Your Badass Self Is Calling

I was 46 years old when I spent my first night alone in the wilderness. 

Despite a childhood filled with hiking, camping, and fishing, I somehow didn’t take my first overnight backpacking trip until age 37, with my teenage son as my hiking buddy, at his suggestion. We picked a pretty tough first trip: two weeks wandering in a remote section of the Canadian Rockies, where we saw many more grizzlies than people. Our packs were ridiculously heavy and we were stubbornly proud of that—we were so well prepared, we thought! Naturally we used barely a quarter of the so-called necessities we struggled to haul around, and nevertheless found we hadn’t packed warm enough clothing for the frigid subalpine nights. We suffered a lot, but the beauty and clarity of waking up in wild lands more than made up for it. 

It took another nine years and many hundreds of backpacking miles for me to set out on a trip alone. I don’t remember feeling nervous but driven: we had hiked a nice section of the North Country Trail together in August 2020, the pandemic having canceled some farther-flung plans out west. When the next spring came around I realized I wanted to complete the NCT through the whole state of Michigan where I live, all 1170+ miles of trail running through both peninsulas, and I didn’t care if anybody was available or interested to join me. I already knew the wilderness was my happy place, and here was a way I could spend day hikes, long weekends, and weeks of vacation time getting to know the wild lands in my own backyard. Over the course of the next two years I met that goal—but if you judged the endeavor by its first couple of hours you would have sworn I would never make it. 

This past May marked four years since the first time I found myself stringing up my hammock alone in the rain, the sun almost down, listening to the sounds of the forest with strange new alarm, suddenly afraid of things that hadn’t scared me even as a child. In the days leading up to the trip, which was only a couple hours’ drive from my Ann Arbor home, I had felt supremely confident. When I mentioned my plans for the weekend to coworkers and friends, I was surprised at some of the reactions. “By yourself?” they asked. “I could never do that.” I had laughed it off, congratulating myself for being a hardy soul—I had slept around grizzlies, after all. What could possibly scare me in the Manistee National Forest, where the black bears are more scared of us than we are of them? 

But now here I was, alone in the rain in the dark, and I could not find my camp. I was using a brand-new tarp that I had chosen because it was the color of tree bark: I wanted to be sure to blend into the landscape when needed, whether to hide the fact that I might be camping someplace not-quite-official, or to avoid attracting the attention of inebriated people with iffy intentions. I was in black bear country, so I made sure to wander away from camp a bit to cook dinner and then secure my food for the night. But in the time it took me make my meal, the light drizzle had turned to downpour, the sun kept going down,  and night crept in. As I turned around to head to the warmth of my little cocoon I realized my error. My tarp had become completely invisible. And then I realized something even worse: my compass, phone, headlamp, and my puffy down jacket, which I had decided I didn’t need under my rain jacket for dinnertime, were all at camp. The car was miles away, and even if I could figure out how to get to it, the car key was also at camp! Which I couldn’t FIND. I was pretty sure I was going to die of hypothermia. 

My first feeling was panic. I’ve since learned that when adults get lost we tend to let our panic make things worse, and I almost succumbed to that adrenaline-fueled bias toward action. I had taken a few desperate strides away from the tree where I’d tied the food bag, in a direction that “felt right,” when I realized the error I was about to make. If I didn’t know where camp was, at least I still knew where the food bag was, and I knew I hadn’t walked far from camp to that spot. But if I ran away from the food bag I would no longer have any anchor--I’d be doubly lost! 

I walked back to the food bag and thought again about how I had approached and selected the spot, remembering that I had eaten in a little clearing with a funny rock. I found the rock, and thought about how I had looked around  while I ate. I remembered deciding to hang the food bag on this particular tree because it had one side that wasn’t getting wet from the rain, and that side also faced my camp—I wanted to be able to see the bag in the morning. Of course! This meant that even though I couldn’t see it the tarp had to be somewhere this bag would still be visible. All I had to do was move away from the food bag, sweeping back and forth until I found it. So long as I never lost sight of the bag with its little tab of reflector tape I’d be okay. Ten minutes later I was snug in my down quilt, doing breathing exercises to slow my heart to a reasonable tempo so I could eventually get some sleep. I promised myself I would never, ever, ever leave camp again without a compass and a light. The next night was easier, and the night after that easier yet. 

It was also on that trip that I felt myself develop a special pride in being a woman in the outdoors, and I think the two are related. A couple of days later I was hiking a stretch of trail where I didn’t see anyone else for hours. Then I saw a woman walking toward me, wearing not-quite-suitable clothes and carrying a reusable water bottle. She was out on a day hike, but she could tell  from my gear and general level of filth that I was staying outside. At first she said the same things as those people at work, but with a twist: “I’ve always wanted to camp alone. But I could never do that.” I asked her why, and she explained that she would be too scared of what could happen, who could reach her, and how powerless she would be to do anything about it. We sat and ate lunch together and talked about it. I asked her what the scariest moment in her life had been to that point, and it was a doozy—a man she loved got violent. I told her about the bullying I’d experienced in school, and about a close call in a traffic situation. I didn’t have to point out to her that these very real and traumatic experiences were distinctly human in origin, the kinds of things that happen when we are around other people in spaces created by people. It’s not to say the wild can’t be dangerous, but playing the odds I’d rather be on a remote mountaintop with no phone signal than in a stranger’s car, or on the receiving end of some middle school mean girl behavior, or backed into a corner by someone who thinks they have nothing to lose. I encouraged her to give sleeping outside by herself a try, that there was nothing out here half as scary as what she’d already lived through. It will be scary the first time, I told her, from more recent experience than she could’ve guess. And then it will get easier. 

When I think back on that scary evening it’s hard to believe it wasn’t even four years ago. Last year, at age 49, I hiked the Continental Divide Trail after many years of dreaming about it. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life, up there with falling in love and having children. The journey surpassed my every expectation both in difficulty and in joy. I walked more miles last year than likely in the five prior years combined, often above 10,000 feet. I watched my body shape change as fat burned away and muscles expanded (and watched it all change back again after I got home—bodies are very good at meeting the moment). I noticed how I got less winded with every mountain I climbed, and how I got better each day at moving my body efficiently and taking care of myself. I thought of food as fuel instead of as a reward I had to earn or a guilty pleasure I should regret. I was burning so many calories every day there was no longer any such thing as “too much,” and my entire perspective on eating shifted as a result. Having set aside so many of life’s silly little expectations in order to be out there, I learned surprising things about what I like, what I need, and what I can do without. Not since I was a little kid had I felt so connected to the power of my muscles and the rhythm of my step, nor such an obvious and unshakeable connection between my mind and body. I felt that my body was truly my own in a way that hadn’t felt possible since before puberty, when I had come to believe that how other people saw me was more important than how I felt. I had spent decades trying to look fit, attractive, and appealing without ever realizing I had decided to prioritize the gazes of others—I was merely trying to be a good enough woman. I’m still unpacking the lessons of that experience and finding out who I am on the other side—but I can tell you that I am damn sure I am good enough to be here, and so are you. I walked myself into a better relationship with myself, and so can you. 

Every time I go out into wilderness I learn something new—how crows call to each other at dusk, how to tell where the river is safest for crossing, how to navigate across steep snow, how to keep a stick of butter from melting in your pack, how to drain your blisters with needle and thread, how to call an elk. Most of all, I learn over and over again how to be patient, to take things one minute and step at a time, and to never quit on a bad day—lessons that many of us who were raised as girls had already been forced to master in other realms of our lives. Most of us are braver and stronger than we think, and it’s a lot easier to see it clearly when we’re away from civilization with its many layers of motives and delusions. When I go for a long walk, I walk beyond gender and even species. I stop thinking about myself as female or even as a person. The longer I’m out there, the more I identify myself first and foremost as a mammal, and a pretty ferocious one at that—you had better not get between me and a thimbleberry bush. 

When I see a woman walking by herself in the wild, whether I think she’s a day hiker on her first jaunt or trying to set a Fastest Known Time on a killer climb, I stop and say hello. 

Because you never know who needs to hear it from another woman: 

You are a badass. You belong. Keep going. 

 

Story by Liz Seger. For more of her writing, follow her on Substack.