I started hiking when I was 23. I was living in Seattle, and my friend let me borrow some gear, took me out and showed me the ropes. Later, I moved back to the East Coast and started backpacking. I was a weekend backpacker for about 10 years, doing three trips or so in the summer with some day hikes mixed in there – nothing too crazy.

Six weeks into it, I knew this was for me. I enjoyed the community and loved being able to fully immerse myself in hiking and the culture. It's a transient lifestyle where you don't always have the money to pay for rent.

In 2021, I started hiking the Appalachian Trail, which was my first long trail. Later, I hiked the White Mountains Direttissima of 48 mountains of 4000 feet or higher in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. There's a route that connects all 48 of those peaks together, where people try to set records by doing a specific route faster than anyone else has.

I did that route of all 48, 4000 footers faster than any other woman has done up until now, and set a women's unsupported, fastest known time record. That’s been really important for me, especially with all the attacks on trans athletes across the country. I wanted to bring a conversation around how trans athletes navigate the outdoor world and the hiking world specifically. Unless you're trans or unless you feel like you're directly impacted, you likely aren't as aware of the issues trans athletes face in sports.

This was a way of forcing that conversation with people. I did face lots of transphobic comments, especially online. There were people who said they’d support me but when the transphobic attacks came and push came to shove, they weren't willing to show their support.

I felt more comfortable with expressing my gender out in the woods 

I realized I was trans when I was about 29, and I'm 35 now. The first couple of years it was really difficult for me because I was having a hard time telling people who were important to me. It’s really scary if you're not telling people in your life while simultaneously expressing what's inside on the outside — you're not sure how people are going to respond and society isn't gonna just generally smile upon somebody who looks 'male' presenting in a more feminine way. 

So I felt more comfortable showing my gender expression out in the woods because I knew I wasn't going to run into as many people if I took a specific route or trail that wasn't highly populated. The other side of that coin is that if you look at outdoor companies and clothing, it's all very androgynous. In my case, that's not helpful.

REI has these button-down Sahara shirts, and I've had the men's one and the women's one, but they look negligibly different and have nothing specifically gendered about them. That's neither good nor bad, but if I am now trying to wear "women's" outdoor clothing to express myself, it doesn’t work.

When I was on the Appalachian Trail, I was trying to present specific gender cues on the trail because it's a hyper-social trail where you run into people all the time. I kept my nails painted, kept cute little earrings, and dyed my hair bright colors.

None of those things inherently mean anything. But my goal is to present a couple gendered cues that might lead people towards at least being curious enough to ask what my pronouns are, and to not assume that I'm a cis man.

But I didn’t have the same worry on the Hayduke trail, where I didn't run into another person the entire time I was out there.

So context is important on the trail – if I'm going to be hiking around a lot of people, I'm gonna respond differently than if I'm hiking by myself.

I don't inherently see anything in the outdoors as gendered

When I started the Appalachian Trail, I had given up my job, my apartment, my car, and the nine-to-five world.

Switching over to having a lifestyle that's centered in the outdoors, meant that there's no longer a dress code, no longer expectations, and a lot more freedom in how I express myself. Because there are not as many implications — you can't get fired for having crazy colored hair if your job is to be a hiker on a long trail.

In the last couple of years, I have been so immersed in the thru-hiking and outdoor culture that who I am on trail and who I am off trail has almost become indistinguishable. I wear the same clothes. I look the same. I talk the same. It's all completely in mesh. And I like that.

When I'm on a trail by myself, I'm not generally feeling gender euphoria, because I think gender euphoria has so much to do with like, "Am I putting on makeup? Am I feeling good because I'm gonna have to go out with my friends and I'm wearing a cute outfit."

Those things might give me gender euphoria. But if I'm hiking, I don't inherently see anything in the outdoors or in hiking as gendered. So there has been nothing that really elicits that response from me. The gender euphoria is more likely to come from interactions with other hikers and people in town – when people compliment my hair and nails, when they tell me I'm pretty, and when they get my pronouns right.

The same things from “real life” kind of come up in hiking, even though the context might be a little bit different. But at the end of the day, it has more to do with interacting with society, and that's where my euphoria will come from.

Whereas when I'm on my own, especially in the outdoors, where I don't have access to makeup and all those kinds of things, I'm less likely to even really consider my gender at all. I very rarely do at this point.

Rather than a wholesale buying of all womanhood, I’ve constructed my own

I get misgendered a decent amount. Nobody deserves to be misgendered, but I understand why it happens. I am a woman but my goal isn't to ‘pass’. It's not to be treated like a cis woman. I'm exactly who I am and because of exactly who I want to be.

In my overall gender presentation, there are a lot of things that I can change, like my voice, that would make people perceive me as a cis woman. I took voice lessons for a couple of semesters, so I have the skills to use those vocal skills if I want to. But I decided not to because it feels more authentic to use this voice that I'm using now.

So rather than wholesale buying all of womanhood with its traditional and stereotypical views, I've constructed my own womanhood. The benefits to it are that I feel incredibly authentic and that people who can see me for who I am, are seeing the realest, purest and happiest version of me possible. 

But the drawback is that when I’m interacting with society at large, I might not be treated how I want to be. I'm not presenting enough gender cues to make it obvious to people what pronouns they should be using.

You could have a discussion about whether or not that's my fault, or if that's society's fault. I know that there are things that I could do that would elicit the response I might want. But then I have to weigh out what I really want and what I'm willing to do to elicit those responses from society at large.

I'm not non-binary but I do end up getting people who use they/them pronouns for me a decent amount because they see me as somewhere in-between and that's the reality – everyone is somewhere in-between.

There’s emotional labor, but I make concessions in the name of progress 

I now know a lot more about the hiking community and the nuances of education – how educated people are about trans-related issues, how willing they are to have discussions, and how far you can push people to still get a positive outcome.

I make concessions in the name of progress. I'm willing to let people sit on that growing edge and to let them struggle through difficult conversations.

Of course, there's an emotional labor that’s inherent in that for me, because I'm dealing with people who are not using the right terminology. Or they’re using words that are offensive, even if they're not meaning to. But I have to sort of look past that screen and see their heart and see their intent and see whether or not they're truly trying to understand.

Very rarely, I will run into people who are not trying to understand or not trying to learn. In those cases, I do need to disconnect myself from specific conversations.

But I find for the most part, if I can look past some of the "mistakes" that people might make, the intent is generally positive if they're willing to engage in a conversation with me.

While I was receiving transphobic comments, I tried to take a tactful approach especially when interacting with non-trans people. I try to meet people where they are and not push them to where I want them to be right away.

I don't expect them to know everything. I don't expect them to get everything right. I don't expect them to always gender me correctly.

Seeing one person's queerness helps another’s thrive and flourish  

I grew up in the 90s in northeastern Massachusetts, and the concept of being transgender was not one that I was aware of. It's not like that the term didn't exist, or that trans people didn't exist, but at that time and place that I lived in, I wasn't aware of it.

If I could travel back in time to my younger self, I’d plant a little seed in my head to do a little research to find this out. Because looking back on my experience as a child and young adult, it's obvious that I’m trans but I wasn't able to connect those dots because I didn't know what that was or what that meant.

I knew that I felt different, and didn't know how to square how I interacted with society, versus how my cisgender men peers interacted with society. I just knew my experience didn't match up with theirs.

The legislative attacks against trans kids now are really difficult to see. I don't think any state is friendly to trans people. Some are better than others. But for young trans people living in one of those states where their very existence is being made illegal, or put into question, I hope they can find community even if it's online.

In my early days of transition and gender exploration, I didn't have an in-person queer community. But I did find comfort in going online and having conversations with people, asking questions of other trans people, especially trans women about their experience.

Those links might feel small or insignificant, but it's a way of learning and connecting – seeing one person's queerness helps another person's queerness thrive and flourish because you're made aware of what's possible.

You see how people can step outside the box of what's expected of them to create their truest selves. Queer chosen family is the most beautiful thing in the universe and all queer and trans people deserve that.

Transphobia exists everywhere, it doesn’t wait for state boundaries or legislation

In the northeastern states, people are generally considered to be more progressive and accepting of trans people. Whereas the southeastern United States are generally considered more regressive. There are a lot of stereotypes in people's minds and when I was hiking the Appalachian Trail, my friends in the North would ask me, "Oh, what was it like in the South? Was it scary? Did you face a lot of transphobia down there?"

In reality, the worst transphobia I experienced was in my home state, Massachusetts. So people have these assumptions that transphobia only exists in places that aren't progressive or liberal. But the fact is, transphobia exists everywhere — in every state, in every country. It doesn't wait for a state boundary, or it doesn't wait for legislation to be passed. The experience of transphobia is universal.

Before I started hiking the Appalachian Trail, I’d searched around for stories of other trans hikers to see what it's like out there, and there wasn't anybody. There was one hit from six years ago that wasn’t relevant to me or my experience. So I signed up to write for an outdoor blog and started using social media.

Through that, I found other trans hikers, and I was out there thinking I was the only one in the whole universe and it's really alienating and isolating.

Hiking gave me a reason to sort of share my story and talk more openly about my experience and identity. This past fall, I finished hiking the Hayduke Trail, which is an 800-mile trail that goes from Arches National Park to Zion National Park. That was the most challenging trail I had done as it required a lot of extra skills and stuff I've developed over the years. It was a culmination of a lot of the things I've learned over the last couple of years, and how I've grown as a person to be able to take on a task like this.

Now, I'm hoping to hike the Continental Divide Trail this coming spring to get my triple crown.