Twenty-eight year old Emily Ford, taking a break from her 3-season gardeners job, decided to through hike the 1200-mile Ice Age Trail in winter.
She didn't distract herself with podcasts or music.
Ford loves the silence and solitude that hiking affords—or, rather, the awareness of how loud nature can be and how deafening feet crunching snow or a porcupine chewing a tree is when there’s nothing else around. She doesn’t hike with headphones or distract herself through music or podcasts, even wondering what people who do are trying to get out of their time in the woods. (After she finished the Ice Age Trail, she wore noise-canceling headphones around her home, because of the city’s din.) On the Ice Age Trail, she’d at most allow an occasional Britney Spears dance party of one, a way to warm up when at rest. For many of those 1,200 miles, she talked to herself—“self-talk,” she calls it.
As a person of color, the trip also represented a reclaiming of through-hiking and camping, which can feel unwelcoming to people who aren't, as she says, "tall and lanky and white."
I know many, many POC who don’t want to be alone outside, especially in the dark, especially in the rural Midwest, and I wanted to help open the door,” says Ford,
"From my observations, sometimes I think it's unintentionally unwelcoming, and we're learning how to be intentional with each other and be kind to each other," Ford said. "And that takes a lot of work. I'm hoping that over time we won't have to use the language of unwelcoming."
https://www.outsideonline.com/2422540/emily-ford-hiked-ice-age-trail-winter?ue=ZGxhbmdlQGhpbnNkYWxlODYub3Jn&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Dispatch-05062021&utm_content=Final&utm_term=dispatch
https://www.cntraveler.com/story/how-emily-ford-overcame-freezing-temperatures-and-loneliness-on-wisconsins-ice-age-trail
https://www.wpr.org/passion-outdoors-emily-ford-aims-complete-winter-thru-hike-ice-age-trail
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