. Kula is like my fabric child –I love it more than I can put into words. It was scary, in the beginning, to ‘give away’ some of those early responsibilities, but my sister showed up at the right time and she is somebody who cares about the business and our customers just as much as I do. I honestly couldn’t do this without her. Our marketing campaigns are honestly completely spontaneous –we are always coming up with ridiculous ideas and we thrive on being in the creative flow. We both spend a lot of time meditating and being in nature so that we can be open to receiving the ideas that we are meant to bring to life. Maybe that sounds a bit ‘woo’, but we don’t follow any type of plan –I honestly think that the universe uses us and Kula to bring a lot of laughter and light into people’s lives. I absolutely love unicorns! I think a unicorn represents the magic that lives inside each of us. So often we argue for our own limitations and we think that we aren’t ‘good enough’ or ‘special enough’ to do something incredible. We look at other people who are doing amazing things and think that they got ‘lucky’. I know this, because that was my story for most of my life. I think that the unicorn represents the truth of what lives in each of us –a mythical creature who is capable of anything.

Jaime: What advice would you give to someone who is afraid to take the next step in life whether it’s starting their own business or just attempting a more challenging hike?

Anastasia: First and foremost, you don’t have to be any different than exactly how you are right now. There is never the ‘perfect’ time for anything, because it’s always just right now. As you begin process in your life, focus all of your attention on visualizing what you WANT, not what you don’t want. Very often, we spend so much time focused on what we don’t want or spending time feeling worried or fearful –in doing so, we actually attract more evidence of what we don’t want. When you stare at the reality of ‘what is’, you just create a whole lot

more of ‘what is.’ So, allow yourself to dream about what you want, and be ok with not knowing how it is all going to happen. The answers will come and find you –not the other way around. Spend time every day connecting with yourself either through meditation, spending time in nature, listening to music, or writing letters of appreciation to others. As your energy rises, you will become inspired to ideas and opportunities that will appear seemingly out of ‘nowhere’. When you realize the power that you have to create anything you want, you’ll never doubt yourself ever again.

Jaime: What is your "all time" favorite trail?

Anastasia: Well, this isn’t entirely a trail… but without a doubt, I think that my favorite back country experience was completing the entire Wind River High Route. This is a primarily off-trail, semi mountaineering objective in Wyoming. It is nearly 90 miles long, and there are huge stretches (30+ miles) with no trails whatsoever. The altitude combined with the navigation tested every part of my knowledge and physical abilities. Plus, it’s probably some of the most beautiful, rugged terrain I’ve ever seen.

Jaime: We are so inspired by your other project, The Musical Mountaineers. How did that adventure start? What was your best hike to date and what song did you play?

Anastasia: The Musical Mountaineers is a duo consisting of me and my friend Rose Freeman who plays piano. We carry a violin and a keyboard to the summits of peaks for unannounced wilderness sunrise serenades to nobody. Rose and I met through a serendipitous series of events, and we’ve since performed over 40 unique concerts and had the opportunity to perform for the She Explores podcast and on stage at Benaroya Hall in Seattle to benefit the Washington National Parks Fund. It’s hard to pick a favorite hike because they all so unique and special. If I had to choose, I’d say that hiking to a secret frozen mountain lake was pretty special. I had the chance to perform ‘Pure Imagination’ while Rose ice skated, and that was a wonderful experience.

Jaime: What does Hike It Off mean to you?

Anastasia: When we spend time in nature, we connect with the truest part of who we are. As we walk away from the trail head, we leave behind the stories, fears, doubts and worries that we often carry with us –sometimes those invisible burdens are much heavier than any pack. Nature has a way of reflecting back to us the eternal beauty that lives inside each of us –a deeper truth about the connection that we all have to each other, ourselves and our planet. When we hike, whether we can articulate it or not, that sense of belonging is what we remember. We leave behind the things that no longer serve us.

Jaime: Who are your mentors? Who inspires you?

Anastasia: A long time ago, I made a decision that I thought was ‘crazy’ at the time –I hired a coach to help me ‘figure out my life’ when I was still a police officer. That coach (who works with the Seattle Coaching Collective), made such a profound impact on my life that I can’t quite quantify it. My husband has also been a tremendous support for me. Let’s face it, when your spouse decides she wants to quit her $80,000/year police job to ‘pursue her dreams’, there are a lot of fears that surface. Aaron has never once doubted me –and, in fact, has believed in me even during moments when I thought I was completely nuts for quitting my job to start a pee cloth company. There are so many other friends and family members who have showed up during this journey to support Kula –it is not, and could not possibly be, a one woman show. Rose still takes all of my Kula product photos, my friend Allison has become our event planner, and our designer Amanda has brought unthinkable beauty to Kula. My sister has invigorated the brand with her endless humor and inner brilliance. I’m also hugely grateful for the thousands of people in the Kula community who show up to support us every single day. I don’t ask for these people to share our product or say kind things about Kula, but they do. Again, and again, they show up. Honestly, it brings me to tears just thinking about it. There is nothing that we do that isn’t entirely for them.

Jaime: What is one piece of advise you would give to someone who is feeling down or like their life isn’t going the way they want it to?

Anastasia: What you focus on is what you will create in your life. I don’t say this to be harsh, I say it because it was a bitter pill that I had to swallow in my own life. A few years ago, I was deeply depressed. I was focusing on how bad everything was in my life. I was handling multiple railroadrelated fatalities per week and I was, quite honestly, questioning everything about life. From the depths of that despair, I was able to find one glimmer of light–the fact that my heart beats itself and that my lungs breath themselves. It was a profound realization for me. I started focusing more and more on the things that I wanted to create, and as I started to do that, things in my life began to shift and opportunities started to open up for me. This is a duplicatable process that anybody can do –it’s not just for me. Don’t look externally for fulfillment or happiness. A job or a career or a certain amount of money in the distant future is not the answer to your ‘problems’. You have to find the peace now, and then those things will come. You must start with yourself, and then watch the whole universe shift to give you the things that you are wanting.

Jaime: What’s next on the horizon for you and your company? Anything else you’d like to share?

Anastasia: I’m extremely excited about some of our upcoming collaborations with non-profits such as The Venture Out Project and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. As we’ve streamlined our production, we are really focusing on using Kula as a vehicle for good so that we can support organizations that are making a difference in the world. I’m really looking forward to our big Kulapalooza event in October in the North Cascades. Last year, the event was really magical, and I can’t wait for it again this year. I think my favorite quote of all time (by Herman Melville) is, “I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.” You don’t need to know all the answers. You only ever need to believe that things are possible. More than anything, I want Kula and The Musical Mountaineers to inspire people to look in their own hearts and see what light wants to shine through.

Get your own Kula Cloth ® at www.kulacloth.com