Gudy Gaskill was a great gal, with many "gifts," but she may have also been Gifted, with a capital G. (That's a lot of G's.) 

Without a standardized cognitive test from her past, we may never know for sure.  But we do have some clues: she was energetic, passionate and idealistic. Gaskill also had far-reaching knowledge and experience as a climber and hiker through Colorado and Europe. 

Here are better clues: 

She became lost in her artwork

She struggled with maps and directional sense

She entered a men's ski race . . .illegally.

Why do these clues point to possible Giftedness? 

Neurodiverse people, especially those with nonverbal cognitive abilities, can be highly conceptual and visual, but struggle with details.  Others are intensely logical, but miss nuance. It is also typical for these "neurologically atypical" people to be perceived as "unfocused" in certain moments, such as during instruction, but "hyper-focused" on artwork, creating or solving. Gudy, like many Gifted people, had intense strengths and glaring deficits (at least with maps and directional sense).  Why is this important to us and our GT program? Because many of our Gifted students will come to our school with similar asynchronous developments.  

Children's deficits in learning tend to become the focus of our attention.  Everyone remembers what they struggled with in school, and for many, it was a point of shame. But what if, before we allowed Gudy access to nature, we gave her a test on mapping?  If she were like many people, she would have failed, connected that particular failure to being "bad at outdoorsy stuff," and the Colorado Trail would never have come to fruition. 

Thankfully for all of us, her perseverance was unmatched and she refused the concept of "permission." This is why entering an illegal race was a nod to Giftedness; and why rule-breaking is also an excellent indicator. 

Ultimately, Colorado was gifted by her Giftedness- an intense mix of idealism, visualization, rule-breaking and mapping deficits. She conceptualized and literally forged the Colorado Trail.  And for our learners at her namesake school, she'll serve as our guide, a persistent reminder that personal or learning "deficits" are actually just clues pointing toward Giftedness.