Tuesday, June 17, 2025
Frida Waara
(The following story first appeared in the April 2024 print edition of Silent Sports Magazine)
Life isn’t fair. The world isn’t safe. There is no finish line.
These are three of the many catchphrases you’ll hear Todd Poquette use often—make that daily—but also the mantra that keeps the 906 Adventure Team moving forward after the tragic loss of the organization’s coordinator, Tara Gluski.
Tara died in a car crash on Friday, January 19, 2024, on US 41, just west of Michigamme, Michigan. Friends and family take comfort knowing she was heading out to do what she loved most: winter camping with girlfriends at the Yurt in Craig Lake State Park.
If anyone can be called a “Force of Nature” it was Tara.
For nearly two decades, she and her husband, Dave Kalishek, taught women at the Becoming an Outdoors Woman workshops (BOW), summer and winter, in Big Bay, Michigan, along with many Beyond BOW weekends. Tara could inspire women who had never slept in a tent to not only belly-along with a small shovel to hollow out the dome of a snow shelter, but also to sleep in it, despite single-digit or below-zero temperatures. She was just that kind of leader; that kind of mentor. It was at BOW that fellow instructor Sandy Kivela first met Tara and they became best backpacking buddies. “Every overnight adventure, girls’ weekend, cabin trip, or backpacking trip, I woke up early to her bringing me coffee while I was still in bed,” Sandy recalled. "Even on her birthday, when I was going to get up earlier than her, she managed to beat me.” She added, “[It’s] one of the million things that I will miss because she was one in a million.” Giving beyond measure, sharing all she had, and building confidence, especially in others who often only had a meek willingness to try, capitalized “Mission” for Tara. Her light beamed powerfully in Marquette and beyond. Whether the Community Gardens, Presque Isle Advisory Board, or Fresh Coast Film Festival, she tirelessly spread her contagious can-do optimism and got things done. Todd met Tara twenty years ago and it’s no wonder the two became instant adventure chums, backpacking the glaciers of Montana, the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, and the wilds of the Upper Peninsula. Then, in 2019, he hired her, as he put it, “To do the stuff I didn’t want to.” Anyone familiar with Todd’s Triple Crown endurance trilogy—Marji Gesick, Polar Roll, and Crusher—understands that Tara was the Good Cop to his pain-and-suffering Bad Cop. But they had a plan, a shared vision, and a bottom line. Todd needed that partner, “So, if I’m hit by a bus, she can carry on.” Life isn’t fair. The world isn’t safe. There is no finish line. Phrases that now carry more weight knowing the woman and story behind the words. “We’ll remember Tara the way she lived her life,” Todd said, “with action.”
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