Once upon a time there was a little girl who liked the woods. She liked the way the yellow light hit the ground, shifting through the pines. She liked the lakes in the woods and the way they looked purple after sunset, the ripples of fish biting.
As a kid, I loved summers at my Grandma’s house on the lake more than anything, a perfect two weeks of the year. Still, I always imagined I would get a big girl job in the big city— I had those perfect summer moments on the lake, but I was not “outdoorsy”.
I didn’t become outdoorsy until my senior year of college. I was twenty-one and finishing a degree in Neuroscience and unhappy with my college boyfriend and felt like I could feel my entire life sprawling out in front of me and it looked like married before 25 to someone I didn’t really get along with and a job in a lab that I didn’t really love. It looked like I would never get to do any of the things I wanted to like backpack in Alaska, or live abroad, or sea kayak on Lake Superior.
I panicked and instead of applying to graduate school, applied for kayak guiding jobs. I broke up with the boyfriend and looked into teaching abroad.
I finished my degree and took a job as a sea kayaking guide on Lake Superior six years ago. I didn’t know anything about the outdoors. I knew so little that I didn’t even really understand how little I knew. I had only set up a tent twice before. I didn’t know how to build a fire, especially not when it’s raining. I didn’t know which trees were which, or what to do if you sprain an ankle and don’t have cell service, or how to prevent blisters, or how to hold a kayak paddle or how to use a compass, or even how to book a campsite. The only thing I was decent at was reading a map.
That was six years ago. I started a career in the outdoors six years ago with no experience, just a person who liked summers in the woods and wasn’t ready for marriage or grad school. In the past six years I’ve guided overnight paddling trips on Lake Superior and the ocean, I’ve backpacked through the Armenian mountains and hitchhiked with truckers to the Iranian border (sorry mom). I’ve paddled in freezing rain and huge waves, and had my a** absolutely handed to me and learned from it, and been winter camping and learned to ski (kind of) and paddled and camped for 70 days straight on the ocean. I can meal plan for expeditions and navigate tidal rapids. In the past six years I’ve become an excellent navigator and a good leader, but I did not start out that way.
Becoming skilled and competent and the outdoors is attainable for everyone. It takes time, but the barrier to entry is not as high as people may think and it is worth it.
Last year at a Wilderness Medicine course, I shared a quick story about an incident with a bee sting to the neck on the water and a woman just a little older than me came up to me after to talk about it. She wanted to know who I was, and where I was from.
“I’m a sea kayaker too,” she said. “I guided for two years in the San Juan Islands.” I don’t remember exactly what I said, or what she said, but she had come to correct me on something I’d said when I was sharing. She had come to compare her guiding and outdoor resume to mine. There were only three other women in the class of more than twenty five. We were the only two who had taken the course before. I could tell she did not like me.
More recently I was talking with a friend about hiking and how hard it is to find people to winter camp with, or people who want to hike more than a few miles. At one point we paused to joke about another girl— “well, I mean… she only hikes for the photo you know?”
I laughed, and didn’t think much of it until later.
People have said that about me, that I only go outside for the content of it. I’ve said it about other people too. People have said that I am only outdoorsy because my boyfriend is, and while I’d likely never winter camp if it weren’t for Andy, I started paddling before he did and we met at a relatively equal skill level and learned a lot from each other. I know those things aren’t true of me, but they still sting.
Truth is, no one goes outside just for the photo, which is maybe why the phrase feels so cutting as an insult. Humans go outside because it feels incredible; it’s where our brains our happiest. Humans as a species evolved in the outdoors and by heritage we are all outdoorsmen. To say “she only goes outside for the photo” is implying that someone is so vapid that they aren’t appreciating a fundamental part of being human.
It denies someone, almost always a woman, a part of their humanity while also calling them vain.
Truth is, outdoorsy girls are mean girls too. We undercut each other in Wilderness Medicine courses, competing for who has more experience because there can only be one. We make jokes about other guides— her form is shit, she takes her job way too seriously. Online and in person we say things like “she only hikes for the photo”, without considering the implication of what we’re actually saying.
I’m a fifth (ish) year coastal kayaking guide now, and people often ask me if I experience sexism in the outdoors. Yes and no, and never from the direction I expect it.
When I first started guiding I was unskilled and didn’t have a concept of to what degree. I was told by other women in the field that I would have to work harder for the same respect as my male coworkers, and so I worked first on my confidence and on seeming competent. In hindsight, I think the result was as a first and even second year paddler I often exaggerated my skills, and people saw through that. There were experiences I had which at the time I considered to be unfair questioning of my skills that in hindsight were likely people seeing the cracks in my false confidence.
That doesn’t happen to me anymore, because my confidence is not false, and my skills and experience speak for themselves. It’s been years since I’ve had a man who I’m speaking with face to face, in person, truly question my place in the outdoors.
Today, almost all of the insults, undermiming, and negativity I’ve experienced in the outdoors has come from other women in the outdoor community. I know that this happens, I know I’ve participated in it when I was younger without even really considering why, and it’s terrible.
It’s as if somehow we’ve all internalized that because we have always seen so few women in leadership roles in the outdoors that there are few spaces, and we’re all competing with each other for them. It’s as if in order to validate my own skills and experience, I must belittle hers. I must demonstrate that I know better than her, that I can do what she does and look less silly, with less makeup, that I can be tougher but still feminine and palatable, but competency in the outdoors is not a limited resource.
The other day I got a comment on a winter paddling post that read “sorry but I hope someone less experienced doesn’t feel emboldened by this post. Too many things can go wrong.” The comment came from another woman, clearly someone also active in the outdoors.
I read the comment after spending the week mulling over the phrase “she only hikes for the photos”, feeling guilty for using it but not being able to articulate why. It came after reading threads (new twitter) of other women outdoor creators talking about the same thing, making judgements on who is and who isn’t outdoorsy for real, who is and who is and who isn’t ruining the outdoors space on Instagram, judgements all made without knowing a person in real life or likely even really examining their content.
And lately I just can’t stop thinking about how we, women, treat each other in the outdoor space— often ungenerously. By and large my interactions with other women in the outdoors and online have been positive, except when they aren’t, which is shockingly often.
When we say “I hope you (a person who has clearly stated their specialized skills) don’t embolden anyone to take similar risks”, what are we really saying if we say it most often to women?
To me it feels like what we’re saying is that people are less likely to take risk seriously when it is attached to a person who looks like me. A person who looks like me doing serious outdoor sports is dangerous because if I can do it, surely anyone can. The world is inherently more dangerous for me because I am small, and blonde, and a girl, and so I should experience less than I could otherwise. Experiencing less is the tax for safety. I’ve been told this explicitly and implicitly since I was six. I rebel with a coral pink drysuit. whatever.
(i’m spiraling a little. she only hikes for the photo.)
I believe the outdoors and access to it is a right, not a privilege. Humans as a species are meant to sleep with our heads on the ground, to see trees and not concrete, to swim in cold water, to feel waterfall mist and move throughout the Earth. Acronyms and certifications like LNT ACA WFR are wonderful and helpful, but not a prerequisite. If you don’t have access to those things, you still deserve the experience of sun on your face and wind in the trees; there are other ways to learn, and it is extremely sad that a relationship to the outdoors has been stripped from so many people.
She only hikes for the photo is mean-spirited and something I used to say, casually, like it was nothing, stripping girls I didn’t know of their relationship to the outdoors as if it proved something positive about me.
I’ve joked with other girls about the women who wear makeup camping, as if I don’t full well understand how hard it is to feel comfortable in your own skin.
I’ve watched while younger women and guides struggle like I did with forced confidence and exaggerated skill, because we’ve been told we have to fight tooth and nail for respect.
I’ve looked at the pretty PNW girls with their perfect hair and leggings and sports bras on the tops of mountains and thought she only hikes for the photo, and I’ve thought that because in their perfect photos I see my own imperfections, how much I struggle with my own body image and could never look like that on top of a mountain. I tell myself that because for some reason I feel like in order for me to be a competent outdoorsperson she must not be, as if there is not room for both of us.
But there is room.
We can make our own outdoor spaces and communities, and we can change the ways we teach about the the wild and welcome people in instead of pushing them out. I’ve changed so much in the past few years; maybe the outdoor space as a whole can too.
I’m retiring she only hikes for the photo. Because it’s mean, because it’s not funny, and because it’s just not true.
maddy goes to the Keweenaw to find snow and finds slush, and other extremely instagram vs reality moments from my extremely unglamorous life:
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