One of the reasons I love backpacking is it’s given me a way to see my own strength and resilience—emotional and physical. When I am caught up with the day-to-day chores and tasks of everyday life, I can lose sight of how strong I really am and how far I’ve come in this life. With too many work and home pressures, my spirit gets duller, and I don’t have the excitement and energy I need to live life to the fullest. I thirst for adventure.
Getting out into the natural world beyond the car campgrounds and into the backcountry wilderness helps lift me up and rekindles my passions. I remember my truest self and the hopes and joys I want to stay connected to even in hard times when the world feels like it’s ripping apart at the seams.
With a pack on my back full of the essentials for survival, it’s enough to bring me back to my essence and back into gratitude.
For many years, I just followed my husband into the woods. I barely had to consider a map or plan a meal. I know I’m privileged because we covered a lot of ground together before our lives changed as parents. Not many women I know have had the kinds of outdoor time or adventures that I’ve had, and I’m proud of the lines on my face that tell the stories of being out in the elements and experiencing the deepest of wild places. These wilderness experiences have made me realize more of who I am, not just as a woman who has overcome childhood trauma, but also as a human who feels integrally connected to nature. These experiences shaped me and gave me an education. Over and over again I’ve been sweetly humbled by the awesome power of the natural world in way that surpasses words.
Eventually, I realized that if I wanted to continue having these adventures after I became a mom, I would have to learn how to take myself out on trips and face the elements and my fears alone. It was tough getting back into it after five years away, but I was motivated to finish all the trails in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2020. Pushing myself to finish gave me a goal to reach for, but it was often a lonely endeavor.
Sometimes solo adventures and the loneliness they evoke can be cleansing and purifying. But I’m a woman, and I want to share these outdoor experiences with the badass women in my life, too. Whatever we are facing in our lives is better faced off-grid and with friends.
My friend Holly is a sweet sister who also loves backpacking. She’s a nature writer whose attention to the natural world through her writing is a powerful balm in these times. She’s also an Appalachian poet and nonfiction essayist, and this past summer we got together to celebrate the impending launch of her lovely debut collection of poetry, The Way the Moon, by Mercer University Press, on a backpack trip in the Cataloochee area of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
It was a minor revelation to me that this is how I want to spend time with girlfriends in the coming year. The earth is getting hotter, but facing the heat together in search of a cold mountain stream and sharing meals, stories, laughter, and firelight under the stars is one of the surest ways we can lift each other up right now.
Holly and I have been friends since 2012, the year before I became a mother and when so many of my other friendships changed or fell away, and I’m grateful we’ve been able to stay in touch and connect through the ups and downs of the last dozen years.
We’ve both come a long way since our first days in a small writing group in Knoxville. Her recent essay about gendered violence in The Bitter Southerner was named one of the journal’s best essays of 2024. (The issue is the one with Kacey Musgraves on the cover. Go get the print copy too, yo!) She’s got more in the works, always. She’s a treasure, go seek her out.
I’m looking forward to more backpack trips with Holly and other badass women in 2025. Here’s to adventures with women who backpack!
Élan Young 