The largest women’s outdoor organization in the country, Sisters on the Fly hits the road on its all-gal adventures with a vintage trailer’s worth of empowerment in tow.
Maurrie Sussman and Becky Clarke are the original “glampers.” As founders of Sisters on the Fly, which began in 1999 as a way to organize women-only fly-fishing trips, they unknowingly stumbled onto a unique business model. Along the way, they’ve picked up more than 6,500 members — ahem, sisters — who share their big love of the outdoors and tiny vintage trailers, most of them just large enough for a double bed and a doll-size kitchen.
Now the largest women’s outdoor organization in the country, Sisters on the Fly is part adventure travel agency and part social group for like-minded women who’d rather be sitting around the campfire telling stories and sleeping under the stars than ordering room service in a five-star hotel in a noisy city. You could call them grown-up tomboys. They prefer to call themselves “Girl Scouts with martinis” — and, yes, they sell a patch that proclaims it.
Maurrie and Becky are real sisters, by the way, and even though they don’t live in the same town anymore (Maurrie lives in Phoenix and Becky in McCall, Idaho) and they’re both married with kids and grandkids, they talk as much as a dozen times a day about Sisters on the Fly business — brainstorming about a new destination for a fishing trip, discussing a new T-shirt design (Becky’s department, since she’s an interior designer by trade), or keeping each other up to date on sisters who may need help, emotional or otherwise.
Now an official corporation with a registered name and trademark, Sisters on the Fly was created on the fly. And perhaps because of this, the business continues to morph and grow at its own pace and with its own direction, hauling the sisters behind it like a couple of vintage trailers (Maurrie owns six; Becky has two).
“We weren’t sure what we were doing that first year,” Maurrie says. “We didn’t think about starting a business. My son was a fly fisherman in Montana, and he took me to the Madison River to teach me how to fly-fish, and I just loved it. Becky and I always did stuff together, so I called her and said, ‘You have got to come up here and learn to fly-fish, too, and we could invite some friends.’ ”
Becky was sold on the idea. “We invited some girlfriends,” she says, “and we went to the backcountry in Idaho with two female guides and we fished with them for three days, and that was fabulous. They all came back to my house, and we stayed in the trailers. The trailers were so we could stay in a nice comfy place and have a bed and a timeout room. It grew from that.”
And so it began. Soon the sisters were designing more camping trips in the West and inviting more girlfriends, who also invited their girlfriends. By 1999, they realized they really had something: a growing network of sisters whom they liked to travel and do things with.
Maurrie’s the oldest and Becky’s two years younger (but neither will reveal their age). They grew up on the West Coast, the children of a Marine Corps colonel and fighter pilot father and a mother with a love of adventure, whom they both call by her nickname, Mazie.
“Dad was gone a lot, and Mazie made all the adventures for us,” Maurrie says. “Aunt Martha and her two girls would come along, and we’d be camping in tents and sleeping around the fire, and it was fun, really fun. We liked the fact that it was outdoors. We were never great campers, but Mom and Aunt Martha figured out how to put up tents, and it was a great learning process, watching Mom and Aunt Martha with tents on their heads. They were laughing so hard, and it was all girls — you can’t do that with men around. Men aren’t fun.”
So it’s no big surprise that Sisters on the Fly is strictly no men allowed. No children or dogs, either.
It’s grown-up girls only on trips that include the Missouri River Trout Rodeo in Craig, Montana; the Cowgirl Boot Camp near Kaycee, Wyoming; and a two-week journey along historic Route 66, with more than 300 members participating in the all-girl caravan (most with their vintage trailers in tow). Maurrie does most of the planning for the outings, but Sisters on the Fly has at least one local “wrangler” per state, a sister who organizes smaller events, such as a slumber party at a local campsite or a potluck at someone’s house. A $60 fee is all that’s required to join, giving members access to the meet-up page that posts members-only local and nationally sanctioned events.
But the group has become so much more than campouts and potlucks. “We did not start out to empower women, but it sure as heck ended up that way,” Maurrie says. “They learn to do things they’ve never done before. Traveling by themselves is a really big deal. Traveling with a trailer is a big deal. Learning how to back it up is a big deal. It’s amazing how protected women are, and it’s empowering in that we’re teaching them new skills for survival. I think the biggest thing is they learn they can do things they’ve always wanted to do with the support of women behind them.”
Single, married, divorced, widowed — the sisters of Sisters on the Fly are one tight-knit community. When they get together, they don’t gossip or man-bash. They discuss trailer hitches or the next quilts they’ll be making for members or loved ones who have cancer. There’s also Sisters on the Curb, a standing pull-into-my-driveway offer to members who need a place to park their trailers for the night. “Of course, you end up putting them in the guest room,” Maurrie says with a laugh.
In 2012, the organization pledged to donate $30,000 each year to Casting for Recovery, a nonprofit that offers fly-fishing retreats for women recovering from breast cancer and reconstructive surgery. This year, Maurrie and Becky plan to establish a 501(c)(3) in their mother’s name (she died last year two days shy of her 95th birthday) to give scholarships to women and children who want to study professions related to the outdoors, such as fish biology and ranching.
And after that? “Our newest conversation is about how a lot of the women are without family and don’t have children, and what happens when they need to retire,” Maurrie says. “We’ve talked about buying up campgrounds so people can bring their trailers and live there and have a Sisters on the Fly compound, with a central place for the kitchen. We want everyone to live a really fun, long life. And we have this idea that we all can watch out for each other.”
Just like sisters do.