Melissa Hickson is not a thrill-seeker.
She does not throw herself off waterfalls or mountains for the rush of it.
“If I feel adrenaline,” she says, “it’s because something has gone wrong,” the 30-year-old adventurer says.
Born and raised in Cleveland, Tennessee, Hickson began kayaking at age 24. Not long after, she became a raft guide on the Ocoee River, then a kayak instructor, ultimately leading her to spend winters in Chile guiding whitewater trips through the Andes Mountains.
In 2018, after a trip on the Maipo River, Hickson remembers watching one of her fellow guides take off his backpack and “unfold what looked like an over-engineered grocery bag attached to some shoelaces,” she says.