19: Women in the wilderness
Thoughts on wild women, fear, aloneness, safety, and the great outdoors
This past weekend, I went camping for the first time—in the Badlands, no less. As such, spending the weekend in a little tent in the middle of 244,000 acres of America’s largest undisturbed mixed grass prairie was really something to me. We staked our tent on the precipice of a literal prairie dog town (!) encircled by rolling hills and a lazy creek, the little burrowers nervously chirping to announce our arrival. The evenings were clear and quiet, the sky embroidered with so many stars. A band of coyotes howled us to sleep each night, their cries somehow lulling and bone-chilling at once. Wildlife surrounded us, coming closer than we ever expected. We ticked deer, jackrabbits, bighorn sheep, and coyotes off of our list easily. Bison silhouetted the undulating landscape as they grazed, and two even allowed us to come less than a carlength away. To be so unexpectedly close to the largest surviving terrestrial animals in North America—we were in awe. During the day, we hiked through juniper forests and the Badlands wall and plateaued prairies, the semi-arid heat and spring sunlight seeping into our skin. We carved our way through the strangely mutable landscape, feeling soft sedimentary rock eroding beneath our feet, between our fingers, under the persistence of the wind, snowmelt, and rain. It was all beautiful and butte-full. Sorry.
By the time we collapsed our tent, I was sunburned, windburned, and more than content. But there was also a sense of release in leaving because, if I’m being honest, I was scared a good deal of the time. Yes, even after all of that beauty, I am still scared of camping. It’s worth noting that I’m scared of dying anytime and anywhere, but camping overnight makes me feel like I could become an episode of Forensic Files or an installment on a true crime podcast at any given moment.
It doesn’t help that campers can’t greet one another or mingle due to COVID concerns. We had to appraise one another from afar, banking on the fact that everyone sharing this small plot of land in the middle of a huge national park was well-intentioned and of sound mind. While it wasn’t helpful to dwell on the off-chance that this wasn’t the case, I still found plenty of ways to do so. My boyfriend slept closest to the door and brought both a hatchet and a knife to ease my nerves. I brought my usual selection of womanly self-defense weapons: Swiss army knife, pepper spray, personal alarm, eye-gouging strobe flashlight. I took mental stock of where every lifeline was located before we went to sleep.
When I say “went to sleep,” I really mean that I laid awake for an undetermined amount of time listening to voices carry and unseen vehicles idle across the isolated campground, engines running hot in the chill of the night. I was more shaken by this subtle human background noise than the chorus of howling coyotes, all of it too close for comfort in the particular quiet of the prairie. I waited for something to happen, imagining potential endings and means of escape until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Each morning, I was quietly flooded with relief that we had made it through the night, assuring myself that my fears were unfounded. But they returned each night. What strikes me is that even though I was fortunate enough to face the great outdoors with a 6’ ~190 lb man willing and able to use his “gainz” (his words) to protect me, I was still scared. I was so scared that I can’t even imagine what it would be like to spend a night in the wilderness alone, and that is both saddening and frustrating to me.
Spending time unsheltered in the outdoors reveals the extent to which that sphere doesn’t belong to women. It amplifies the uneasy feelings that cling to you even while you’re entrenched in civilization, like acting out pretend conversations on your phone while walking home alone at night, wearing only one earbud while out and about in public, running with your hair in a bun instead of a ponytail because it’s harder to yank, or approaching your car with your keys between your knuckles. This constant need to be alert—to be “smart”—in everyday life is already hard enough to bear, but being outdoors removes the possibility of intervention by passersby. You have to be even “smarter.” Women are unable to feel safe while taking up their rightful space in the world, and situating oneself in the wilderness heightens that sense of isolation as well as the potential threats that come with it. The great outdoors should belong to everyone, but because we can’t even move freely throughout the world in our everyday lives, it doesn’t feel like something we share ownership of.
Even if you move beyond camping, an activity that doesn’t lend itself to women who spend solo time outdoors given that it requires one to be out after dark, things look bleak. Consider hiking. Despite loving hiking since I was a kid, I found myself only hiking a couple times each year throughout my life. Now that I am dating someone who also likes to hike, I spend leaps and bounds more time outside doing what I love. Having a consistent hiking partner has completely opened up the outdoors to me, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. But how sad is it that I’ve never felt safe enough to even consider hiking alone once throughout my 24 years of life—something my male partner does all the time on a whim? I’ve long felt unhappy holding myself back, but like 46% of men and 54% of women, I believe it’s riskier for women to hike alone than for men. All of the things we need to take stock of in our everyday lives as women are exacerbated out on the trail. The slow, deliberate pace of hiking means you’re easier to follow or overtake. The need to stick to a well-trodden path in unfamiliar or unwieldy environments means it is more difficult to escape or evade a pursuer.
Okay, so we’ll move closer to home and turn to running alone, right? Running isn’t constrained to wooded trails, so it must be safer. You can move through largely open, heavily-trafficked areas at a higher speed, which means it’ll be easier to escape or evade a pursuer and you’ll be harder to follow or overtake. In theory. But staying close to home didn’t save Mollie Tibbetts, Wendy Karina Martinez, Karina Vetrano, Vanessa Marcotte, and so many other women who have been murdered while running alone. Only 4% of men experience harassment while running compared to 43% of women—harassment that has been proven to turn fatal.
In a recent survey from Wearsafe Labs, over a third of women reported feeling afraid while running, biking, walking, or hiking alone outdoors—either sometimes or all the time. 60% of women said fewer hours of light has a direct impact on their routine, limiting their time outdoors to daylight hours or ending it completely. 50% of women admit to being too afraid to walk or run at night in their own neighborhoods. 33% of women said they switched to indoor activities once night fell, and the 34% that chose to venture out after hours took added precautions by wearing a safety device. And much like my experience with camping and hiking, 40% of women felt their safety was “greatly” increased when spending time outdoors with others. These statistics really bring home the sad truth of how little space women are afforded in the world outside of our homes compared to men—space that is rightfully ours to share.
But is it all in our heads? Due to a phenomenon called the gender-fear paradox of victimization, women report much higher levels of fear of violent crime than men do—even though men are much more likely to actually be crime victims. Says criminology and criminal justice professor Jennifer K. Wesely, “It’s very natural for women to feel afraid because that has been ingrained in our minds from a very young age.” Realistically, women are much more likely to be assaulted by someone they know rather than a stranger in the wilderness, but we fixate on the unknown. “The fear is what’s holding women back, not the reality. Women are not in more danger in wild spaces,” according to Wesely. Beyond this, public lands have also been shown to be significantly safer than the rest of the country for both men and women. The risk of being a victim of a violent crime 1000 times lower in a national park than in America at large.
While it is important to undergo a slight reality check, it is worth noting that there is no database for crimes committed in the wilderness, let alone statistics on the gender of victims. On top of this, sexual assault is extremely underreported. Reality also offers us countless stories of women whose lives were brought to an end all too soon just because they dared to venture outdoors alone—something that shouldn’t be daring. Type “woman killed hiking/running/etc.” into Google and you’ll come up with millions of hits. The devastatingly recent case of Sarah Everard, who was murdered by a police officer while doing everything “right,” illustrates the lack of control women seem to have over their own fates once they step foot in the outside world. Sarah was walking home in a well-populated urban area at 9:30 pm, wearing bright colors, and talking to her boyfriend on the phone when she disappeared. Her body was later found in a wooded area outside of London. We can’t even walk home alone at a reasonable time of night in a heavily-trafficked metropolitan area without being preyed upon. Is any space or form of movement safe for us?
I honestly don’t think so. While this concept is both depressing and terrifying to me, its acceptance also provides me with a nihilistic sense of release. Female writer and adventurer Blair Braverman expresses this feeling most eloquently:
“… Sure, maybe solo camping as a woman is somewhat dangerous. But you know what else is dangerous? Going anywhere, every day. And even that isn’t as dangerous as giving in, staying home, letting life become a collage of other people’s limits and expectations. […] Going alone into the wilderness is one of the ways I reclaim myself. It is an act of joy and an act of self-defense.”
I’m not brave enough to reclaim myself in this way yet—to fully own my aloneness and sit with my fear in wide open spaces. But I want to work toward doing so. This sentiment acknowledges the validity of our fears while pushing us to take up the space we deserve with the activities we love.
In writing this piece, I keep coming back to a specific vignette in Wild by Cheryl Strayed—a gorgeously raw memoir recounting her 1,100 mile solo hike on the Pacific Crest Trail as a young woman. Toward the end of her hike, Cheryl comes across two male hunters who sexually harass her: “I don’t believe a young thing like her could be out here all by herself, do you?” “I wouldn’t let you come out here if you were my girlfriend, that’s for shit shock sure.” “She’s got a really nice figure, don’t she?” She lies about her plans and extracts herself from the situation, talking herself down and assuring herself that they didn’t know any better. Soon enough, her instincts are proven to be right when one of the hunters tracks her down, upset she “tricked” them, and continues to aggressively come onto her despite her protests: “What? I’m complimenting you! Can’t a guy give a girl a compliment anymore? You should be flattered.” Her internal monologue is as follows:
“I could hardly hear my own words for what felt like a great clanging in my head, which was the realization that my whole hike on the PCT could come to this. That no matter how tough or strong or brave I’d been, how comfortable I’d come to be with being alone, I’d also been lucky, and that if my luck ran out now, it would be as if nothing before it had ever existed, that this one evening would annihilate all those brave days.”
Cheryl imagines the ways in which she could defend herself, becoming increasingly desperate until the other hunter returns and calls his friend off. Before he leaves, he says, “Here’s to a young girl all alone in the woods.” Cheryl continues:
“I stood for a while in the way I had the first time they left, letting all the knots of fear unclench. Nothing had happened, I told myself. I am perfectly okay. He was just a creepy, horny, not-nice man, and now he's gone.
I lifted Monster, buckled it on, stepped onto the trail, and started walking northward in the fading light. I walked and I walked, my mind shifting into a primal gear that was void of anything but forward motion, and I walked until walking became unbearable, until I believed I couldn't walk even one more step. And then I ran.”
Cheryl’s vignette so viscerally depicts what so many women go through, painting a picture of the conflicting truths and shifting complexities of what it is to be a woman alone in the wilderness. “…No matter how tough or strong or brave I’d been, how comfortable I’d come to be with being alone, I’d also been lucky, and […] if my luck ran out now, it would be as if nothing before it had ever existed, that this one evening would annihilate all those brave days.” Every time we go outside, we open ourselves up to encounters that can lay bare just how unsafe we are when alone, revealing how much of our continued existence outdoors is just pure luck. Cheryl internalizes these depressingly hard truths, acknowledging her fears by pushing onward into the night. But she still finishes her hike, shaken but undeterred. Like Braverman, she refuses to give in to the limitations imposed upon her, pressing on in the face of the very real threats the patriarchal world poses to “a young girl all alone in the woods.” And that’s something.
Maybe someday I will be like Blair Braverman or Cheryl Strayed and feel secure (see: brazen) enough to take up my rightful space in the outdoors all by myself, my fears in tow. Even if not, laying claim to what nature’s promised to us in whatever way we feel comfortable is enough. Our journey can and should be shared with people who make us feel safe. Aloneness is not the end-all-be-all—experiencing the outdoors is. Just existing in this world as a female-presenting person is dangerous, and we should not be ashamed to live carefully and consciously as a result. Even so, I hope we can all find ways to celebrate small victories (like sleeping through the night while camping in a national park!), slowly reclaiming outdoor spaces as our own over time. Here’s to the young girls in the woods—all alone or not. We belong wherever our feet can take us.
The fact that I’m moving next week! Not much to say about this beyond the thing itself! Super excited—but not for all the packing ahead :’) Stay tuned!
Judas and the Black Messiah. Again, keeping things brief because I want to write more about movies down the road, but wow did I love this film. Given that Lakeith Stanfield, Daniel Kaluuya, and Jesse Plemons are in it, it’s far from surprising that this is the case. Kaluuya portrays former Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton so powerfully, bringing necessary light to his legacy and the stunningly inhumane and racist actions of the FBI and Chicago PD. One of the hardest—and most important—watches of the year.
Rice-Krispie Treats. And no, I’m NOT talking homemade. Store-bought. We need that fake sickly-sweet flavor. I haven’t had these in forever but just invested in them for our camping trip. Wow, did I miss these bad boys.
Slugging. After coming home sunburned/windburned to a dry a** crisp, I’ve been slathering my face in Vaseline, aloe, and lotion day and night. Locking in what little moisture my face has left through slugging before I go to sleep has been a game changer for my very irate skin. Thank you, Vaseline!
Apartment Therapy on Instagram and YouTube. The Instagram account is nice for inspiration, but I really enjoy watching Apartment Therapy’s YouTube videos. They manage to find amazing interviewees who are absolutely charming and have super interesting outlooks on life. I always find myself not only walking away with great design ideas but also new perspectives on what it is to live a meaningful life and share space with others. I was especially taken with the renovated apartment below (as well as the couple living in it!).