On Purity: Notes from America's Long Trails

When a stranger offers you something free during a thru-hike, you say yes. It's called trail magic for a reason: My most enchanted memories from my long walks are random kindnesses. In New Mexico, a woman drove miles from her ranch so I could wait out a hailstorm in her truck. In Vermont, a man picked me and my friends up from a gas station and brought us to his house for the night and, over a home-cooked salmon dinner, revealed he was a professional magician by pulling a foam ball from my ear.I knew the rule even on my first hike, the Pacific Crest Trail. So when a man in a Hawaiian shirt and Tevas sat down uninvited at the table I was sharing with a hiker called Thor at a lodge just north of the California–Oregon border and offered to buy us milkshakes in exchange for some trail stories, we said yes. And when he asked if Thor and I had just met, we said yes, because it was true. And when he asked if I was alone before that I said yes, too, because I wanted it to be true.“You're not sleeping your way up the trail like that woman who wrote that book, are you?” he asked.“You mean Cheryl Strayed?”“Yeah, that's the one.”“I don't think she slept with many people on the trail. Like, maybe just one.”“Nope,” he said. He crossed his hands on top of his belly. “It was lots of people. Hundreds.”“Oh,” I said. I knew he was wrong. Strayed's promiscuous days were before her hike. I also knew better than to argue with a man who was our best bet for an easy ride back to the trail. “Well I'm not, anyways.”He gave us Tootsie Pops when he dropped us off. I crunched angrily through the candy shell and hiked ahead of Thor. I felt dirty. I wished I would've argued more forcefully. I wished Thor would've spoken up, but he'd never read or seen Wild, so what could he say? That it wasn't OK to ask random women about their sex lives, I guess. I wished I hadn't said, “Well I'm not, anyways,” like it absolved me of something. I wished I wasn't sleeping my way up the trail.2. In the long-distance backpacking community, people who walk every inch of trail are called purists. I've hiked with a few. If we hitchhiked into town from one side of the road and got dropped off on the other, they'd jog across to the pickup spot to link their footsteps. They insisted on leaving camp the same way we entered, even if another path joined the main trail a few yards farther along. The purest of purists walk to town instead of hitching, but the only people I know of who do that are attempting speed records, which have special rules.I've done three long walks: the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail, Mexico to Canada through California, Oregon, and Washington; the 3,000-mile Continental Divide Trail, Canada to Mexico through the Rockies; and the 2,192-mile Appalachian Trail, Georgia to Maine. These trails have official routes, designated by Congress through the National Scenic Trails Act, and I mostly followed them. But on all three walks, I sometimes took alternate trails. I occasionally hitched instead of road walking. I'm missing over a hundred miles of the CDT in Wyoming because I got off trail for a wedding and then jumped ahead when I got back on to catch a friend. I am not a purist.3. “Sleeping my way up the trail” was an exaggeration. For a few hundred miles at the beginning of the PCT, I was hooking up with a guy called Well Said. When the man in the Hawaiian shirt inquired about my sex life, I had been writing Well Said pining letters at night and flirting with Thor during the day. Soon enough, I suspected, Well Said would be out of my life and Thor would be in my tent.I had no way of knowing that in a couple years I'd spend the last two weeks of the CDT cuddling with Hot Legs, or that I'd fall in love with Yard Sale on the AT, or that in between I'd bat my eyelashes into rides and free food and places to stay all up and down the National Scenic Trails System.A romance on the trail is a giddy thing. You pick each other wildflowers and skinny dip in alpine lakes and goad each other into ditching your water filters. You get stuck hitching on blind corners, but it doesn't matter because you've got snacks to share and someone to smooch while you wait. You have extra water when they're dry. They help you stand in the morning when your Achilles is locked and you can't get out of your sleeping bag.That bliss has always felt dirty to me. I'm still embarrassed to admit it's been a pattern.4. I recall reading a quote from a famous outdoorswoman—though I have since been unable to find it—that goes something like this: to be a woman in the outdoors you must either be claimed by a husband or boyfriend or be too intimidatingly good at your sport for men to feel they can hit on you.5. When I was 16, a family friend brought me to Bolivia for a couple months. Busy with work, she deposited me in Cochabamba with her friend Claudia and Claudia's 23-year-old son, Santiago—Santi. I assumed Santi would be indifferent to my presence, far too old to spend time with me, but I was wrong. Shortly after I arrived, Claudia went away for a business trip and Santi and I got so drunk together on rum and strawberry milk that I wrecked my graphing calculator, which I'd brought to do algebra homework, with pink vomit.I could tell he was into me. I was flattered, but I kept my distance. Nothing seemed wrong with him except that he was hitting on a teenager, but that seemed wrong enough to give me pause.A few weeks after I arrived, they brought me to the family village for a festival. As we waded through the crowd, someone grabbed my butt. I spun and saw a leering man, 50 or 60 years old, a thick wad of coca leaves bulging in his mouth.I didn't feel violated, exactly. A lot of things I'd read about Bolivia told me to expect to be groped in public, so it felt more like a cultural experience, something to tick off my list under “Visit Lake Titicaca” and “Drink Chicha.” Still, I didn't want it to happen again. I quickened my pace and slipped my hand into Santi's and held on all day. I kept holding on when we got back to Cochabamba: riding the bus, grocery shopping, waiting in line at the movie theater, anywhere a stranger's hands might be near my body, and then all the time, because it felt nice. We made out the next time we were drunk. I can't remember if we did more. He slept in my bed whenever Claudia was away.6. The first time I hung out with Well Said was in Idyllwild, California, about a week into the PCT. A snowstorm had trapped all the hikers in town, and I was sharing a cabin with seven or eight others. We cooked up a mess of spaghetti and had a spectacular party.Well Said had the cabin next door. Around hiker midnight—9 p.m.—I found myself at his place watching cartoons. He was in his late twenties, which seemed old to me. He told me he was a rock climber. I told him about the time my brother and I climbed the Grand Teton together and I forgot a WAG bag for the ascent and had to shit in a Ziploc.“How are you not married?” he asked.“I'm twenty-one,” I said. Futurama flashed brown and red on the TV. I left after that episode, but I was thrilled: He'd been flirting.When I got back to my cabin, a guy called White Turtle was bouncing between the few women present, asking each to cuddle. He incorporated me into the rotation, drunkenly appearing every five or ten minutes. His advances didn't feel threatening, just annoying and degrading. I snuck to a bedroom while he was bothering Red Riding Hood. Both beds had been claimed by packs, so I laid my sleeping pad on the floor and passed out.I woke to White Turtle tiptoeing past. Bad luck. I pretended to be asleep.I woke again to fingers on my face. White Turtle was reaching down from the bed.“Hold my hand?” he whispered. It didn't occur to me to be scared. I felt sorry for him and wanted to go back to sleep. I grabbed his fingers and held until he snored. A few days later I started sleeping in Well Said's tent.7. You get your trail name somewhere near the start of your first thru-hike. Usually other hikers name you, but you can choose whether you want to keep what's offered.Shortly before Idyllwild, another hiker tried to call me Flyby when a fighter jet flew so low over us that we felt the sound in our kneecaps and molars. The name felt good. I had been moving fast; the miles I covered made me feel expansive. I liked the echo of the power of the jet. But I was reluctant to keep it. Defining myself on speed felt vain.The day after the cabin, Well Said forgot I was from Vermont and suggested I go by Sweet Virginia. Part of me knew I was pandering, but I let it stick. It felt good to feel cute.8. I know Santi was being creepy, but even now, as I look back on my time in Bolivia, I can't make myself feel taken advantage of. I had a lot of agency. I may have been choosing between bad options—more strangers grabbing me in public or hooking up with somebody far too old for me—but I don't think Santi was perceptive enough to exploit those stakes. Plus, it's not like I had a bad time. He was a great kisser.Well Said didn't coerce me into sleeping with him, either. Yes, having him around kept the White Turtles at bay, but I knew plenty of women who were just fine hiking alone. No—I was flattered by Well Said's interest. He seemed to belong effortlessly among the scraggly-bearded thru-hikers at a time when I was still scrambling for solutions for my broken water filter and the embarrassing patches of chafe on my inner thighs. Of course, we were all figuring it out, and in fact I was probably better prepared than most. But I was insecure, and I slept with him because I thought it would neutralize my insecurity. Instead, I felt worse.It was the same with Thor: He was a seeker, an adventurer, deeply invested in living an examined life. Hot Legs had the smallest pack I'd ever seen. Yard Sale ran ultramarathons. Each seemed poised to give me access to the person I wanted to become; each seemed to offer a shortcut to belonging in a community that made me feel peripheral. In some ways they did, but I also feel like I lost something.9. In a memoir about an 85-day backpacking course, Alden Jones writes, “When I didn't know how to execute a task, I turned to look for a helpful boy, and in this way, it took me longer than it should have to learn how to tie a proper knot or set up a sleeping tarp.”10. Years after that guy in the Hawaiian shirt asked about my sex life, I saw Cheryl Strayed on a conference panel about women on journeys. The panelists discussed how the experiences of women aren't well documented, how there aren't enough women writers talking about journeys, so one story about one woman on one journey too often comes to stand for all women on all journeys.Strayed said she'd been thinking about something since agreeing to join the panel. On her PCT hike, almost every hiker she met hit on her. She their as She wrote about it in an of Wild, but her told her to it out because it like She She let her in the be to something you as a you've kept from As Strayed something so me that I felt I had and I was to find myself in the same the same still on the same I had never how and I felt about the ways I to men on the I'd always their advances of on the my and I took a alternate through the the we had to of It was The rock my and my The felt on the of If it did, or if I lost my I have been to I grabbed was to the by the Wild, of a trip he took in as a was by the of I up to the of and over the The of what was in those me, but I of something in the some and no than the of a can't if of and a the of me feel or my way down the rock in the my my I felt something to what It was every The Grand Teton in the all and The a at the were just beginning to and in the too far to be just enough that I could look up and the of the up at me and it had that good alpine and I was so and so I felt I was the in the few a and me into We our in our My was old, and a fine from in the in I just a to over he think it's said. you ever want to I'd be I think about that quote from the famous a I have always wanted to be so good at the outdoors that men don't think they can hit on me. But I have to it's In the years after my long walks, I set speed and the Trail. thru-hikers still into my is it that even to be by a man me feel is it that Strayed's thought she be if she her had something to say about The If not a a The of a of a in of get the a long time, the But at the of the as the a and was to make been by into more wrote in of to and for which no can do first of the would the that has turned a of our into a lot of with and wrote in first of a of in sport the more and in and In a and an Appalachian His for more want the of We want over a the was It at two other the PCT and In Congress passed the Act, which as the and community of life are by man, man is a who not that of of or I had because it like that it something like even if the the is another that had of the in as in which have never the of in this of the is that people have been for the man is a who not is a The so a as a for a a time when men were Cheryl Strayed was not a from it. She only did about a of the PCT, and sometimes she up hitching around she because they were or she was she to say things like hiked the that she did the but that she when she got famous and thru-hikers The might not be but they hit an A lot of hikers I met, on the PCT, were that Strayed was the of in the because she didn't even the not a I to say on the PCT. I was and people asking me what I I think it's a good about days on the PCT. I my in The way I a day on trail is a day on whether you do miles or If a book, I don't know what The first time I read Strayed's list in Wild, I was so embarrassed for her I the the that I told myself my story before the PCT, the story was that I was not Cheryl I had an pack and a and with my not alone. In a and the of a a woman writes, is the you've to I feel the to is not my When I to the Pacific Crest this I be out a saw or a for is about about and is off to me about the to that our are not Wild, not not Cheryl doesn't sound so from not that of we just and In a of about her years as a the of about women on journeys. She a from a at a years when she a she found who like the of a found at their place of while they These women it because they hadn't been seen in the first And they hadn't been seen because there was no cultural for and As women on the road were do a of about and and they the which still with place for people who aren't we on she she A woman of the doesn't make so we she been we that the woman has road with no and the of mean that in our there is a and but even Strayed in and The is that she have to be on the missing out of lost in the and if she hadn't to her by on her and having an And even Strayed had to the other hikers hitting on her. She and but if she was to her way back to with a to her life as a and the to which she was an of the in was too for some all she did was her way up the never done I sometimes said when people asked if I was never had an In New Mexico, on the I a with eight other I felt a bed for so I offered to share with a guy I'd for a I he'd my offer was woke to his hands on my His were on my his fingers their way around my My shirt felt I tried not to I tried to make my I didn't want him to know I was until I had a was and in the on his were all around and I didn't know what to about the of sharing a about having so about his to this in a made the feel and I didn't know how he'd if I I didn't know if it was the up through my had I this guy into my sharing this with out on the trail hands were near my I wished I was a I whispered. don't want he said. He hands still on my that I felt that of my miles of of my for my to a of myself made by and and the of the of the I ran out of food or woke to on my sleeping bag or was of and hiked of the the the of it I had to I was not in that people didn't me as someone who had and I felt in that that I had been wrong. I that I was then let He and away and it was know what was so great about the Thor said. doesn't if a man or a or or you can just be were on a It had been two since we the PCT, and we were to be in love in It wasn't We had been because he didn't I was he call a it that way as a I maybe he was the trail let me I had to on Cheryl Strayed for her but sometimes I got to be one of the an of a made me feel like a woman in a way I sometimes forgot to in a way I was Bad because it was yes, but also bad in other ways to It had to do with and I If the is to make men what it do for people who aren't I know what it did for It made me the The last spectacular of the CDT is the just north of The is an but it. is and there are and You the through a all Legs and I the in late We had our and we were in long before after catch The in was to find in the We through and as we waded across the when we saw that turned out to be It was almost and to the our water each The were but we could only through the at the top of the through the we from the at a We the night in an with In the of and we to road walk the of the way to about road is that you've from the a ride doesn't so a A that night and over us the next and moving we hitched to In a on do we of in the the to trail after one not walk at is the of a hike. of is a of A long trail a In the hiker up their to go this a of The in the was a yes. But I a longer if Hot Legs and I hadn't started out a few days We were in a to be alone in a still hiked that of the but I've The was first official and even as a I can't that something and about the The water in the three has people for over a even in of You for through the to and then enough water to enough water to all of enough water for to keep you up at I saw a the only a few yards from a for a of the out and and my that was waiting for that I when I hitched to I what would think of me. he my or her would have been She was an but she access to because she all sex not for the of I've been to get into when it's too to hike. at a last I met a guy who was a and had the Trail. He told me about his about It like a but I asked because we were alone and it was and I didn't want to his I told him I wrote about he said, it's better than that by that mean Cheryl was out of and didn't want to into the so I set about on I about and I so the guy would know I was read the