“I had literally never been camping in my life.” — Nicole, just before starting on a 460-mile solo hike
Nicole Antoinette is a wild, wise human. She hosts Real Talk Radio — I was featured in season 12, if you want to hear me talking about being brave, getting bigger, and managing depression — which has got over a million downloads and is just plain GOOD podcasting and interviewing and humanity-listening.
In this episode of That’s What She Said, we’re talking about the craziness that possesses a human who has no history of camping or outdoorsy-ness to through-hike some of the nation’s toughest trails.
Whether you’re a hiker or not (and I’m *definitely* not), you’ll want to listen in as we talk about:
+ replacing addictive behaviors with healthy ones
+ self-reliance at its most literal
+ accessing the wild, ferrel, dirty state
+ the privilege of choosing our suffering
+ changing the stories we tell ourselves
+ living life online (as in, it’s her income) and offline (like not seeing any other humans for 4 days at a time on the trail)
+ recharging batteries and staying motivated for the long haul
+ where she’s planning to hike next
+ the existential questions we conquer when we’re given time in the wilderness
…and the importance of choosing ‘impossible’ tasks in our lives
I hope you’ll leave this conversation inspired to do at least one impossible thing.
If you’d like to keep tabs on Nicole, please do so by becoming a patron of her podcast and/or by playing on Instagram, where she shares once-daily updates while on the trail.
Unlikely Hikers also gets a shoutout during the interview, so check it out if you’d like to see evidence of more not-white and/or not-male humans hiking up a storm.
P.S. This interview makes the long journey to the body even more relevant.