“I really had no idea what I was getting into when I came into Outward Bound,” Dr. Moran says. “It has given me a huge amount of pleasure and has become such an enormous part of my life.”
Work Hard, Play Hard
Dr. Moran was born and raised in Hinsdale, Ill. After graduating nursing school from Marquette University in Milwaukee in 1975 and working in a hospital for several months, she craved to do something different and exciting, something outside of four walls. So she signed up for Outward Bound’s sailing course.
Top: Winter Outward Bound programs. Middle: At sea with Scout, the therapy dog. Above: Training in Chicago. Right: Dr. Moran with her former colleagues from the Illinois Bone and Joint Institute in Chicago, Dr. Gerry Eisenberg (left) and Dr. Patrick Schuette (right).
For most of the journey, only one question entered her mind: “What was I thinking?” Her epiphany came late in that adventure while on nearby Hurricane Island—which would become her second home—watching the sunrise with one of the sailing instructors.
“It was so amazing, so fabulous,” she says. “Then I thought, ‘This is why I’m here.’”
But there would be many more classrooms in Dr. Moran’s future. For the next several years, she attended Rush Medical School in Chicago, graduating in 1981. Then she completed her internship, residency and rheumatology fellowship in 1986 at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., and joined the faculty for roughly one year before moving back home to Chicago.
For the next 12 years, she worked as a rheumatologist at the Lutheran General Medical Group in Park Ridge, Ill., and was then employed at the Illinois Bone & Joint Institute in Chicago for the following 17 years.
In between working and spending time with her growing family, she never missed one single summer participating in an Outward Bound experience, whether it was sailing or hiking and camping on Hurricane Island.
“I love Maine,” she says, adding that for 12 years, she also volunteered as the doctor for the U.S. Biathlon team whose members compete in shooting and cross-country skiing. “After that first sailing adventure, I knew that at some point, I wanted to live in Northern New England.”
She stayed true to her heart. Roughly 11 years ago, she and her husband, Bruce, who also participates in Outward Bound, purchased a 76-acre farm that sits off a lake and is five miles from the ocean. Her active life also includes working three days a week at Waldo County General Hospital; managing a one-acre vegetable garden for personal consumption; growing hay on 10 acres for a local cattle rancher; foresting timber on her property; and training one of her three golden retrievers to become a therapy dog she plans on taking to work.
“I feel like there’s never enough time in the day to do all the things we want to do,” says Dr. Moran, adding that in August 2016, she and her husband were among 100 people who swam three miles from Lincolnville, Maine, to Isleboro, Maine, to raise money for Life Flight, an air ambulance charity. “It was a fun community event that raised $160,000. “We were all very proud of ourselves.”
More Doors to Open
Although Dr. Moran has now limited her volunteer activities with Outward Bound (she does continue to serve as an advisor to its Safety Committee), she’s probably the organization’s biggest promoter. After participating in its programs for four decades, she jokes that she intimately knows every rock, tree, hill and crevice on Hurricane Island.
She believes these experiences have helped her become a better physician in numerous ways. Besides boosting her self-confidence, she also developed the art of listening, especially to instructors while in survival mode, and has become acutely sensitive to people’s needs.
As a lifestyle, she says Outward Bound opened up a new world that she didn’t even know existed.
“Outward Bound made me feel like I could do anything if I put my mind to it,” Dr. Moran says. “To younger rheumatologists, if you see a door, open it. You just never know what’s really behind it.”
Listen to Dr. Moran talk more about Outward Bound and practicing rheumatology.
Carol Patton is a writer based in Las Vegas.
