John Osborn, a physician perhaps best known locally for his leadership role in Vashon’s Medical Reserve Corps during the COVID pandemic, will read from his new book, “Moving Mountains: Creating the Nurse Practitioner and Rural EMS,” from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Friday, March 14, at the Land Trust Building.
John co-wrote the book with his mother, Marie — her long-awaited memoir, published in February by Caxton Press.
“Moving Mountains” tells a sweeping and often dramatic story of service: In 1972, Marie founded the Salmon River Emergency Clinic in Stanley, Idaho, a tiny community in Sawtooth-Salmon River County, which covers 6,000 square miles. For nearly 30 years, she served as the clinic’s sole provider of health care, on 24/7 emergency call, in that wild and remote region.
Along the way, Marie made history, as Idaho became the first state to license nurse practitioners and she became the state’s first licensed nurse practitioner.
In doing so, she paved the way for many others to follow. Today, licensed nurse practitioners in the United States number over 300,000 and the profession has expanded internationally.
“Moving Mountains,” filled with 170 photographs and contributions from Marie’s patients, first responders, forest service staff and health care leaders who worked with her, tells an almost made-for-Hollywood tale of Marie’s chutzpah and grit — a 4-foot 11- inch-tall registered nurse and mother of five, who at the age of 40 decided to work in one of the most isolated rural communities in the west.
“In 1971, I set out to provide emergency care services in Idaho’s Sawtooth and Salmon River country,” Marie writes in the book. “I did not set out to change the world. Once I started, though, I had to see it through. Partly, it was the utter lack of health care in Stanley [Idaho] and the Sawtooth Valley. Also, in the man’s world of the early 1970s, I was driven to prove that a woman could do it.”
The work came at a high cost.
“For me personally, there were consequences,” Marie wrote. “This life cost me my marriage, fractured my family, left me on the edge of poverty, and landed me in frequent hearings before legislative committees, the Board of Medicine, and the Board of Pharmacy.”
In the end, though, she said, her clinic and ambulance service still stood — as did the profession of nurse practitioner.
Last week, at a practice run for John’s public reading of the memoir — a gathering at a private home for close friends and colleagues — John and his brother Jerry Osborn shared passages of the book.
After the reading, retired nurse practitioner and Vashon Health Care District board member Wendy Noble marveled at Marie’s tireless determination to make a difference.
“There are stories of trauma and death and grief and despair and sometimes, relief,” Noble said. “But after dealing with all that, then the next day, she would go see patients in the clinic, and then go home to her five kids.”
But the book was more than the life story of one person, Noble added.
“It’s a story about small rural mountain communities where life is hard, where avalanches and drownings and accidents are a part of life and you have few resources,” Noble said. “It’s about a community where people stepped up — forest rangers, firefighters, community members, her patients. It’s about rural EMS services that are still underfunded and under-resourced.”
“Moving Mountains” is also a story about family — as evidenced by some passages from the book shared by John and his brother, recounting mountaintop moments with each other and their mother.
John recalled how in the 1970s, when Marie’s annual income as a nurse practitioner at the Stanley Clinic was $1,000, she told him, “Well, to pay for my retirement, I’m going to write my memoir. I’m going to tell the stories.”
But as the years passed, and as Marie aged — she will soon celebrate her 94th birthday and lives in an independent living facility — John eventually decided he would take the lead on the memoir.
He started work on the book about 10 years ago, he said, not only interviewing his mother but also seeking out the voices of those who had been by his mother’s side as she blazed new trails in health care.
“In looking forward to where we are going, we must look back at our history,” John said, in a press release provided by the book’s publisher. “This book takes the long view, providing policymakers and public with a road map and those unforgettable personal stories.”
John’s own life’s work — as a physician, community health leader, and conservationist — has long been inspired by his mother and father.
He is now in his 40th year of providing medical care for veterans, currently in the emergency room at the Seattle VA. He has served as a physician advisor to Camp Chaparral, a joint Department of Veterans Affairs/Yakima Nation project for VA staff to improve care for Native American veterans with PTSD. With his mother, he also co-created the Stanley River Medical Internship, which since 1975 has placed pre-med College of Idaho students in internships at the Stanley clinic.
Outside of his medical practice, John founded the Spokane-based Lands Council; served for 15 years on the boards of the Washington Wilderness Coalition (now Washington Wild) and Idaho Wildlife Federation; and for 22 years as the Sierra Club’s conservation chair for eastern Washington and Idaho.
His current efforts include work with Indigenous sovereigns and faith communities through One River-Ethics Matter, a project that seeks to infuse principles of stewardship and justice into the re-negotiation of the Columbia River Treaty.
John will have some books for sale at his book reading at 6:30-8:30 p.m. Friday, March 14, at the Land Trust. Purchase the book online at caxtonnnn.myshopify.com.
Marie Osborn, in the lab of the Stanley clinic in the 1970s. (Roland Miller photo)
John Osborn will read from “Moving Mountains: Creating the Nurse Practitioner and Rural EMS,” from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Friday, March 14, at the Land Trust Building. (Courtesy photo)
