At the end of a summer-long adventure on the Colorado Trail with her two daughters, Emily Shoff reflects on the things worth carrying forward and the things to leave behind:
“It wasn’t until we’d finished the 500 miles that I realized it didn’t matter that the adventure hadn’t gone perfectly. That going outside, like parenting, like anything in life, is not about how seamlessly you pull it off, but about how well you recover from the mistakes you make. I’ve spent almost half a century chiding myself for my imperfections, wishing I were a bit more like the imaginary people I compare myself to because then I would be satisfied with my life. That summer, when I finally shrugged my backpack off, I realized I’d been carrying around a lot more than week-old trash and squished granola bars. That my pack, like many people’s (especially those of women) was crammed to the brim with the wrong things, mostly lists of the ways in which I fail. That for the next 50 years, should I live that long, I’d like to walk around with a lighter pack, one that’s filled with all the ways I win. To have children and a husband to love. To have access to wilderness. To be able to live in a time and place where a woman and two almost-women can walk alone safely. I hope that by traveling this way, not only will I move more easily, but my girls might too.”
From “Learning to Parent from the Trail,” in the 2023 issue of Deep Wild: Writing from the Backcountry. To read the rest of Emily’s essay and the work of 51 other writers from wild places, visit deepwildjournal.com
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