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Anticipation

In April of 2016 I decided I was going to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from Canada to Mexico. The first person I told about this plan was my boyfriend, Keith. We were in our apartment, the two rooms with the yellow walls and the apple tree in the lawn. I let him know that in 2018 I’d be leaving Los Angeles, my job, and our home together. That I’d be chasing this dream that had reached up and grabbed me; a dream I couldn’t shake loose. I didn’t ask him for permission, nor did I exactly invite him to come along with me, I simply stated my intentions and hoped for the best. It was a risk. It continues to be a risk. And I was comfortable in the idea that I could very likely be tackling this adventure alone. Later, to my surprise and delight, Keith told me he wanted to come along on my wild dream, that this was something he wanted us to do together. From that moment on it was our dream.  We had an audacious goal that felt deeply special, like the whole PCT was just for us. Our lives in Los Angeles now operated against a ticking clock – one that would take nearly two years to wind down.

Humans, it would seem, are obsessed with big improbable dreams, the Olympics are certainly proof of that. But what I never reconciled about big dreams, is that they operate on long timelines, years where things could go wrong, months and days where plans can change and fantasies can fall apart. These long timelines are ripe with potential pitfalls, but also quiet moments where one’s mind drifts off to what could be. What it would feel like to stand at the start of an epic adventure, what the daily miscellanea will feel like, and the imagined euphoria of completion. It’s like being a kid before Christmas. Yet, with the perspective of age I’ve come to realize that the anticipation might just be the best part, and it also might be the most damaging part too. Because life attempts to teach us that what we want and what we get are often different, what we hope will be true can mar the experience of what is. Anticipation can loom so large and magnificent that the real experience could never live up to the effortlessly beautiful film reel that plays in our minds. Even the knowledge of inevitable pain and challenge is muted until it is nothing more than a dull ache echoing from a far away place.

The time for us to depart on our hike is rapidly approaching. The little apartment with the yellow walls has been stripped of everything that once made it ours and the anticipation of what is to come fills my waking mind. I’ve stopped living in the present and started living in a distant fictional reality where the world is at once more wonderful and extreme and dangerous. A world, where unbidden to reality, my rapidly spiraling imagination can picture a thousand outcomes replete with detailed fictional characters. Day dreams where I can swap out details and scenarios, replay them until they’re right or wrong or poignant enough to feel almost real. In some, I’m witty and kind, the best version of myself, and thru hiking is an effortless dream scape. In some I’m argumentative and petty or worse, I balk and retreat where I would rather I stand up for what I believe, and I’m ashamed and mad at this future fictional self. In the present however, I know that I am all of these things, which is what makes these anticipatory day dreams so captivating, they’re all based on some granule of truth. Just because something feels real, doesn’t make it real, or even possible, and I fear that my daydreams will cloud my reality to the point where the only outcome is disappointment.

The PCT is one thing – a finite trail,  defined by milage and markers, but it is also a million things – daily struggles and pain and joy and apathy and who knows what else. I’m worried that I’ll meet people on the trail who are as toxic and problematic as they appear on the PCT Facebook page, where casual derision and sexism are par for the course. I’m afraid that when I meet these people I’ll let their behavior wash past me, and I will disengage, using my privilege to retreat to a safe space. At the same time I’m worried that I will stand by my convictions and as a result I will be friendless all the way to Canada, ostracized and mocked and threatened.

I’m also afraid, so afraid, that some unforeseen accident will keep me from finishing the trail. That two years of planning and dreaming and hoping will all be for nothing. I’m afraid that my very body which has carried me through 29 years of not terribly kind treatment will simply fail to tote my brain all the way to Canada. Or perhaps that my tendons will all swell and freeze into place and I will have to admit that hiking, this thing that feels like part of me, is not meant for me. That I won’t be strong or adaptable enough to persevere and that I’ll have to live with the knowledge of that. I’m worried that Keith will hate the trail and I’ll have to carry on alone, or worse, that we’ll fall away from each other and the four years we’ve spent building a life together will cease to matter. That I’ll finish the trail alone, in a new city without a job or an apartment or friends.  

In writing this, I’m attempting to concur another fear – around the very real possibility of public failure. Of stating my plans for this grand adventure, writing about my hike on this blog and then falling short, the embarrassment of having to explain that I failed. There are perfectionist tendencies which roil inside me, and the few things in my life that I’m very proud of are those which were nearly impossible upon the outset. With a finishing rate of around 30%, the PCT certainly falls into the category of things I’m statistically likely to fail at, and while that is scary, it is also what draws me to this challenge.

Fear, however, is not my only companion on my approach to the PCT, though at times it is certainly the loudest. There is an ache that resonates inside me, that calls me towards the mountains, and I yearn for the opportunity to explore that, to deepen my connection to old places I love and new places I’ve yet to be acquainted with. I’m looking forward to the muscle pain of effort, the euphoria of endorphins rushing between my ears. I want to meet wonderful people and share this experience with them. I want to take on the world with this man who feels like home, and I want us to grow together and become better both individually and apart. The anticipation of cold mornings, boring snacks, suffocating laughter, and  tear inducing frustration, I’ve anticipated it all, I want it all. But I also know, that what I can imagine is not all there is.

How can you possibly anticipate a future about which you know almost nothing? So much of the map, both literal and emotional, is blank. There are vast stretches of this trail which are totally foreign to me, there are people I have never imagined meeting, and yet I will. Experiences I won’t expect to have, and yet I will. There is fear in the unknown, but also the opportunity for discovery, and when I try and think of all the eventualities that lay beyond the horizon I’m awed at the immensity of it. I cannot help but laugh at my audacity, for thinking I could plan out this trip, anticipate everything that could be. The honest truth is that I have about as much knowledge of the next nine months of my life as I do of 1920’s refrigerator maintenance.

Amongst all the things I have tried to anticipate, there is the one thing I’ve tried to push completely from my mind: what would my future look like if everything stayed the same. There is fear in the unknown, yes, but for me there is a much greater fear of stagnation and dull uniformity. What if in my quest for challenge and newness I find nothing so much as the same person I am now? What if nothing changes and I’m spat out on the far side of the Canadian border as lost and wondering and confused as I am now? What if the PCT isn’t a life changing experience, but just another experience in a life? Is it possible to step off the map, only to find yourself on another map, walking down another road and wondering how you got there?

In planning to depart for the PCT I’ve tried, almost certainly in vain, to anticipate what is to come. As though by sheer volume of thought I could safeguard myself against future pain and disappointment. But the time has come to let go of all those thoughts and accept that I cannot know what is coming, and that I’m allowed to be scared. I’m allowed to be scared of change, and newness, and doing hard things, but I’m not allowed to not try. In electing to leave behind comfort and stability for something grand and unknowable, I’m accepting that fear is part of the process. But I want to believe that I’m the type of person who can do hard things, and the only way to prove that to myself is to do the hard things, and hopefully, to grow.

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The Whitest Thing I’ve Ever Done: Privilege and PCT Prep

For the last three months my life has been consumed with getting myself ready to hike the PCT. When I think about this adventure this constant nagging exhilaration floods the back of my brain. Lately that nag has crescendoed into a crashing wave that breaks throughout the day sending me reeling into daydreams of mountain trails and aching muscles. This hike combined with our intended move comport the majority of the conversations between Keith and myself. It’s ridiculous, it’s unflattering, it’s the exact kind of obsession that affluent white people get when they become bored and disenfranchised with their urban lives. I know it’s true. And I know it’s true for more than just us.

Expensive gear is expensive.

Scroll through the PCT Class of 2018 Facebook page and you’ll see 4,500 predominantly white, male, middle class folks talking about their increasing anxieties around this very privileged thing we’re all about to do. People buying and rebuying gear in an effort to shave pack weight – which is the thread that binds all talk about gear. Folks asking complete strangers with no credentials about highly personal decisions. There is aggressive fear mongering about everything from bears to snow to snakes to bug spray, it is endless and overwhelmingly uninformed. All of this is doused in the highly competitive culture of thru hiking. The problem that arises when you surround yourself in this very small bubble of outdoors culture, is that this bizarre behavior and subject matter takes on a patina of normalcy.

What is missing from these conversations is the recognition that hiking the PCT requires substantial financial, social, and lifestyle privileges that not everyone in our culture is afforded. More worryingly, is the thru hiking community’s rabid denial that privilege or access to resources has anything to do with attempting a successful thru hike.

An example.

A few weeks ago Keith and I had an argument, the kind which stems from attempting to plan a months long adventure. It was nearing 9pm and I had just finished sorting 60 days worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners into our 11 resupply boxes. The boxes were labeled, neatly organized, and waiting by the door to be shipped out. Just as I finished the last box Keith came home, noticed the boxes, and then we had an argument about how the boxes themselves were too big. He felt that I’d bought the wrong boxes. I told him they were the exact size he told me to buy, and would the phrase “thank you for working on this for four hours” possibly come out of his mouth? Of course, the obvious solution was to simply buy smaller boxes for our food and use the big boxes for moving. We ultimately came to this solution, but not before a good 20 minutes of huffy silence and apologies – it would seem that while thru hike planning is exciting, it can also turn both you and your partner into jerks.

Because PCT prep has become our normal, it took me some time to realize how much privilege this little spat reveals. This is exemplified by the fact that I have access to money to not only buy months worth of food ahead of time, but also to mail it to myself. Something I could never have done if I was living paycheck to paycheck. I have a family and friends who are willing, even eager, to spend their time to mail these boxes to me, because they have access to things like flex hours, PTO, and cars to tote boxes around in.

This brings us to the question: why do I need resupply boxes anyway? Because I was raised, and have always lived in suburban areas with easy access to nice grocery stores filled with fruits and veggies. Because I don’t even consider it an option to shop for my food the way that so many people in this country shop – out of mini marts and gas stations. Because even while backpacking I’m accustomed to a certain level of comfort, of privilege.

Of course, food is not the only cost associated with undertaking a thru hike. Drop into any backpacking forum, and the most prevalent discussion will be gear. Not cheap gear, mind you. No, to be a thru hiker you need the lightest, often most expensive gear. Because if you don’t have the lightest gear, then you won’t have a low enough base weight, and that of course means you’ll fail at your hike. As though there is some uniform for thru hiking that will ensure success.

And while there may not be a literal uniform you need to buy before you can hike the PCT, there is a shocking uniformity among those who undertake it.

Do me a favor and picture an outdoorsy person in your minds eye. Is that person a white able bodied man with a beard and a thin body? Does that person look a little or a lot like the Brawny paper towel cartoon with a backpack? There is a reason for this, and it’s directly related to who has been held up as the standard of the outdoors adventurer.

The history of white men exploring  the world exploded in popularity around the turn of the 20th century when men like Ernest Shackleton and Roald Amundsen captured the world’s imagination by plundering into the furthest reaches of the globe. That standard dates back even further to when white Europeans claimed discovery of the Americas, as though there weren’t already people living here. We have told this story so many times that even in our minds the stereotype persists. Men are told that they are the purveyors of adventure, the owners of wild spaces. That is their privilege. The privilege to not only go where you want, and do what you want, but to be told by society at large that you are welcome and wanted there.

That is what privilege is: it is the inadvertent things in your life, things you did nothing to gain, that benefit you in a way that others are not benefited.

Privilege directly impacts not only the experience one will have when attempting a thru hike, but also the likelihood that you will even consider thru hiking as something that you can participate in.

Perhaps, another example. And because I know several of the men folk in my life will be reading this article with their defensive hackles raised, I want to address the privileges that are helping me get to the start of the PCT.

First, I was born to a middle class family living near abundant open spaces, as a result, my parents had the resources and free time to introduce me to the outdoors at a young age. Proximity to open spaces meant I had easy access all my life, and being outdoors was something that was normalized in the culture I grew up in. Because I come from a middle class family, I attended good schools all my life, I went to college, and ultimately I landed in a well paying job that affords me the ability to save enough money for a trip like this. As a white middle class woman, it is socially acceptable for me to up and quit my job for an extended walking vacation – nobody is going to think I’m a homeless vagrant. Additionally, falling within the parameters of conventional attractiveness means that people are kind to me while hitchhiking, I am not perceived as a threat, and they let my dirtiness and smelliness slide in a way that we do not offer other folks. I could go on, but I’ll hope that this abbreviated list serves to prove my point.

Planning to hike the PCT requires substantial capital in the forms of gear purchases, food, and free time. It requires access to nature and trails for training. It requires the social status to leave the working world behind for a time and literally escape social norms by fleeing into the woods. While I believe nature is for everyone, we currently do not live in a society that truly operates that way. Sadly, this is going to be one of those frustrating articles that ends in a gaping question mark, not a neatly concluded list of actionable steps. Tackling the issues of inclusivity and diversity in the outdoors is one of those wicked problems that will take time to solve, and will require those of us with access and privilege to change our behavior in a way that affords those same privileges to everyone.

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When Your Career is on Life Support, Sometimes it’s Best to Pull the Plug

“What about your career?” They said.

They have been my bosses, my friends, my relatives, and some complete strangers who just feel the need to voice their opinions. They have been confused that a young woman who just jumped from a big advertising agency, to an even bigger marketing company could simply be pulling the plug on what outwardly appears to be a smooth career trajectory from elite college graduate to a career headed towards more money, fancy job titles, and the cushy world or corporate credit cards and personal assistants.

But the truth is far less glamorous, and perhaps, a little more relatable. The truth is that my career has been a walking corpse for the last year and a half. The truth is that I have lied to the faces of many a person, told them my decision to leave my ad job – a job that I actually loved and was good at – was my own choice. I told them that my decision to take a job at a massive corporate marketing company was for the money, and the relaxed hours. And I’ve told  those same people that I was moving my career in a new direction, that it was done intentionally. But that is not the truth. Here is what really happened:

In early 2016 I was given the opportunity to start working as an art director at the advertising agency where I had worked as a video editor for three years. I was told that this would be a trial assignment, and that if I did well I’d be given a job as an art director. I worked so hard. I remember waking up at 4am to put in a few hours work before going into the office where I’d sometimes work until 10 at night. I held down my new duties and retained my old job, holding the edges of my career together with sheer force of will. For close to six months I worked two jobs within the same company. But it worked! The clients loved the work, they wanted to buy and produce some of our best ideas. I was thrilled! I bought champagne, I told my boyfriend that I’d done it, and that just like everybody told me, I saw that working hard gets you ahead.

But then before we could move into production, our client had a massive internal shake up. People lost their jobs, the project folded, and I was back at square one. I was disappointed, but grateful to still have a job, no complaining from me. So I started again, and my agency was all too eager to allow me to work myself into the ground. After all, it’s not like they were paying me more money. And while it would be easy to paint myself as the victim here, the reality is that I knew I should have left in the summer of 2016. But I loved the people I worked with, I liked the work I was doing, and I was being told that if I just hung in there I’d get the career I was so desperate to have. I was young, and hungry, and blind.

For the next 10 months I worked hours and hours of overtime, what would amount to two full months of OT hours in the span of a year. Two jobs, one company. I tried to launch new initiatives within the company, I tried and succeeded in impressing the most senior members of my agency. And then I got in my car and cried on the drive home a lot of nights. I took on freelance work to boost my flagging salary, I was passed over for promotions and raises because I wasn’t fully in anyone’s department and nobody took responsibility for me. I was a young woman in man’s world and I didn’t know how to speak up for myself, yet.

And finally, finally, after nearly a year and a half I saw the writing on the wall and I told them they either needed to offer me an art director position, or else I’d be stepping back into my editor role. Our talent manager tried to feed me a line about budget and getting the money for my salary but I wasn’t having it. It took me nearly two years to stand up for myself, but I finally did and it felt awesome! I went back to working under my old boss, I tried to launch a new production arm, I tried for the zillionth time to prove my worth, I continued to impress the leadership of my company, and I received the best review of my career. All of which I’m still very proud of. I was planning on leaving for the PCT in 2018, and I resolved to grit it out until then, be helpful, be the best worker bee I could be.

And then they laid me off.

I thought I was going into a meeting to negotiate a raise and instead they canned me and told me they hired my job out from under me to a 20-something dude from Dallas – talk about reading the room wrong!

And I never told anybody but my closest of close friends and family because all I could see was my personal failings. I was so humiliated. Laid off at 29. Who get’s laid off at 29? Probably lots of people, but nobody talks about it – I didn’t want to talk about it – because we’re so career oriented that I couldn’t bring myself to tell everybody how I’d failed.

When this new job offered me a decent salary, a close location, and a good title, I jumped at it, even though I knew that it wasn’t a good fit. My highest priority was getting to the start of the PCT in 2018 and getting out of LA. What I told everybody was a career leap was really more like grabbing a tree branch to keep yourself from falling off a cliff. I know that I’m lucky to have landed on my feet, that many people who lose their jobs have a far more precarious financial situation than I, and I am grateful that things turned out so well for me. Truly.

So, what about my career? Won’t hiking the PCT leave a big gap in my resume? What will employers think about a woman who gets a new job, works there for six months and then up and quits to romp through the woods for half a year?

Frankly, I don’t care.

I spent the last three years chasing the approval of those who told me my career should be my everything, and I have nothing to show for it.

Beyond giving corporate life the big middle finger in 2018, I’m also resolving to be more open and honest about it. Because if everybody was just a little more honest about work and life and the lie that work/life balance is a thing, then maybe we wouldn’t feel so hurt and scared when our careers fall apart. At least we’d know we’re not alone. Maybe you’re 23 and getting a degree you hate to appease your parents, maybe you’re 40 and you’ve just been canned from your dream job – the job you built your identity around- maybe you’re 60 and you’ve just been let go and woken up to the rude reality that your company never cared about you as a person. Whatever your reality, I bet you’re not alone.

Perhaps hiking the PCT will be the single worst thing I could do for my career, but somehow I don’t think that’s the case. Maybe placing our worth and identity at the center of what we do 9 to 5 is the worst thing we can do for ourselves. So I’m electing to try something new. I’m done believing that if I just put enough hard work tokens into the career machine that a shiny badge a validation and corporate success will pop out. I want to get out of a city where the first and most important question is: where do you work? And I’m ready to give this irreverent dirtbag life a try.

What’s the worst that can happen, they fire me?

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Don’t Call it Spontaneous: The Financial Reality of Hiking the PCT

My announcement of my plan to thru hike the PCT with Keith has kicked off a veritable whirlwind of activity. We’ve started to pack away our apartment, we’re preparing to leave our jobs, anxiety/excitement has been on the rise, and I’ve been hearing one thing over and over again: “What? you’re leaving?! This is so sudden, so spontaneous!”

To which there is only one honest reply: No it isn’t.

I decided to hike the PCT in April of 2016. Which means, by the time I get on the trail on March 27th, it will have been nearly two years since I made the choice to attempt this trail. The reality is, this only feels spontaneous to the people I’m telling about it now, and there are a handful of very good reasons for that. The first being that employers really don’t want a worker bee who is going to up and leave in a few months/years. As they say in the advertising world: it’s bad ROI. The second reason, is that a million things could have happened between deciding I wanted to hike the PCT and actually leaving on the trip. A million tiny little things that could have derailed this entire dream. I don’t want to be the kind of person who says she’s going to do something and then bails, so I decided that I’d only tell a select few people in my life about my plans until they were all but certain. And frankly, when you talk about thru hiking, almost nothing is certain.

The third and biggest reason for a two year gap between deciding to hike the PCT and actually doing it: money. Yes, thru hiking is cheaper than living in a big city like Los Angeles, but that doesn’t mean it’s cheap, and it doesn’t mean it’s free. The financial reality of undertaking a trip like the PCT is something that is rarely discussed in the hiking community, and as a result planning a trip like this can seem incomprehensible. However, I think it’s important to be more honest about where our money goes and what we spend it on, and this post is a stab at doing just that. Below you can see how I’ve saved for and budgeted for this trip, and since this post has the likelihood of getting a little long, I’ve broken it down by topic.

Estimating Cost:
Based on my calculations I needed to save a minimum of $10,000 in order to hike the PCT.  If I could get closer to $15,000 that would give me some much appreciated wiggle room for after our hike, since we’ll be relocating to Seattle, WA and I will be jobless upon arriving.

If you do a cursory search for what it costs to do a thru hike you’ll find that not many people are talking about this in concrete dollar amounts, but those who are estimate around $5,000  for their entire hike, including things like food, gear replacements, getting a hotel room in town, and rides to and from the trail. Then how did I settle on $10,000 for my hike?

Student loans baby!

At the writing of this post, I have close to $25,000* in student debt (down from nearly $47,000 when I graduated college). Those loans need to be paid come rain, shine, unemployment, thru hikes, and in some cases even death. When I started saving, I paid close to $650 each month in student loans, now I pay closer to $450 since I’ve been able to pay a few loans off. Furthermore, I assumed I wouldn’t get a job right away upon finishing the trail, so I threw in a couple more months of payments, rounded up for sanity and ended up at another $5,000 that I needed to save just so I could continue to pay back my loans while on the trail.

NOTE: I’m sure some of you are thinking, with $15,000 in savings you could pay off a lot of that debt! And you’re not wrong. But I could also be hit by a car tomorrow and killed, so I’d rather pursue this dream now. Also, I didn’t ask for your opinion or approval, so kindly keep it to yourself.

The Savings:
Time for honesty! Saving money is not sexy, it’s not cool, and it’s not fun.

To save for this hike I stopped buying new clothes for close to two years, I didn’t go on vacations, I packed my lunch every single day for months and months, I set budgets for myself for every single thing in my life and tried my best to stick to them. I said no to fun things like concerts, weekends away, and little treats. It was stressful, and lame and boring at times, but that’s the truth of it.

In addition to being more frugal with my spending, I also started freelance writing where I made $100-$150 an article. For the last nine months I’ve been constantly pitching and writing articles – a task that often felt like I had two or more jobs at any given time. Beyond writing, I took any and all overtime work I could get, I got a new day job with a higher salary, even though I didn’t love the work, and I said yes to any paid gig that came my way. Because I am good at video creation and editing, and built a solid reputation during my time in advertising, I was able to snag some lucrative projects from old contacts which served as big capital windfalls (around $2500) that helped me reach my $15,000 savings goal. Sometimes this meant that I was exhausted, working multiple jobs, and sleeping very little. Again, it’s not sexy or fun, but it’s also true, and it’s what it took for me to pursue this dream.

Pre-Trail Costs – Gear:
Lucky for me, both Keith and I are avid backpackers. This means that when I set out to hike the PCT I already had a lot of the gear I needed, much of which we used on our JMT hike in 2017. So this was a cost, but not one that came in a big lump sum. Instead it was handfuls of little to moderate costs strung out over the last two years*.

An added bonus, is that Keith is an incredibly generous and talented human being and he made many of the items that we’ll need on the trail. He designed and made me my own sleeping quilt and gifted it to me for my birthday, as well as making gaiters and a pack covers which are nicer and cheaper than ones I would have bought. Keith is also the most frugal human I’ve ever met, which means he knows how to score a deal! When we settled on buying Mountain Hardware Ghost Whisperer Jackets (MSRP $350) we waited for a sale, and then bought our jackets in kinda weird colors – allowing us to get the jackets for less than half price. And since we’re doing this hike together, we can split the costs of things like our tent and stove (this also saves pack weight). I know I wouldn’t be starting the trail half as well prepared if it weren’t for Keith, so he deserves a huge amount of credit for all his help.

*NOTE: I did not include gear purchases in my savings calculations for this hike. Another note, if you’re planning your own thru hike, or simply want to get into backpacking in any capacity, don’t be an idiot and buy this stuff off the shelf at REI. Shop around and use the dozens of discount gear sites like MooseJaw, Backcountry, Sunny Sports,  Steep and Cheap, Sierra Trading Post, and even Amazon. Paying MSRP is for fools.

Below is what you could expect to spend on your set up for the PCT (around $2,000). Some people drop serious cash to get the lightest gear, other people prioritize savings instead of pack weight, it’s up to you. But I prioritized pack weight and comfort over money, and then looked for deals to cut costs.

Backpack: $250-$350
Tent: $200-$600
Sleeping Pad: $150-$200 (but you could go as low as $40)
Sleeping Bag/Quilt: $300-$800
Hiking Outfit (daily wear): $150
Shoes: $80-$120/pair*
Trekking Poles: $100
Thermals top and bottom: $100
Misc. Other Clothes: $60-$100
Rain Jacket: $150-$200
Down Jacket: $120-$360
Water Filter: $40
Hat: $10-$40
Sunglasses: $20-$150
Pack Cover, Gaiters, stuff sacks, sleeping pillow, other random crap: $200

NOTE: Shoes, socks, and sometimes clothes will have to be replaced during your hike, so take those costs and multiply them by 4 or 5.

Pre-Trail Costs – Food:
Part of hiking the PCT is mailing yourself resupply boxes – these are boxes of food and gear, which one typically sends themselves in areas that are more remote and don’t have a proper grocery store. These boxes probably cost $400 per person for food, buying the boxes, and the shipping costs of mailing them first to my parents and then buying postage for my parents to mail them back to us. Backpackers are a weird lot, and resupply boxes epitomize that.

While $400 is a lot to spend on food that I won’t even eat for five or more months it works out to just about $7/day. We cut costs here by making our own freeze-dried and dehydrated meals instead of buying a brand name like Mountain House or Backpaker Pantry which can run $9 for one meal. Also, instead of buying snacks at the store, we purchased things like candy bars in bulk online where you get a discount for buying 48 candy bars at once.

As someone who cannot eat gluten without *ahem* unpleasant side effects, my food costs will likely total more than Keith’s since gluten free food is much more expensive than standard food. Furthermore, I’ll be supplementing my boxes on-trail with potato chips (aka backpacker super food) which are easy to find almost anywhere, but were too bulky to mail ahead.

Costs I’m Avoiding:
I’m doing my best to strip away any costs that I don’t need to pay for on the trail. We’re giving up our apartment, which also means no utilities or wifi bills. I’ll be parking my car off the street in a private lot, which will cost me $100 each month, but will save me the need to register my car or pay for car insurance, in addition to cutting down on gas money, oil changes and maintenance. My mom is generously paying for my phone bill (she’s the best!). And we’ve also elected to sell the majority of our furniture and possessions (aka return them to the great Craigslist circle of life) instead of storing them while we’re on the trail. The $100/mo I’m paying to store my car will also cover storing the trailer with all our stuff inside.

Health Insurance:
This is a big, scary topic, and one that I wasn’t fully prepared for. With the start of the Trump administration, and the removal of the personal mandate from the ACA, everything around health insurance shifted in 2018. And while I’m pretty sure the elimination of the personal mandate will ultimately lead to the destruction of the ACA as we know it – a system that relies on the payments of young, healthy folks, to subsidize the higher costs of older folks and those with chronic illnesses – it was a massive relief for me personally. I feel really conflicted about even saying that, but the truth is, I could not afford any of the options available to me under the ACA when I checked back in 2017. I was looking at around $380 a month in premiums through The Marketplace. Most of the plans would have failed to cover me if I was more than 100 miles from home, or needed to seek healthcare outside of my primary provider. In short, they were nearly useless given my situation, and would have meant incurring massive payments for coverage if I needed healthcare on the trail, in addition to the already sky high premiums.

Ultimately, I am electing to purchase health insurance through the ACA/Covered California when the plans shifted in 2018. What I have purchased would be considered ‘major medical’ or ‘catastrophic medical coverage’ which means that while my monthly premium is low, my deductibles are very high. This is the type of insurance that only serves to safe guard you should you become seriously injured or ill and need elaborate medical care. Up until 2018 I’m pretty sure these type of plans didn’t even qualify as fully insured under the ACA individual mandate. Furthermore, I only qualify for this plan because I am under 30, rarely use medical services of any kind, and am willing to pay out of pocket for any small to medium medical costs. In short, I will pay $155/mo for a PPO plan that gives me the right to not be bankrupted should I need significant medical care. My deductible will be $6500 in network, and $25,000 out of network, and the coverage I will receive is basically all out of pocket until I hit those deductibles. Like I said, this isn’t a great insurance plan, but because I am young, healthy, and very rarely go to the doctor it’s an option that is open to me. It’s frankly a bit of a  risk, but much less so than forgoing insurance entirely.

On top of major medical insurance, I’d suggest every person traveling in the outdoors buy the American Alpine Club membership. Spend $80 for a full year of insurance and you’ll get coverage for things like trailhead rescue coverage, and domestic rescue coverage in the backcountry for any land-based activity. It’s the sort of coverage that no standard insurance company offers, but one that backcountry travelers can really benefit from should you need an evacuation – helicopter rides are really expensive.

One of the other options I explored was to get travelers insurance through a company such as World Nomads. Companies like this one offer insurance for those who are traveling internationally or domestically, and participating in activities that typical insurance companies will not cover. They will also do things that no standard insurance company will cover, such as emergency medical evacuation from a remote area. These plans are only intended to be ‘secondary insurance’ and not stand in for being insured in another way. The main problem with such insurance plans is that they work on a reimbursement system, which can take six months to a year to fully resolve. This means that you need to pay all of your medical bills up front, and then submit a claim for the insurance company to pay you back. While this arrangement certainly isn’t idea, I figured that I could always get an 12 month 0 APR credit card to put the balance on until the company could pay me back. I recognize upon writing that how bananas our health care system is.

The other insurance option for a thru hiker is to buy insurance individually through a standard company. However, unless you can shell out big money, then you’re basically left with a pretty garbage plan and praying you don’t get injured.

_____

The above more or less details where my money will be going on the trail, and what I did to accumulate it before the trail. Leave a comment below if you have any questions on gear, money, or the trail, and I’ll do my best to answer them before I leave.

 

 

 

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Kara and Keith Hike the PCT – One Month Out

On March 27, 2018 Keith and I will start hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, commonly known as the PCT. Getting to the trailhead is the culmination of a dream nearly two years in the making, a dream that has involved substantial frugality, planning, organization, packing all our possessions away, and leaving our lives in Los Angeles. Upon completion of the trail Keith and I plan to relocate to Seattle.

There, now that the basics are out of the way, we can delve a little further into the plan. As I mentioned, the PCT is a really complex undertaking, and something that I’m guessing most folks aren’t super familiar with. I’ve constructed this post as an imagined conversation between myself and y’all and I’ll try and answer the most common questions people have. Note: I totally co-opted this idea from Vanessa’s blog, which you should 100% be reading because she is great.

What is the PCT anyway?
The PCT is a hiking trail that runs 2,650 miles along the height of the country from the Mexican to Canadian border, and can be hiked either northbound (NoBo) or southbound (SoBo). Keith and I are heading north, which is by far the most common direction. The trail follows the pacific crest, which is a natural feature, something like a spine made of mountains and ridges that run north to south through California, Oregon, and Washington.

If you’d like to know even more about the trail, I’ll direct you to PCTA.org, which is the nonprofit organization that maintains the trail, issues permits, and is the repository of knowledge about planning for the trail.

Rad, how long will that take?
A successful thru hike, defined as hiking from one end of the trail to the other with minimal skipped mileage, takes most folks 5-6 months to complete. This is somewhat of a inaccurate description, since the majority of people setting out to hike the PCT do not, in fact, finish the trail in one season (or at all). Most estimates put the finishing rate at around 30%.

Most NoBo hikers start between late March and early May, and look to complete the trail before late September – for SoBo hikers the timeline is closer to mid June to early November.

The reason for this timeline is due to the numerous environments that the PCT runs through. Going north from Mexico hikers must traverse desert, high alpine forest, the Sierra Nevada range, the ridges of northern California, the arid semi-desert of southern Oregon, the lush rain forest of northern Oregon and Washington before finally ending in the North Cascades and the Canadian border. If you start too late you’ll bake in the California desert, and may not finish before the snow starts in Washington. If you start too early you won’t be able to safely enter the Sierras due to snow.

What do you need to go backpacking?
When backpacking one takes everything they need to survive with them in a pack on their back, hence – backpacking. Between us we’ll carry a tent, sleeping bags, stove and fuel for cooking, clothes for hiking in, sleeping in, and extra layers for when it’s cold, first aid kit and miscellaneous electronics like headlamps and battery packs for recharging items, and some other stuff like mosquito head nets that I’m probably forgetting to mention here. 

Mmmm, so do you stay in hotels along the way or….?
That’s a great question! The answer is typically, no, though on some trails like the Camino del Santiago one can stay in hotels or hostels the majority of the time. However, since the PCT is pretty remote most nights we’ll be sleeping in our tent near the trail. Hotel stays will be reserved for when we’re in town resupplying.

What am resupplying?
Gosh, so many good questions imaginary person that I’m having this conversation with! A resupply stop is when a hiker heads into town to get more food and to rest. Since it would be impossible (and way heavy) to carry all of the food you need for a full thru hike, most hikers will head into towns near the trail every four to 10 days to stock up.

There are two kinds of resupplies, one where you head into town and buy your food at a regular grocery store (just like regular people), and one where you mail yourself a box of food ahead of time and pick it up at a post office or general store that holds boxes for hikers. The second method is good for areas with either no store, or one with very limited options like a gas station. Pre-mailed boxes will only make up about 35% of our planned resupplies because frankly they’re kind of a pain to put together and then find someone who will mail them to you, and then who knows what you’re going to still like eating in one to five months time. Some people elect to do all their resuppling from boxes, but they are typically folks with dietary restrictions.

What does a typical day on the trail look like?
In short: walking up and down mountains while snacking.

In long: We’ll wake relatively early (6-7am), eat breakfast and break down camp before getting on the trail. The majority of the day will be spent walking down the trail, occasionally stopping to rest and eat snacks and refill our water bottles. Towards sunset we’ll begin looking for a campsite where upon we’ll set up our tent, make and eat dinner, fart repeatedly, and then pass out into our sleeping bags before 9pm because hiking is hard work and sleep is awesome.

What happens after the trail?
Ah, you’ve stumbled upon what it perhaps the scariest aspect of thru hiking, clever you. As I mentioned previously, Keith and I will be relocating to Seattle, WA for at least the next few years. Keith has been offered a position at SpaceX’s Seattle branch because he is smart and talented and they thought (correctly) that he was an employee worth holding on to.

I on the other hand will probably travel for a bit (Thailand, anyone?), because I have very little interest in jumping back into the corporate world and enough savings to allow me to dick around for some time. Honestly, I don’t have any concrete plans for after the PCT. No job lined up, no apartment, no real concept as to what I actually want to do with my career. I’m trying not to think about it too much because I’m an adult and that’s how adults handle looming life changes.

One month to go, what are you doing to prepare?
At this point we’re pretty well set with our preparation. Our gear has been purchased and assembled, Keith has a job lined up and next week I’ll be handing in my notice at my job, our resupply boxes are packed and ready to ship to my parents, and our landlord has been told that we’re leaving. There are dozens of small things that still need to be handled such as finding an insurance plan I can actually afford, registering my car as non-operational, and last minute dentist appointments just to name the few that I can remember at the moment.

The remainder of our prep will be to get our apartment packed into the trailer we’ve purchased to haul our junk to Seattle, and doing training hikes on weekends. I’ve also been trying to visit with friends more and do any of the last things I’d like to see/do in Los Angeles before we leave. In some ways it’s like any move, and in some ways it’s like running headlong into a tidal wave of apprehension and barely concealed glee at leaving my city life behind. Spending time in nature is something that is central to who I am as a person, and the plan to spend months simply walking and being outside is one that is inexpressibly appealing to me.

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Men Lighting Fires in the Desert: The SpaceX Christmas Tree Burn

A great leaping tongue of fire illuminates the desert hills of Jawbone Canyon, eliciting cheers and gasps from the dispersed crowd. The flame lashes violently at the dark sky before fading, as quickly as it came. Christmas trees after all, are mostly kindling; a powerfully bright flash which dwindles to near nothing. And burning Christmas trees, hundreds of them, is why these folks gather in the desert every winter. It’s the annual SpaceX Christmas Tree Burn. And recent years has seen it grow to near cult status.

From the outsider’s perspective this ritual is endearingly bizarre. Dozens of affluent young men gathering the discarded remnants of the most capitalist celebration in American society: Christmas. Then dragging these trees, like worker ants into the Mojave desert; a desert which by name alone conjures images of desolation and solitude. But this event is anything but lonely, despite its seclusion.

Both curious onlookers, and the wealthy Burning Man community have become aware of the SpaceX Christmas tree burn in recent years and begun to infiltrate its ranks. As with any sacred practice, the intrusion of outsiders is changing this yearly celebration. In the early hours of the revelry, while onlookers poor into Jawbone Canyon, the fire like the affect of the party, remains docile. It will not be until these interlopers have vanished that the real, effusive, profound nature of this jubilee will swell into full effect.

Even at a distance the Christmas tree burn is obvious. Hundreds of bodies surround a converted school bus. RVs both rented and owned, and trailers stacked 20-deep with discarded Christmas trees dance on the horizon. The vehicles circle around the blaze like so many covered waggons. Their hulking metallic bodies are backlit by the fire, which rises and falls like the tides, as trees are added and consumed. Intertwined with the dancing orange glow is the distinctly artificial thrum of neon rods and hoops which pierce the air and twirl along the arms of costume clad people. Rolling trance music echoes through the campground, occasionally caught and blown away by the howling teasing wind that roars off the mountains and down through the valley, before finally blowing itself out miles to the east among the lonely Joshua trees.

Pushing against the wind along a winding dusty road, one is deposited amongst the thronging crowd. Swelling, and retreating as another tree is consumed and the fire forces the revelers back into the darkness with its stark heat and light.

The main party in attendance are SpaceX employees who have driven up in droves for the weekend of revelry. The converted school bus and RVs are only the start. Within the limited eye shot offered by the dancing fire are expensive sports cars, a bivvy of lifted jeeps, studded-tire motor bikes, and more than a few gleaming Teslas. These toys belong to the grown employee-children of Elon Musk, who are by and large young, male, white, and so nearly uniform as to be comical. Clad in their SpaceX jackets, hoodies, ball caps, and t-shirts one could be forgiven for thinking the burn is a company sponsored event instead of a carousel of irresponsible freewheeling masculinity.

Juxtaposed against the backdrop of skinny white 20-somethings with beards are the fans, the groupies, the stumble-ins who look both delighted and alarmed at having found themselves included, by good luck, in the wildest party that almost no one has ever heard of. These interlopers are distinguished by their relative sobriety and appeasing laughter. Later, when the the chilling wind becomes too much they’ll return to their Saturns and Suburbans and disappear into the night.

Then, things can really get started.

The party crescendos into near insanity. The fire flings itself into the sky, sparks swirling on the wind, and enough social lubricant has been applied to the engineers that even the worst ideas seem bright and promising. Music drones. Fireworks light the sky. Plumes of pot smoke twine through the crowds buoyed along by hysterical laughter. Shots are taken, and again, and again. A young man takes a running start and hurls himself over the flames and the crowd erupts into a celebratory din the noise of which could shake the stars from the sky.

Away from the curious eyes of interlopers, these wealthy white urbanites can taste something very nearly like freedom. As Junger posits in his book Tribe these men need a communal bonding of sorts, an expression of masculine community that is so rarely afforded to them in their indoor fluorescent lives. In a society that no longer requires a ritual sacrifice to achieve manhood, perhaps throwing yourself across a flaming pit while your coworkers shriek like banshees is a worthy surrogate. Perhaps the artificial danger of intoxication mixed with dirt bikes is enough to jumpstart the civilized brain back into its more primal state. Perhaps in a society that exalts productivity over fealty, we have turned the extended celebrations of a prolonged adolescence into the closest thing the working millennial has to ritual. If the SpaceX Christmas tree burn is anything, it is a ritual.

 

A remarkably docile scene greets the sun as it cracks over the surrounding hills. In the light of day the debauchery of the night before is nearly erased. The frenzied charisma of communal connection replaced by the daytime persona of stayed company man. The fire pit smolders as bleary eyed former revelers stumble around the campground picking up bits of litter and loading themselves back into their expensive cars. One by one they depart back down the canyon, returning to their urban lives, the stink of booze and furor following until that too is washed away and washed down with Monday’s coffee.

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Is it Environmentally Responsible to Have Kids?

In July of 2018 I’ll turn 30 years old which, in and of itself, is a mildly terrifying prospect. However, this upcoming decade change has ushered in a collection of more probing questions from extended family members, society at large, and relative strangers, all of whom feel they have the right to question and hold sway over my personal choices. As any femme-identifying person can attest to, the most persistent of these questions is: when are you going to have children? As though my uterus is some sort of frequent flyer program of baby making. As though my only value to this world is to push out children. As though any woman who doesn’t want children is somehow beholden to the population at large to explain herself, justify herself, clarify her own wishes and desires to those oh-so entitled question askers.

Before we move on let’s take a moment to familiarize ourselves with the following:

1) ‘No’ is a complete sentence

And

2) “Because I don’t want to” is as much justification as you need to give for any decision in your life. Period.

Personally, I have never wanted, nor enjoyed, children of any particular variety. However, if you (man or woman) really really want kids, then bully for you. I’m certainly not here to tell you what to do. But maybe, to help you consider how your actions affect the planet at large. It’s important to remember that this one miraculous blue dot is all we have, and that we’re all in this together, truly.

2017 was great for showing us how our actions impact others, and that personal responsibility has to be the cornerstone of an effective human race. Furthermore, as someone who is looking for ways to make their environmental footprint smaller, I started to wonder: What is the environmental impact of having a child? As we’ll see, the answer is both conclusive, and nuanced.

In 2017 the Institute of Physics – a London Based charity that seeks to promote the understanding and application of physics – published a joint study from the University of British Columbia and Lund University in Sweden that directly tied having one fewer child to a massive decrease in tons of CO2 emissions (represented as tCO2e saved per year). If you live in a developed country, the impact of having a child is 58.6 tCO2e each year. This number is higher than combined impact of not owning a car (2.4 tCO2e), avoiding airline travel (1.6 tCO2e per round trip transatlantic flight), and eating an exclusively plant based diet (0.8 tCO2e).  

In short, if you elect to have a child, you’d have to give up owning a car for 24.4 years to offset the impact of one year of your child’s carbon footprint. Alternately, you could go vegan for the next 73.25 years to accomplish the same thing. If those numbers seem daunting, worry not. A similar study from Oregon State University posited that each parent should only be responsible for half the impact of each offspring, so you can cleave those numbers above in two. However, the remainder of the OSU study doesn’t paint such a rosy picture for those parents to be.

The scientists at OSU employed the EPA’s Personal Emissions Calculator to extrapolate the yearly impact of having a child over an 80-year period — the current lifetime average for an American female. The OSU study claims that if all global factors remain the same, then having a child will sock an additional 9,441 metric tons of CO2 into our already clogged atmosphere during the life of that child.

However, because things in this world are rarely static, the OSU study also provides two additional numbers for the lifetime CO2 emissions for that child, one which they title a pessimistic outcome (12,730 metric tons of CO2) and an optimistic outcome (562 metric tons of CO2). While ‘pessimistic’ and ‘optimistic’ outcomes are hardly quantitative scientific measurements, and the study does not elaborate on how they came to those numbers, one thing is clear from table 3 below: even in the most optimistic scenario, adding an additional child to your household adds more CO2 to the environment that that could be saved by combining every other CO2 reducing action in the remainder of the table.

The OSU study, sums up the issue succinctly “clearly, the potential savings from reduced reproduction are huge compared to the savings that can be achieved by changes in lifestyle.” Bam, case closed. Or, maybe not?

As they say, the children are our future. So then the question becomes: is it worth having a child for the potential benefits that they may bring to the world? Unlike studies documenting CO2 emissions, the argument for having a child is a lot less concrete, but there is still a persuasive, though largely idealistic, argument to be made.

The first argument for having a child is that your progeny could be a genius. With an increase in population comes an increase in the number of geniuses. In the last 200-odd years the population has seen more than an eightfold increase in the global population. In that time we have also seen man walk on the moon, a massive increase in information accessibility via the internet, and a rise in renewable energy systems. The argument that some economists make is that a massive population is necessary for remarkable forward progress. Where geniuses come in, is that a genius, a true genius, on the scale of Albert Einstein, Hedy Lamarr, and Emmy Noether, are so vital to the progress of our species that they greatly outweigh the damage caused by the rest of the more pedestrian population.

The next argument is that the children being born today are coming into a world that has been thoroughly mucked up by adults, and they’re not willing to duff about doing nothing. Consider the landmark trail Juliana et al. vs The United States of America. This suit which was filed on behalf of 21 people aged 10 to 21 claims that an environment sustainable for human life is a basic human right. It goes to further claim that the U.S. government is infringing on the 5th Amendment by allowing global CO2 emissions to pass 410 parts per million.

Now, it should be noted that when the US passed the 410 ppm threshold in early 2017, nothing catastrophic actually happened. However, this number has long been touted by conservationists as a number worth being aware of, one that could possibly signal irreparable damage to Earth’s environment. It’s especially dire when compared to the 280 ppm level of the pre-industrial world. And, more worryingly, that it took us less than 60 years to rise the level of atmospheric CO2 from 316 ppm in 1958 (when consistent measurement began) to 410 ppm in early 2017.

Since it seems clear that nobody in our current administration is going to do anything about climate change, I certainly hope that we can raise a new generation that is committed to remedying the mess we’ve made of our home. And this, parents and future parents to be, is where you come in. If you elect to have a child, knowing the damage it will cause the world, then I fully expect you to raise a conscientious and environmentally aware human.

The OSU study, while providing overwhelming evidence that reproduction is environmentally damaging, also espouses the value of taking personal steps to reduce your emissions. The study states “this is not to say that lifestyle changes are unimportant; in fact, they are essential, since immediate reductions in emissions worldwide are needed to limit the damaging effects of climate change that are already being documented (Kerr, 2007; Moriarty and Honnery, 2008).” And goes on to illustrate the above point that your choices as a parent, as a person, as a human, on this collective merry-go-round that we’re all riding matter a great deal. “The amplifying effect of an individual’s reproduction … implies that such lifestyle changes must propagate through future generations in order to be fully effective, and that enormous future benefits can be gained by immediate changes in reproductive behavior.”

So take public transit, ride a bike or walk, stop eating meat, fly less, make your home more energy efficient by replacing your windows with high insulating ones and replacing incandescent bulbs with LEDs, stop buying new things, and recycle any and everything that you can, buy a higher MPG car, call your congressperson, call your senators, call your local reps every single day and tell them how important our environment is to you, exclusively support brands that have sustainable practices, buy local, and teach your children to do the same.

Ultimately, your daily choices matter a great deal, not just to those of us alive now, but those who are yet to be born. As a person, and as a parent, you are given the opportunity every single day to determine what you want your legacy to be, and I hope that it won’t be one of greed and consumerism, but instead one of conservation and awareness.

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Things I’ve Learned From The Trees

When the world seems a dismal place, I like to think about what we can learn from the trees. The value of silently observing the world as it changes around you. The deep quiet of solitude, loneliness, the simple act of standing witness to the passage of time. Being committed to just one thing: growth. Living in a way that does good for the world; and knowing that even the sentinels of the forest are not without their flaws. For even the most resplendent tree casts a shadow upon the ground that keeps the ferns from growing.That it is impossible to live a life that is devoid of harming others, but, tandemly, simply because something is impossible doesn’t preclude it from being worthy of our attention, our efforts.

After all, it was impossible for man to reach beyond our little blue dot and sail to the mood. It was impossible right up to the moment that we decided to test our hypothesis of impossibility. In doing so we move the bar just that much further, set a new impossible, a vast horizon on which we can build and destroy dreams so grand, that from here, their greatness makes them all but invisible.

When I look at the world and see all the greed and indifference, the shame and confusion, I think of the trees. The old giants.

I like to imagine a stand of soaring pine trees which no man has ever seen. Trees that took root before this great democratic experiment, before you, before me, before anyone you’ve ever had the slightest possibility of knowing came into being. When I look at the trees, not the tame, domesticated blooms that adorn our city street and front lawns, but the wild ineffable misers who live out their lives – which are so inexpressibly different from our own –  away from the prying eyes of humans. When I think of these trees – it feels like the greatest form of hubris that we should endeavor to write our stories on their skin.

These trees don’t strive to have their names written in the pages of our history books. Instead, they are the pages of our history books, the pages of nearly every human story, the true and the tabloid, the sweeping epic and the stereo installation manual. And if tomorrow, we are called upon by some desire within ourselves to cut these giants down; to bring their soaring-ever-reaching limbs crashing down to earth, they will not complain, but simply acquiesce to our desires and we will have lost something grand and powerful, and very nearly the closest thing we have on this planet to the divine. We will have lost a teacher.

For the trees know we are small confused mammals with minds that are smaller still. They accept us and our hubris, our carelessness, our ceaseless errors, knowing that these flaws are simply part of our DNA, and they forgive us. And in their silence they hold space for us to learn. To grow not as they do, but in our own way.

The trees teach us that there is an awesome power in growth, in being huge, fat, bursting in our liveliness, and that it does not do to make oneself small. Conversely, they also show us that the notions of who is better and best does nothing but divide us, and that living only to take is not only cruel, but so beyond pointless that only a silly little animal like a human would spend their one fleeting, glorious life in pursuit of this pyrrhic victory.

I like to look to the trees, and know that one day, all of it, all of you, will be gone, as surely and completely as the silence that stood in your place before you arrived. And then what? Just the trees and the dirt will remain, until one day, they too are swallowed up by the gaping maw of space. And we are, all of us, returned to the star dust from which we came.

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I Was a Privileged Jerk and it Taught me a Lot About Inclusivity in the Outdoors

Story time!

This picture has nothing to do with the below story, it’s just a nice sunset pic that I took near my house.

Some years ago, when I was still awkwardly attempting to navigate the Los Angeles dating scene I went on a date with a dude, we’d hit it off moderately well, and arranged for a second date the next week. I had just gotten back into hiking in a big way and thought that a perfect (and cheap) date would be a hike in the Santa Monica mountains above LA. I had everything planned out and texted him the details. His reply: “What does one wear to go hiking?”

Honestly, this totally threw me. I thought that everybody knew what you’d wear to go hiking, it seemed so obvious to me, and downright silly that somebody wouldn’t know. I told him shorts and regular athletic shoes would do the trick. He told me the only shorts he owned were boxer shorts, and then I proceeded to get really awkward and cancel our date.

What I should have done was to pick an easy hike that could be navigated in jeans and town shoes, helped him find a way to participate in the outdoors without spending a bunch of money, and then slowly ease him into something I was really passionate about.

What I did do was to blow him off, then mock him behind his back to my friends. Smooth.

And why? All because he didn’t know how to participate in a sport that is almost exclusively marketed to straight, white, wealthy, able bodied, men. That’s crazy messed up people, and I deserve zero credit for finally coming to this realization! The truth is, that this realization was nearly five years in the making (now that’s embarrassing), that being a good ally is a continual learning process for which you are responsible, not the oppressed and marginalized people. And while I 100% believe that nature is for everyone, I also know that the “outdoors community” can be downright exclusionary.

I grew up in a white, middle-class family, I lived in a city that had easy access to open spaces, my parents had the money and free time to help me get out there and explore, all of which equals one thing: privilege. Privilege I am grateful for every time I step on a trail, but privilege none the less.

Conversely, imagine growing up near downtown LA and trying to visit Yosemite – one of America’s most visited and most popular National Parks.  What if your parents don’t work a cushy white collar job with PTO and ample access to a car? Just to get to Yosemite you’d have to hop a bus to union station, from there you’d take an AMTRAK bus to Bakersfield, CA, then you get on a train to Merced, CA, get on another bus that would take you into the park. All told 10+ hours of travel, and $60-$80 just to get there, and then you still have to get home! With a car it would take 4.5 hours and $30 one way.

So let’s all stop living this collective lie that our national parks are truly accessible to everyone. And recognize that our outdoors media largely isn’t representative of the amazing kaleidoscope of colors/genders/sizes/abilities that make up the human race.

But, I also recognize that me as a white woman talking about how I messed up when it comes to inclusion isn’t moving the ball down the field. Below are a few awesome bloggers from a diverse range of backgrounds who are making their presence in the outdoors community know. Please leave a comment below with any other awesome outdoors folks who have inspired you and are making our natural spaces more diverse and inclusive!

OutDoor Afro – Where Black People and Nature Meet
Outdoor Afro has become the nation’s leading, cutting edge network that celebrates and inspires African American connections and leadership in nature. They help people take better care of themselves, their communities, and our planet! With more than 60 leaders in 28 states from around the country, they connect thousands of people to outdoor experiences.

Vanessa Pamela Freedman – Dramatic But Honest
Vanessa is a bad ass lady hiker and writer who, aside from other awesome things, hiked 450 miles of the PCT this year! She’s a self proclaimed  “queer feminist writer and photographer who is usually based in Portland, OR but is currently traveling around Europe. I’ve got a pink sleeping bag, a pink journal, and a lot of feelings.” You can find more of her on Flex Your Heart Radio in her awesome interview titled “I Walked 454 Miles and I Still Feel Like I Failed” – this interview is definitely worth a listen.

The Blackalachian aka Daniel White
Daniel completed his thru hike of the Appalachian trail in 2017, and is currently in the process of planning a 2018 thru hike of the PCT. His Instagram account is a funny and irreverent look at life on the trail through his eyes. This month The Trek wrote a profile on Daniel, and it’s 100% worth a read.

Jenny Bruso of Unlikely Hikers
Jenny describes herself as “a self-identified fat, femme, queer, writer and former indoor kid who, in 2012, went on an accidental hike which revealed a new life trajectory of healing, self-care and adventure in the outdoors. Through sharing my personal stories and the @UnlikelyHikers Instagram community, I want to bust up preconceived notions of what an “outdoorsperson” looks like and put a spotlight on diversity, inclusion and visibility. I live and adventure in Portland, Oregon.”

Latino Outdoors Blog
From their about page: “We bring cultura into the outdoor narrative and connect Latino communities and leadership with nature and outdoor experiences.” Their blog series “Yo Cuento Outdoors” is filled with engaging pieces featuring community members. For additional reading, VOX published an awesome piece titled “The Strangeness of Being a Latina Who Loves Hiking.”

Able Outdoors
Their mission is to bring the entire accessible outside world into one place, to be an information source for everything outdoors: hunting, fishing, travel & all types of outdoor recreation. Their Facebook page is another awesome resource where athletes can connect with each other, share stories, and find resources.

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Canyon Walls – Halloween Special

“Life Elevated” read the sign. Welcome to Utah. We drove on. An ebullient mood filled the car as the red desert, speckled with muted green sage brush, flew past the window. The southwest felt like freedom, even to, or perhaps especially to, two 20 something college kids on a road trip.

I eased my car from the freeway and we cruised past the muddy brown waters of the Colorado River, cutting its way between the red sand stone cliffs.  Driving until, after a time we set up camp at a little backcountry spot I knew, just outside the town of Moab – a small southwest tourist town slug between low bluffs, barely making an indent in the oppressive blue sky.

It was a weeknight and we were miles from the closest people, but had everything we needed. Campfire, great company, and a few beers to round out the night.

We drank and relaxed in the way that only those who have shared the traumas of public high school can. Stories wound into the night on the tails of embers. Soon it was late, we doused our fire and crawled into the tent. The sky was brilliantly clear, and the only sounds for miles was the wind softly whispering through the skeletal trees of the desert. Laying awake I heard, in the distance, a sound unlike anything I’d ever heard before. It was so perplexing that even years later I’m afraid that I continue to fail in my endeavor to describe it accurately.

The sound drifted through the canyon walls, it’s source obscured by echo and reverberation. A low, rumbling, metallic, howl drifted through the camp. Then – silence.

Assuming it was a one-off I tried to roll over and fall asleep as my friend already had. But then again, came the sound. It sounded alive, and like whatever was making the sound was in pain. Laboriously droning out it’s final death gasps to the heavens.

My friend, partially roused by the noise, rolled over in her sleeping bag and mumbled “they’re killing it” before she drifted easily back to sleep.

I’m sure it’s gratuitous to say that this didn’t help my anxiety.

For hours I lay awake, too scared to leave the imagined safety of our tent. Too scared to sleep. The sound came again and again, rumbling up through the canyons, across the lonely desert and into my terrified ears. A belabored, struggling, noise, that interposed a sense of foreboding into the stars and wind. The shadows outside our tent were abruptly filled with childhood monsters – born from the unknown and given form within my frightened and drunken brain

For hours I sat listening to the noise – I could tell it wasn’t getting closer, and in the early morning stillness the sound suddenly stopped. My ears, my body strained with the effort of listening, slouched forward in my sleeping bag, I finally had to accept that the howl had ceased.

The next morning as the sun rose to blazing intensity in the clear sky we hiked into the canyon, towards the source of the noise. Buoyed into curiosity by the light of day. What we ultimately found was: nothing. No people camped further in, no wounded animals, no industrial machinery. The only thing out there was miles of red desert snaking between canyon walls and sandstone monoliths.

Whatever had made the disquieting sounds clearly didn’t feel the need to stick around until sunrise.

Today, after all those years, that sound has found a place, deep within my memories, where I can still hear it floating over the dusty red earth. But I’m no closer to understanding it’s source, and – I accept – that I likely never will.