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Having stepped away from high-powered careers, alumnus Scot Bealer and his wife, Lea Frye, now focus on what they love, writing about and photographing Rocky Mountain wildlife

Scot Bealer doesn’t think of himself as a writer, but he’s written one book and co-written another. The way he tells it, he just communicates about what he loves: wildlife and nature.

His partner in publishing and in life has, quite literally, the same focus. She’s a photographer.

Together, Bealer and , who are married, have published a new book titled , which fuses their lifelong passions for wildlife, photography and storytelling. Last year, they teamed up on .

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Scot Bealer (left), a 1986 CU Boulder biology graduate, and his wife, Lea Frye (right), recently published , which fuses their lifelong passions for wildlife, photography and storytelling.

His path from college biology student to author was not exactly linear. Here’s how it happened:

Bealer graduated from the �Թ��� of Colorado Boulder in 1986 with a BA in biology, cum laude, and went on to earn an MBA from Texas McCombs School of Business.

When he came to CU Boulder and majored in biology, he was initially baffled about why he had to take non-science courses. One of those courses was philosophy.

There were weekly writing assignments, and the professor returned Bealer’s first essay covered in red ink and bearing a “stunningly low grade.” The professor invited students who didn’t do well to see him during office hours. Bealer did that. ��

The professor told Bealer that he clearly knew the material and could talk about it, but writing was another story. “This will make a difference in your life, if you take the time to learn how to get your thoughts down on paper,” the professor told Bealer.

By the end of the semester, the professor praised Bealer’s progress, noting, “I hope you see how much you’ve changed in your writing.”

Bealer calls that encouragement “transformational.”

Science, fly fishing and business

At CU Boulder, he was mentored by biology professors Carl Bock and David Armstrong, who encouraged him to develop critical thinking and communication skills. Armstrong was Bealer’s advisor for his honors thesis.

After graduating from CU Boulder, Bealer joined a PhD program, thinking he’d go into academe. While in graduate school, though, Bealer took a job with the L.L. Bean fly-fishing school, where he worked with , who wrote and illustrated the . He had such a satisfying time in Maine that he stayed at L.L. Bean and didn’t return to the PhD program.

Also at the L.L. Bean Fly-Fishing School, Bealer met Brock Apfel, who would become a great friend and mentor and who encouraged him to go into the business world. Bealer got an MBA and launched a business career that went “pretty well,” he notes.

Bealer eventually rose to vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for Universal Air Travel Plan (UATP), a global payment network and expense management system for corporate air travel. Prior to that, he worked at Continental Airlines in revenue management.

At Continental Airlines, he crunched data to figure out when one person might pay $1,000 for a seat even if the person in the next seat paid $200. “Well, it was all about demand. And I was very good at analyzing statistics to predict demand on future flights,” he notes, adding: “The foundation in statistical work I did at CU is really what drove me to succeed in the realm I did from a business standpoint.”

Bealer found that in many ways working at UATP was that “dream job” with good pay and a chance to travel around the world, “which in one sense was spectacular. I got to do business trips to New Zealand, where I could bring my fly-fishing gear and take a few days” to fish. But constant travel is “not healthy,” and he stepped away from the dream job, eventually returning to work as a fly-fishing guide in Salida, Colorado.

“And I was back to doing what I loved. It was really kind of a fun circle, and it worked for both me and Lea, who also did very well in her business career. … We were kind of spendthrifts, so when we were ready to go do stuff that we loved, we could pay down debt and live on what we made doing jobs that paid less.”

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“We’re working 60 to 80 hours a week on our book and photography ... we’re getting about 2% of the income we used to get, but we love everything we do,” notes CU Boulder alumnus Scot Bealer of producing . (Cover photograph: Lea Frye)��

A shared love of the outdoors

Bealer and Frye both grew up loving nature and wildlife, which they continue to explore together:

They met in Texas, but their families are both from Pennsylvania, and both families enjoyed spotting animals in the wild. “Lea’s passion was wildlife photography ... She loved taking pictures of animals with little instamatic cameras.”��Over time, those cameras would get bigger and better.

“Her mom and dad both loved taking pictures, and when she was 8 or 9, her dad built a dark room in their basement. She remembers going down and helping him with that archaic technology called developing film.”

One thing that cemented their bond was that Bealer and Frye loved spending time outside. “And if we saw an animal, we were happy to stop and watch it and see what it was doing. We might even wander off trail for miles because what it was doing was interesting, and we stayed with it.”

Bealer notes that many people love animals but are satisfied looking at pictures and getting outside a few times a year. “If they see something, cool; that’s exciting, and it shows up and then it goes away. Lea and I love to spend time watching what the animals do. We think seeing their little neat, quirky behaviors that are part of their life is just wonderful.”

Hitting the jackpot

But seeing and photographing wildlife can require a lot of time waiting and watching. Sometimes, the investment pays off. Last summer, Bealer and Frye were in the Montana wilderness when they spied (and photographed) a wolverine.

Such a sight is extraordinarily rare. Bealer calls it a “once-in-a-lifetime” encounter. He also calls it a “lottery-ticket kind of win.” (The wolverine photos are in Wildlife Through the Lens.)

“But our time in the field buys us a lot of lottery tickets. We still got lucky. I know people who have lived here all their lives; they’re serious outdoors people like I am. They still haven’t seen one.”

Then there are badgers, which few people see. Frye has photos of them, too. They spend a lot of time in prairie-dog colonies (because prairie dogs are a favorite food) but are less visible than prairie dogs. Bealer noted that Frye has an eagle eye for things like plumes of dirt rising from prairie-dog towns.

For instance, as they were driving, they noticed a puff of dirt flying into the air. “Most people would not have seen that or cared if they did because it was windy and there were lots of little dust plumes.”

But Bealer and Frye stopped the car. “Five plumes later a badger pops his head up. If you didn't stop when you saw that first plume, you wouldn’t have seen it.”

Bird lovers and ‘birders’

Bealer and Frye love to see birds, and Wildlife Through the Lens��includes arresting images of birds. Still, they pause when they’re asked if they are “birders.”

Bealer puts it this way: Those who call themselves birders can be focused on completing “life lists” of birds they’ve seen and on traveling great distances to find an individual species. Meanwhile, “we don’t find as much excitement in seeing 10 new birds. We find the excitement in finding one bird and then watching it do something really cool.”

Nonetheless, Frye is keen to photograph the dance-on-water moves of the western grebe. Bealer says they’ve seen the grebes dancing on water. “We just didn’t get the pictures yet.” They’re planning to return to that same place next spring to try again, so one might call them “birder-adjacent.”

Among the many other species they chronicle and display in their book are bighorn sheep. Bighorn males are known for butting heads (literally) in the rutting season. They’re less known for another contest of wills: kicking each other in the, um, privates.

In the book, Bealer notes that Frye was hesitant to publish the images. “But over time I convinced her that I couldn’t be the only adult in the world that still had the sense of humor of a 13-year-old.”

As soon as she printed the first one, he adds, “it became a hit.”

Bealer notes that he and Frye are a synergistic team.

“We can spend hours watching stuff without saying a whole lot,” he says, noting that they are both skilled at finding animals. “Lea is just hell on wheels finding nests. She can hear in a range that I can’t. And if we’re hiking and she hears baby birds, it’s like she’ll just stop and look up like there’s a nest and I haven’t heard a thing.”

When they make such a find, they’ll back away and make a note of where the nest was. They want to see the parents and watch the young grow.

Their previous book, Most Trout Don’t Read, reflects Bealer’s philosophy that fishing should be fun. ��

The book’s title “was a one-liner I used when teaching beginners about fly fishing,” he says, adding: “It doesn’t have to be complicated. You can take six fly patterns and fish a whole lifetime and catch lots of fish. You don’t need to be a master caster.”

Lifelong learning and reflection

From his career in business, Bealer saw the value of a broad education and critical thinking, especially in leadership roles:

“People coming out of school with technical degrees fill immediate needs, but for advanced roles, you need people who can think creatively and solve problems,” he says. “I became a huge fan of looking for people with a liberal arts education.”

Now retired, Scot and Lea continue to pursue their passions with enthusiasm and humility:��“We’re working 60 to 80 hours a week on our book and photography ... we’re getting about 2% of the income we used to get, but we love everything we do.”

Even the writing.

“I would not go so far as to say that I’m a writer,” Bealer says, adding: “I translate oral stories into reasonable texts that hopefully people understand.”��

Black bear

Northern pygmy owl

Mountain goats

Grizzly bear

Photos by Lea Frye

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