Marguerite Okonjo
Lead guide, Willamette Valley
Runs the wine and orchard day trips, and keeps a list of which barns sell peaches on the honour system.
Guides who still live where they guide
Ten of us lead Pussywillow Journeys trips, and eight sleep within an hour of the trailheads we use. We hire people who shop at the same markets, know which bakery opens at five, and can tell you why the Thursday ferry is worth avoiding. Average tenure here is seven years; two of our guides have been with us since the first Willamette Valley trip in 2014.
Every group is capped at twelve travellers, and most days run on a 1:6 ratio. That is the number that lets a guide stop for a ten minute conversation about soil, chanterelles or a broken fence post without losing the group.
Six of the team
Roles are groupings, not hierarchies — most guides work across two or three regions over a season.
Tomás Bergqvist
Mountain guide, Cascades
Has walked the Timberline Trail eleven times and carries a repair kit for other people's boots.
Junko Aikawa
Coastal guide, Oregon Coast
Times the Haystack Rock tidepool walks to the lowest tide of each month and knows the octopus.
Priya Raghunathan
Custom trip designer
Builds the private itineraries, usually around food markets, old churches and one long lunch.
Hannah Lindquist
City guide, Portland
Leads the Saturday Linnton and Kenton walks; her second job is at a secondhand bookstore on Alberta.
Osvaldo Marchetti
Spanish-speaking guide
Runs our only fully bilingual departure, the five-day Columbia Gorge trip each September.
The two lead guides
Marguerite and Tomás plan the routes the rest of us walk. They sat down with us between trips in March; these are edited excerpts.
Marguerite Okonjo, lead guide since 2014
Marguerite grew up outside McMinnville and spent nine years as an agricultural inspector before guiding. She has led 260 trips for Pussywillow, and 38 of those were custom itineraries for repeat travellers.
I do not want to show anyone a vineyard that could be in California. The point is the specific spring, the specific family, the espresso cart that only opens when the grapes are picked. If a traveller leaves remembering one farmer's name, the day worked.
Tomás Bergqvist came to Oregon from Umeå in 2011 and took his wilderness first responder course a year later, before his first season. He has led 190 trips, 15 of them in snowshoes, and updates the guide handbook's avalanche chapter every February.
An easy day at 6,000 feet is still a day where the weather decides. I would rather turn a group around at noon and hear groans than push on and get lucky. Nobody has been injured on a Pussywillow trip in the eleven years we have run them.
Training and safety, in plain numbers
Every guide completes the following before leading a single booked group. Certificates are renewed on the schedule in the last column and are held on file at our Portland office.
| Requirement | Who holds it | Renewed |
|---|---|---|
| Wilderness first aid (16 hours) | All 10 guides | Every 2 years |
| Wilderness first responder (72 hours) | 6 guides | Every 3 years |
| Food handler card | All 10 guides | Every 3 years |
| Liability driving record with our insurer | Guides driving the 14-seat van | Yearly |
| Second language (Spanish) | 4 guides | Assessed every season |
- Apprenticing
- Six shadow trips with an experienced guide before any paid solo day.
- Languages
- English, Spanish, Japanese, Italian and Mandarin are spoken across the team.
- Radio contact
- Two satchels and one handheld receiver are carried on rural trips; check-in at lunch and at trailhead means the office always knows where a group is standing.