In this week’s episode of Unpacked by AFAR, journalist Emily Pennington—author of the memoir Feral—shares what it was like to spend a year road-tripping to (nearly) all the national parks in the United States.
In early 2020, journalist Emily Pennington set out on a year-long road trip to visit all 62 national parks in the United States. A few months into her journey the pandemic struck, turning her life upside down. She chronicled it all in her new memoir, Feral (Little A, February 2023). In this episode of Unpacked, Emily shares her journey, what our national parks can represent (or not), and what kept her going when it seemed like the wheels were about to fall off, metaphorically speaking. (Gizmo was fine.)
Read the transcript here: https://rebrand.ly/6tav3d0
Discover more episodes of the podcast here: https://www.afar.com/podcasts/unpacked
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In early 2020, journalist Emily Pennington set out on a year-long road trip to visit all 62 national parks in the United States. A few months into her journey the pandemic struck, turning her life upside down. She chronicled it all in her new memoir, Feral (Little A, February 2023). In this episode of Unpacked, Emily shares her journey, what our national parks can represent (or not), and what kept her going when it seemed like the wheels were about to fall off, metaphorically speaking. (Gizmo was fine.)
Read the transcript here: https://rebrand.ly/6tav3d0
Discover more episodes of the podcast here: https://www.afar.com/podcasts/unpacked
----
CONNECT WITH AFAR
Afar.com is a digital and print magazine that publishes travel tips, guides, news, and stories: https://www.afar.com
Get updates on the latest articles, travel news, and more from AFAR by signing up for the AFAR newsletter: https://afar.com/newsletters
Follow AFAR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AfarMedia
Follow AFAR on Twitter: https://twitter.com/afarmedia
Follow AFAR on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afarmedia
Follow AFAR on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/afarmedia
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TravelTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:07 The pandemic was roaring.
00:10 I was literally going through a breakup
00:13 in the middle of the largest national park in the country.
00:17 [MUSIC]
00:19 I didn't technically have a home to return home to,
00:25 and yet I was also in the middle of some of
00:28 the biggest, wildest, most trail-free,
00:33 road-free, no visitor center landscapes
00:37 that you can visit in the country or in the world, perhaps.
00:41 [MUSIC]
00:46 That, in a nutshell, is Feral,
00:49 a new memoir from journalist Emily Pennington that
00:52 chronicles her year-long road trip to visit
00:54 all 62 national parks in the United States.
00:57 The journey was ambitious,
00:59 it was sometimes a little dangerous,
01:02 and it just so happened to coincide with the pandemic.
01:05 In other words, it was an epic adventure.
01:08 [MUSIC]
01:10 I'm Aislinn Greene, Associate Director of Podcasts here at Afar,
01:13 and this is Unpacked,
01:14 the podcast that unpacks one tricky topic in travel every week.
01:18 This week, we're going to hear my conversation with Emily.
01:21 We covered a lot of ground.
01:22 We talked about her trusty van Gizmo,
01:25 which carried her around to nearly all the parks.
01:28 We discussed why she wanted to tackle a journey like this,
01:31 what our national parks can represent or not,
01:35 and what kept her going when it seemed like
01:37 the wheels were about to fall off, metaphorically speaking.
01:41 Gizmo was fine.
01:43 One note before we get started,
01:45 Emily was home in her LA apartment for this interview,
01:47 so you may hear a little of the city in the background.
01:50 Okay, let's hit the road.
01:53 Emily, welcome to the show.
01:55 I'd love to just jump in.
01:57 Congrats on your book.
01:59 I really enjoyed the read.
02:00 How does it feel to have it out in the world?
02:02 It feels really surreal.
02:04 I think one thing that I underestimated was how many other people who have been on
02:10 really intense and/or similar in some way healing journeys,
02:15 how many people would reach out to me.
02:17 I think I underestimated that,
02:18 and so I've been a little bit inundated and overwhelmed with
02:21 really beautiful and kind of intense messages from other people who have been through a lot.
02:26 Yeah, that makes sense.
02:28 You reveal so much in the book,
02:31 so it makes sense that people would kind of want to reveal things in turn.
02:35 Well, I would love to just kind of start at the beginning for listeners
02:37 who don't know that much about the book.
02:40 In 2020, you spent a year traveling around the US in your van, Gizmo,
02:44 in an attempt to visit all of our national parks.
02:47 Why? Why did you embark on this quest?
02:50 I was always kind of jealous of people who took a year off,
02:56 like saved up their money and went on a big trip.
02:59 And in 2016, I was in a point in my life where I was just starting to get outdoorsy in my late 20s.
03:06 I didn't really grow up outdoorsy.
03:09 And I was going to some of the more local national parks to me in California,
03:13 like Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon.
03:18 And I just, I don't know, I wanted to do something big and scary
03:22 that would take a whole year to complete
03:24 and something that I didn't know if I even could finish,
03:27 because I think that it's really crucial to at least once in your life
03:32 lean into something that is kind of terrifying,
03:35 for no other reason than to figure out what you're made of
03:40 and learn more about your own strength and resilience,
03:43 even if the path to get there is messy and winding.
03:47 And you launched this trip at just the perfect time
03:51 to really tempt the universe to throw lots of messy, winding things in your path.
03:57 I was so impressed that you kept going despite everything with the pandemic.
04:00 What kind of in you motivated you in that way?
04:04 You know, I think one of the things that I was really lucky to have going in my favor
04:10 was that after the two to three month shutdown that we all experienced,
04:16 where we were quite literally shuttered in our homes,
04:19 the outdoors seemed to be the safest place to be.
04:22 And so I was in this strange front line of travel writers and journalists
04:27 who were in a way able to keep working when a lot of our colleagues were not,
04:33 because what I was doing was kind of traveling in my own little mobile pod
04:38 in this little minivan and going into these big wild spaces
04:41 where it was very easy to keep a six foot distance from people.
04:45 Maybe it's like the Aries in me.
04:47 Maybe it's just my upbringing as like a really type A overachiever.
04:52 But it's funny, once we learned that the outdoors were relatively safe places to be,
04:57 there was kind of no doubt in my mind that I wanted to finish.
05:01 And then especially coming back from Alaska,
05:05 I think it's no secret that I go through a breakup in the middle of the book.
05:08 So coming back from Alaska, knowing that I had literally no home to go back to,
05:14 which was like having the rug pulled out from under you 10 times over.
05:19 I think having to really just jump into the new reality of,
05:22 wow, this van actually is my home now,
05:26 lent a new immediacy to the project that I definitely did not want to back down from.
05:31 And do you still have your van?
05:33 Do you still have Gizmo?
05:34 I had her for about a year after the trip ended,
05:37 and then I was daydreaming about using my book advance money
05:41 to upgrade to something with a refrigerator.
05:43 And so I have another minivan now that was a little bit more professionally built out.
05:48 Her name is Doris.
05:50 Nice. Doris. Okay, I like it.
05:53 Was she named after anyone in particular?
05:56 Actually, kind of, yes.
05:58 She has weird features.
06:00 She has like Bluetooth, but doesn't have Apple CarPlay and her clock never works.
06:05 And she doesn't have a digital...
06:07 She's a brand new van, but does not have a digital mileage speed readout.
06:14 So she has all of these like kind of clunky features in the middle of a very new van.
06:18 So I wanted her to have kind of a grandma name.
06:21 And then also the van in the movie Almost Famous is named Doris.
06:27 Or not the van, the bus.
06:28 An honorable name.
06:30 Well, one of the things that I noticed,
06:32 and you, of course, remarked on this in the book,
06:35 but your schedule was so ambitious
06:37 and you moved so quickly through some of the parks.
06:40 Looking back, would you have liked to have taken more time?
06:43 How do you feel about that schedule?
06:45 Yeah, I think one of the big takeaways from the book
06:49 is this notion of slowing down
06:54 and adhering to a schedule that's more dictated by your body,
07:00 your body and your mind's ability,
07:02 rather than trying to strong arm yourself
07:05 into a way of being that is solely intellectual.
07:10 And so I think what I like to joke about is that
07:15 if I ever did the trip again,
07:17 I think it would be really cool to do it with about twice as much time.
07:21 I think that I had some weather hiccups here and there,
07:24 especially in the Pacific Northwest
07:27 when I was facing the worst wildfire season in history.
07:30 Also in Glacier National Park,
07:32 I feel like I'm due for a glacier redux
07:34 because I was there for five or six days,
07:37 hoping like, "Okay, I'm in a backpack,
07:39 I'm gonna have plenty of time."
07:40 And then of course it rained the entire time that I was there.
07:44 And that's like one of the most famous, gorgeous parks.
07:46 And I just saw gray clouds for every day but one.
07:50 Would you do this again, do you think?
07:52 Or would it be more like targeted parks
07:54 that you would return to one-on-one?
07:56 I've toyed around with the idea of doing something else
08:00 that would be a big, you know, six to 12-month trip.
08:04 But I don't know if I would make it quite as arbitrary
08:07 as checking a bunch of things off a list,
08:10 even though it was really magical the first go around.
08:14 I've thought about doing other things
08:15 that are more landscape or road-based.
08:18 So doing something like driving all the way
08:20 from like the tip of Alaska in Prudhoe Bay,
08:23 all the way down to the tip of Patagonia,
08:27 doing something like Alaska to Argentina
08:29 could be really interesting.
08:31 Yeah, so I'm kind of brainstorming other ways
08:33 to move across landscapes in big ways
08:36 that would be adventurous,
08:38 but not necessarily adhere to such a rigid schedule
08:43 that feels a little more mathematical.
08:45 Yeah, yeah.
08:47 I mean, it makes sense for your first big journey
08:50 in that way to kind of take that approach, right?
08:52 Like it's this structure of the spine,
08:54 something to aim for.
08:56 And now that you've done it and you learn from it,
08:58 do you think you would kind of go at a different pace,
09:01 like allowing your own whims of the moment to guide you?
09:06 Yeah, one of the ideas that I did have was actually,
09:09 was this kind of silly concept of like,
09:14 can you cure your own type A-isms in adulthood?
09:19 So like, is there a version of this trip that's also,
09:27 I don't know, isn't there a book called
09:28 "The Year of Yes" or something?
09:31 I was gonna say, maybe there's a version of a road trip
09:33 where you have to say yes to everything,
09:36 every detour that someone takes you on,
09:39 as long as it's generally in the direction
09:41 that you're trying to end up.
09:43 - Yeah, I love that.
09:45 You kind of mentioned this a little bit,
09:47 but so much of the book is about disappointment
09:50 and uncertainty and things not going as planned.
09:53 So what advice might you have for somebody
09:56 embarking on a journey like this?
09:58 - I would say always have a plan B
10:00 and maybe even a plan C if you're going out,
10:03 especially into wilderness areas.
10:05 I feel like that's one of the biggest pieces of advice
10:07 that I give to people,
10:08 even if they're just going on a weekend trip
10:10 or a week long road trip to different national parks
10:14 in Utah or something.
10:15 Because especially as they get more crowded
10:17 and as you get weather delays,
10:20 or maybe there was rock fall and a trail is closed,
10:25 it's always a really good idea to have a plan B.
10:27 And like I said, maybe even a plan C ready to go
10:30 that you're excited about so that you can be flexible.
10:35 You can kind of pivot on a dime.
10:39 I also feel like it's really important
10:43 to simultaneously have a plan
10:48 and also not define success by that plan,
10:53 if that makes sense.
10:54 I feel like human brains are really bad
10:57 at cognitive dissonance,
11:00 but I feel like in order to travel
11:04 for a long period of time successfully,
11:05 you have to become kind of a master at it.
11:08 So often what I'll do when I'm traveling,
11:10 even now, 'cause I work as a travel writer and a journalist,
11:14 I will have a list of things that I wanna do,
11:17 but I will not know on which day I'm going to do any of them.
11:20 And so there's kind of like this play at being flexible
11:24 and also rigid at the same time.
11:27 - I like that, some structure,
11:28 but not needing it to kind of follow the A, B, C, D order
11:32 because you never know what you're gonna encounter.
11:35 You never know how you're gonna feel
11:36 on a particular day, right?
11:38 - Exactly.
11:39 - You wanna leave some room for serendipity.
11:41 Well, kind of pivoting to a slightly different topic,
11:45 I was really struck by something
11:47 that you wrote early on in the book,
11:50 kind of once you were outside of Los Angeles,
11:52 where you still, do you still live in LA?
11:55 - I do, yeah.
11:56 I'm hoping to move to Colorado later this year,
11:58 but we'll see how it works.
12:00 - Nice.
12:01 You wrote that, quote, "Getting gas in Koleen
12:04 reminded me of how much of the country lives.
12:07 Fried food, dented pickups and trailers,
12:09 housing produce pickers etched like bricks
12:11 into the town center.
12:13 Los Angeles's maze of organic groceries
12:15 and vegan gelaterias is not the status quo."
12:18 And it made me wonder how this trip
12:20 kind of changed the way that you see the country
12:23 and even LA.
12:24 - Yeah, it really opened my eyes to what a bubble
12:28 we can often live in when we live in a big liberal city
12:33 like Los Angeles.
12:34 Even though Los Angeles is really diverse
12:36 and we come up against a lot of different kinds of people
12:39 and a lot of different ways of being every single day
12:42 because it's such a dense city,
12:45 one thing that was really striking,
12:46 especially because so much of the trip took place
12:48 during the pandemic,
12:50 was noticing how much of the world in a way
12:54 didn't have the kind of white collar luxury of shutting down.
12:59 Everyone I knew in Los Angeles
13:01 could basically work from home.
13:03 And so they, although it was deeply uncomfortable
13:06 and very traumatic,
13:08 they were able to kind of shudder indoors
13:11 and still enjoy a lot of creature comforts.
13:13 Whereas in a lot of places that I traveled to that year,
13:17 you know, especially gateway communities of national parks
13:20 are more rural.
13:21 So you still have people that are out working the farms
13:24 or feeding their horses or, you know, going to retail jobs.
13:28 And so I think that there was something,
13:31 there's like a quiet respect that I have for those people
13:34 that I think often go unseen
13:37 that maybe I didn't have as deep of a feeling for
13:42 before the trip.
13:43 - Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
13:44 Did it help kind of temper, you know,
13:48 there's such extreme discourse on either sides of the US now
13:53 and in throughout the pandemic.
13:54 And I don't know, it just seems like it allows you
13:57 to kind of see a little bit more
13:59 of all different perspectives
14:00 to travel through communities in that way.
14:02 - Yeah, it's an interesting question
14:05 because I feel like even though I have very firm beliefs
14:12 in science and vaccines, especially as a travel writer,
14:17 because I know that what I do could impact people
14:20 because I'm moving around so much,
14:22 but I have more compassion for people who do live
14:26 on the outskirts of societies
14:28 or people who live in remote island communities
14:30 where misinformation can spread really quickly.
14:35 So even if I might not agree with it,
14:39 I have a lot more compassion for people
14:42 with wildly differing beliefs.
14:45 And I understand how they might've gotten there
14:49 and I have patience to talk to them
14:50 and maybe share my side of the story in a calmer way
14:54 that's a little bit less divisive and blame oriented.
14:57 - Kind of speaks to the power of travel
15:01 and opening our minds, right?
15:02 And opening our souls.
15:05 Well, on a more straightforward level,
15:08 which parks do you wanna return to?
15:10 You kind of talked about it at the top of the chat,
15:12 but, or which have you returned to?
15:14 It's been a couple of years.
15:16 - Yeah, it has.
15:17 It has been a couple of years.
15:18 I finished the book almost a year and a half ago.
15:20 So it's wild that it's just now coming out.
15:22 I've been back to quite a few.
15:27 I went back to Capitol Reef in Utah almost immediately.
15:33 - Oh, wow, really?
15:35 - I went back, I think maybe three months
15:39 after my trip technically ended in Hawaii
15:42 because I wanted to go back in a slightly warmer month
15:45 and I wanted to go back
15:46 and do some slot canyons with supervision
15:48 so that in case I fell into something,
15:51 I would have a friend who could make sure I didn't die.
15:54 And that was amazing.
15:57 I highly recommend doing some slot canyons in Utah.
16:00 They are really incredible and a little bit scary.
16:04 And Capitol Reef is one of the less visited parks
16:08 in Utah as well.
16:09 I feel like we like to talk about, you know,
16:11 arches and Bryce Canyon and Zion,
16:13 but Capitol Reef is this weird little,
16:16 it's kind of more central Utah than Southern Utah, I think.
16:19 And it's just, it's in the middle
16:21 of just gorgeous red rock country.
16:23 I'm currently in the middle of trying to plan,
16:27 hopefully an August trip back to Alaska this year.
16:32 I really want to go back,
16:34 hopefully up towards the Arctic Circle
16:36 and do some more trekking or some river rafting.
16:39 And I did a little bit of a, kind of like a punk rock,
16:44 like I don't want to do a normal road trip.
16:46 I want to do like a cranky road trip
16:48 up to the Pacific Northwest.
16:51 This was in November.
16:53 Yeah, so I felt like the sunshine
16:55 in Los Angeles was oppressive.
16:57 And I wanted to go up to the Pacific Northwest
17:01 and check out giant trees,
17:05 but kind of purposefully in the middle of rain and weather
17:09 that we were not getting in Southern California.
17:12 So I went all the way up to Olympic National Park
17:15 and Redwoods National Park in November
17:19 to kind of get a different experience
17:21 than I got when I was there
17:22 in a much more fair weather month during the book.
17:25 - And did you get the moody rainy experience
17:28 you were hoping for?
17:29 - Yeah, definitely, almost too much so.
17:31 But I had the best time kind of getting my wits
17:35 about me in Portland and renting an Airbnb for a few days
17:38 to take a break and eat food
17:41 and then keep going up into Olympic, which was awesome.
17:45 And seeing the fall colors out there was really incredible.
17:48 It felt like they were kind of coming on late last year
17:51 and I was really grateful for it.
17:53 - Nice, oh, that's so cool.
17:55 And did you do that trip alone?
17:57 - No, I did that trip with someone I was dating at the time.
18:00 I think I've had quite a lot of solitude
18:04 and I'm comfortable traveling alone.
18:06 And I'm a lot more comfortable being alone
18:10 probably than I ever have been.
18:12 But that being said,
18:13 I think that when you do as much travel as I do
18:15 for work and writing and projects,
18:19 it's really delightful when I can bring a plus one
18:22 because I think you make more memories
18:25 and there's just one more wrench
18:28 that can get thrown into your trip,
18:30 which is someone else's personality.
18:32 And by that, I mean, there's a very good wrench
18:34 that can get thrown in, a laughing wrench
18:38 that hopefully will induce some smiles.
18:40 - I like that, a good wrench.
18:43 - Yeah, let's just throw a good wrench into this situation.
18:47 - Speaking of wrenches, we're going to take a quick break.
18:51 And when we get back, we'll get into the stoicism movement,
18:55 body image and the outdoors and much more.
18:58 (upbeat music)
19:00 I was curious because there is a little bit of that tension
19:13 throughout the book of the times
19:15 where you were alone in nature
19:17 and then the feelings of loneliness or despair
19:22 or craving like food or technology,
19:26 but you seem the better for those experience.
19:29 So why do you think having some time alone in nature
19:32 can be so good for us as human beings?
19:34 - I think there's a big move towards stoicism right now.
19:37 I know Tim Ferriss is really into it
19:39 and talks about it a lot.
19:40 A lot of the tech, I think a lot of the tech guys do
19:42 in Silicon Valley.
19:44 And what I mean by that is that I think
19:47 there almost comes a time when we have so engineered
19:51 the modern world to be nothing but comfortable for us
19:54 all of the time.
19:56 So much so that it's actually,
19:58 it feels like a respite or a vacation to go
20:02 and be less comfortable for a while.
20:07 So I think that's why we're seeing a lot of movement
20:11 in like glamping where people wanna be comfortable,
20:15 but they also wanna be outside and cold.
20:17 We're seeing big movements and even like van life,
20:22 you see these people buying these really expensive vans,
20:24 but it's really because they wanna pare down their life.
20:27 It's like life has gotten too big and too comfortable.
20:29 And so we're trying to figure out how we can fit
20:31 a modern comfortable life, like through the eye of a needle
20:35 and figure out how to come out a little bit more tailored
20:40 and simple and clean maybe as a result.
20:45 But I think that there's also a lot of busy moments
20:50 that the mind does when it is surrounded
20:55 by things that are man-made.
21:01 And when you get out in nature, there is a level of quiet
21:05 that is totally unlike anything you'll experience in a city,
21:10 even when it is a quiet moment.
21:11 And then I think I also talk about in the book,
21:16 there's a wonderful Eckhart Tolle quote
21:18 about how when you're walking around in a city,
21:23 even if you're looking at like a garden or something,
21:27 it's like manicured and things are kind of placed
21:30 in certain positions and everything has right angles.
21:34 And your brain is processing all of these ideas
21:38 that are man-made ideas.
21:39 And so you're creating language as you're walking around
21:41 a cityscape, whereas in like a forest,
21:45 maybe it's similarly dense, but it's all of these weird vines
21:50 and bushes and flowers and trees and things
21:53 that have naturally grown creature-like
21:56 and kind of crawled into each other.
21:58 And I think that there's something
21:59 really meditative about that.
22:01 - And there's the kind of awesome size of it, right?
22:04 That can make you feel small in such a good way.
22:07 You talk about your own journey,
22:10 like building confidence in the wilderness.
22:13 And I was just curious what you might say to other women
22:17 who are at the beginning of their wilderness journey.
22:20 - Yeah, I would say that,
22:22 I think that spending time in the wilderness,
22:25 whether it's alone or with trusted friends and confidants
22:28 or even a guide is perhaps even more important
22:32 for female identifying people,
22:34 because especially with all the body image nonsense
22:41 that we're thrown on a daily basis,
22:43 I think having something that is wholly dependent
22:48 on your body, but not in terms of an aesthetic way,
22:50 it's more like a strength and perseverance way.
22:54 I think that there's something really somatically healing
22:56 about that.
22:58 I'm someone who actually had an eating disorder in college.
23:01 And I remember when I was in my,
23:04 yeah, I guess kind of late twenties,
23:06 and I had come out of it a few years before,
23:09 but I never really felt a hundred percent comfortable
23:11 in my body until I was doing mountaineering
23:15 and climbing these big trails
23:18 and doing these huge solo backpacking trips
23:20 and carrying 40 pounds on my back,
23:22 that I realized that my body is,
23:27 yes, my body can turn into this like city thing
23:31 where I wear a dress and I wear makeup.
23:32 My body can also be this really incredible tool
23:35 that can do amazing things.
23:37 And it sounds really trite or overly simplistic,
23:40 but I've heard other people mention this notion
23:45 that there's something really transformative
23:49 about doing big, hard things in the outdoors
23:51 where no one cares what you look like
23:53 or what kind of makeup you're wearing,
23:54 or if there are dead mosquitoes smashed on your arms
23:57 because it was a mosquito-y evening.
24:00 You know, it's really nice to feel your own prowess
24:04 in a completely different way.
24:06 - Yeah, yeah, it's so empowering, right?
24:10 - Exactly, yeah, that's a great word for it.
24:12 - I think it was your friend Kate
24:15 who was kind of talking about like this ancient journey,
24:18 this kind of hermetic wandering,
24:20 and that she said that this roaming in the wilderness
24:24 is something that many women in their early 30s
24:26 need to go through when they realize
24:28 they won't be 25 forever.
24:30 And I was just curious if you think this is a journey
24:34 you could have taken earlier in your life.
24:36 - Yeah, it's a good question.
24:37 I think my gut instinct is that
24:42 I either probably would have lost interest
24:46 and maybe wanted to go do something else halfway through,
24:50 or I would have maybe been turning to substances
24:54 to self-soothe much more so than I did.
24:57 I was mostly sober.
24:59 I was pretty much sober the entire year,
25:02 except for a couple of little moments
25:03 where I drink wine with a friend or get like a beer.
25:06 But yeah, I think that when I was younger,
25:10 I was much quicker to reach for things
25:13 to get me out of discomfort.
25:14 And I think so much of the journey in "Feral"
25:17 is about sitting in the discomfort so much so
25:22 that it like overtakes you at times.
25:26 - And then coming through to the other side of that, right?
25:32 And seeing what you've learned or what waits
25:36 and realizing that you don't need to necessarily numb out,
25:39 right, in those tough moments.
25:41 Yeah.
25:42 - And I think that that's something
25:43 that I've heard monastics talk about it
25:45 in meditation retreats I've been on as well.
25:48 Like there's this notion that like, oh, like I'm cold,
25:50 but you don't necessarily have to like get up
25:52 from your meditation and like go get a jacket or a wrap.
25:55 You could just tell yourself like, well,
25:58 this cold is a sensation that I am feeling right now
26:03 and I'm not gonna die because it's only a little bit cold.
26:07 And in 15 minutes when I'm done sitting here,
26:12 I will calmly go and get something warmer.
26:15 And I think that a lot of the year,
26:17 that's like a very small, small piece of the philosophy
26:20 that I tried to enter the year with.
26:22 - Yeah, I mean, it was powerful.
26:26 I felt like it kind of, you know,
26:28 came through a lot of the pages.
26:30 Like I felt I was in that discomfort with you.
26:33 It was very visceral.
26:34 I also wanted to completely moving away from discomfort,
26:39 ask you about Instagram.
26:42 Maybe that's a different kind of discomfort.
26:44 (laughing)
26:47 But when you were in Death Valley,
26:48 you were talking about visiting a spot
26:50 where there were all of these people jockeying
26:52 to get the best photo and you kind of shared
26:55 your own experiences and this realization
26:57 that like building an itinerary around trying
27:00 to get this perfect moment isn't always very satisfying.
27:04 And what would you say, like how can leaving the camera
27:08 behind help us experience nature
27:11 or just living more fully?
27:13 What's your philosophy around that?
27:14 - I actually love this question
27:17 because I will frequently go on hikes
27:20 where I do not take any photos
27:22 and I'll call them my just for me hikes.
27:25 - Oh, I love that.
27:26 - I think especially when you are a big Instagrammer
27:28 or when travel becomes a part of your job,
27:32 it can be really tricky to almost never have a vacation
27:35 because the thing that you love is now also the thing
27:38 that's paying your rent.
27:39 And so finding ways to create boundaries
27:42 within your own life becomes really crucial.
27:45 I'd also love to talk about the idea of overcrowding
27:48 at specific areas that are maybe social media
27:51 or Instagram famous in different national parks.
27:54 I'm friends with the Grand Teton superintendent,
27:57 Chip Jenkins, who is delightful.
28:00 And he has always said to us travel writers,
28:04 like you have no idea how much power you wield
28:07 because if you talk about something in a big article,
28:11 people are gonna go there and they notice it
28:13 in places like Jackson Hole
28:15 where they are really heavily impacted by tourism
28:18 because they have beautiful mountains
28:20 and national parks all around them.
28:23 And so I think that one of the ways that I found
28:28 that was best to alleviate some of that feeling of,
28:33 oh, like every trail I'm going to is overcrowded
28:37 or, oh, like I just Googled these three blogs
28:40 and they're all saying the same five trails.
28:42 There's gotta be like other cool ones.
28:44 These are just, these must just be the five
28:45 that everyone does.
28:46 And so this is gonna sound so,
28:50 for anyone who's not a millennial that's listening,
28:52 I feel like this is gonna sound so simple and cheesy,
28:55 but like just going and like talking to a ranger
28:58 or calling the ranger station.
29:00 I also don't love picking up my phone and I get scared,
29:04 especially during in 2020, during the pandemic,
29:06 I didn't love going up to someone and wearing a mask
29:09 and being like, hey, what trail would you recommend?
29:13 But to be totally honest,
29:14 I got some of the best recommendations
29:16 of the least crowded places
29:18 because the rangers have hiked all over that park.
29:21 And they're not only,
29:22 they're gonna know which ones are crowded,
29:24 they're gonna tell you probably to go at sunrise or go late.
29:27 If there is a crowded one
29:29 that you're dying to get a photo of,
29:31 and then they're gonna have a couple of recommendations
29:33 for really similar topographies
29:35 that you could go hike through and photograph.
29:38 - I love that, that's such a good tip.
29:40 And I imagine an underutilized resource.
29:43 And you're right, travel writers and editors
29:46 have so much power,
29:47 like the love that you are thinking about that in your work.
29:52 I feel like that segues into this other question
29:55 that I wanted to ask you about.
29:57 What do you think America's park system means in 2023?
30:02 - Yeah, I mean, I think the national parks
30:06 and the outdoor industry as a whole
30:08 have been in the middle of a reckoning
30:10 for the last three to five years.
30:12 I think first it was trying to include more diverse voices
30:16 in the way of female writers and adventurers.
30:20 Then it moved into kind of LGBTQ issues and people of color.
30:24 And right now I know that there is a huge movement
30:28 both within the outdoor industry and the park service
30:31 to not only include more indigenous voices,
30:35 but also to increase tribal co-management of national parks.
30:40 So places like Joshua Tree, which is one of the,
30:43 I think it's usually one of the top 10
30:44 most visited national parks.
30:46 I believe just a month or two ago,
30:49 they finally signed off on getting the first official step
30:54 of tribal co-management to pass through the review process.
31:01 So I believe that that is happening now in 2023.
31:04 - That's so cool.
31:05 - Yeah, so I think that I just talked about a few ways
31:08 that they are improving in terms of access and equity
31:13 and telling more whole stories
31:15 about the thousands of years of history in these lands
31:19 that were essentially stolen from native peoples.
31:23 But now we have a lot of back and forth discussion
31:26 between the National Park Service
31:27 and a lot of affiliated tribes to allow for things
31:30 like subsistence hunting and fishing.
31:31 And like I said, co-management of certain parks and lands.
31:36 - Absolutely.
31:38 Well, returning to kind of a specific place or park,
31:42 Alaska seemed like it was such a pivotal time
31:46 in your journey, so much happened there.
31:48 In what ways was that a turning point for you
31:51 and how did kind of Alaska fit into that as a landscape?
31:56 - Alaska is my absolute favorite thing to talk about.
32:00 So I'm so glad you asked this.
32:02 Yeah, you're right.
32:05 I think that the pandemic was roaring.
32:09 I was literally going through a breakup
32:12 in the middle of the largest national park in the country.
32:16 I didn't technically have a home to return home to.
32:21 And yet I was also in the middle of some of the biggest,
32:27 wildest, most trail-free, road-free,
32:32 no visitor center landscapes that you can visit
32:37 in the country or in the world perhaps.
32:39 And I think that there was a depth of sorrow
32:45 that I was experiencing on a personal level
32:51 that was somehow matched by this unyielding, vast landscape
32:56 that felt harsh but not cruel.
33:04 And it was really spellbinding and healing
33:09 in a way that I don't think I would have expected.
33:12 I think that it could have been really easy
33:14 to be afraid of such a vast landscape at that moment,
33:16 but there was something so mysterious and beautiful about it
33:20 that I think it piqued my curiosity
33:22 rather than my fear in my mind.
33:25 And I ended up forming this kind of,
33:30 hopefully lifelong love affair with Alaska.
33:34 I really fell in love with just how the land
33:39 theoretically used to look and be,
33:43 because I think that we, in the lower 48,
33:46 in a way we're spoiled because we have these parks
33:49 with trails and visitor centers,
33:50 and some of them have wifi now, which is crazy.
33:54 But up in Alaska, you'll have these like
33:56 three million acre parks with like one road,
34:01 and that's it, and no trails.
34:03 And so you can access different areas,
34:08 but you have to bend to the land's will
34:12 rather than the other way around,
34:13 because it's not like there's bridges over the rivers,
34:15 there's not trails going over a muddy field.
34:19 And there's something really humbling about that
34:23 that feels ancient and important.
34:27 And I mean, you will totally get weird blisters
34:31 and have cold nights in your tent,
34:33 but you will also experience
34:34 what earth is supposed to look like.
34:37 And just also the amount of wildlife you see,
34:42 it really, it almost made me sad,
34:44 because I feel like you don't see that kind of wildlife
34:46 in the lower 48.
34:47 And I would bet that that or more
34:51 is what it used to be like,
34:53 because they had these undeveloped tracts of land
34:57 that they could roam free on.
34:59 And yeah, it's kind of bittersweet,
35:03 but I'm really grateful
35:04 that we do have so much protected land up there.
35:07 - I mean, it's such a magnificent place,
35:10 and it was interesting.
35:12 I think, what park was it that you could only visit by plane
35:16 because of the pandemic?
35:19 - There are, I believe, four or five in Alaska
35:23 that you can only fly or boat into.
35:27 Alaska does not lend itself to roads.
35:30 There's a lot of weird fjords
35:34 and just pretty intense mountain ranges.
35:39 But I think the two that you're referring to
35:41 might be Gates of the Arctic and Kobuk Valley.
35:45 Those are the two with no roads, no trails,
35:48 nothing to help you other than you hire a guide
35:52 and they land on this gravel river bank,
35:56 and you just kind of get out
35:57 and watch the plane take off
36:00 and hope that you brought enough snacks for five days.
36:03 - And what a trippy experience,
36:08 A, to kind of see so much land by air.
36:10 What was that like?
36:12 - I mean, totally riveting,
36:15 especially coming into Gates of the Arctic
36:17 in early September
36:18 when the tundra is actively changing colors
36:21 'cause they have such a short summer season up there,
36:24 that watching these huge mountain ranges
36:28 in the Brooks Range,
36:29 these huge undulating peaks turn bright crimson
36:34 and bright yellow and marigold,
36:38 it was really like flying down
36:41 into an artist's palette of paint splotches,
36:44 except the paint was the different trees and shrubs
36:47 that grow along the tundra.
36:50 And also, like I said,
36:53 it can be a little bittersweet
36:55 because you notice how much earth there is
37:00 and how much we have impacted that earth.
37:03 And we might think that we're like these small little things
37:06 that don't have that much of an impact
37:10 on how wild and rugged the landscape is,
37:13 but we definitely do.
37:16 I mean, that sounds like really simplistic,
37:18 but when you see a landscape that is millions of acres,
37:23 large, and you see that there are literally no roads
37:28 or trails or buildings or light sources
37:31 or anything really impeding it,
37:33 it's kind of eyeopening
37:37 because you realize that maybe there's a way to have
37:40 like a happy medium that we haven't seemed to achieve
37:44 in some of the more developed Western states.
37:47 - Yeah.
37:48 Well, kind of pulling back out,
37:51 and I imagine this is an almost impossible question
37:54 to answer, but I will ask it anyhow.
37:57 If you had to kind of pick a single lesson or lessons
38:01 that you took away from this journey,
38:03 what might they be or it be?
38:05 - One of the things that was really important to me
38:07 when writing "Feral" was accurately showing
38:11 that going through a transformational journey
38:16 is not ever gonna be this neat, linear packaged product
38:20 like we might see in a movie or on TV
38:23 where it kind of has to have this three-act structure.
38:26 And I think that we're really blessed in books
38:29 that we can explore slightly messier life structures
38:33 and life happenings.
38:35 And so understanding that my own path toward healing
38:40 and change was gonna be this like messy, funny,
38:45 strange, chaotic, up and down rollercoaster
38:50 of a year, and trying to accurately portray that
38:54 in the book, I think helped me ultimately learn the lesson
38:59 that life is simultaneously gorgeous and deadly.
39:04 I think I talk a lot about this
39:07 in the last national park in Hawaii,
39:09 like looking out over these vast lava fields
39:13 and watching the way in which new earth gets created
39:18 was really eyeopening because basically you have
39:21 these like noxious gases that I think could kill you
39:24 and you have this molten rock
39:26 and it's not a very hospitable place.
39:28 And yet that is how so much of the thing
39:33 that gives us life is created.
39:35 And I thought that there was something really beautiful
39:37 and kind of dark and mysterious about that.
39:39 So I would say that for me,
39:44 one of the biggest takeaways was learning how to lean
39:47 into that kind of deep discomfort,
39:49 understanding that it is actually very natural.
39:52 The earth in fact mimics it.
39:54 So a lot of times the feelings we experience
39:56 are quite ancient things that the earth itself
40:00 moves through as well.
40:01 And I think once you realize that,
40:05 it can give you a lot more patience for yourself
40:07 as you're on this kind of messy, radical journey
40:12 towards wholeness.
40:13 - Well, I won't reveal too much of how the book ended,
40:16 but I really did appreciate the kind of strong,
40:19 very centered note of it.
40:21 You know, it felt very empowering
40:23 and you talked a little bit about what's happened since,
40:26 but what does life look like for you now?
40:28 - Life has looked like taking a lot more time
40:32 to focus on my mental health
40:35 because it is really important for us
40:38 to keep our minds safe and happy
40:42 as we continue through adulthood.
40:45 And I travel a ton internationally now.
40:50 I'm trying to branch out
40:52 into some of the more international national parks
40:55 and learn more about biodiversity
40:59 and how climate change is affecting different communities
41:02 in other countries and how it's affecting landscapes
41:06 and wildlife across the globe.
41:09 And trying to be an advocate for nature,
41:12 not only in my own country, but hopefully the world over.
41:16 - Any particular places that you're focused on right now?
41:19 - Yeah, a bit.
41:20 I just went to Antarctica on my first ever trip there
41:24 and learning about, there is a hole in the ozone there.
41:29 There's a tourism board that's trying to manage
41:31 how many cruise ships are going down,
41:33 but also it's kind of exponentially increasing right now.
41:35 So I'm doing a little bit of research work
41:38 on the sustainability surrounding Antarctic tourism
41:40 because I mean, even more than Alaska,
41:44 that is a huge, relatively unexplored,
41:48 undeveloped piece of land that houses a lot of wildlife
41:51 and fish and birds and whales.
41:56 And so it's really critical to have places like that
41:59 stay protected.
42:02 And then also I got to go on my first trip
42:06 to Africa last year, which was really eyeopening
42:08 and learning how they manage poaching and wildlife
42:12 and different park and preserve designations
42:15 was really eyeopening as well.
42:17 There's not necessarily one answer when it comes
42:21 to how land is best preserved,
42:24 but I don't know if you've been reading
42:26 about like the 30 by 30 initiative that President Biden
42:29 and a bunch of other world leaders have signed onto,
42:33 but it's this idea that we need to protect 30%
42:37 of the world's lands and waters by 2030
42:42 or we are facing massive species loss.
42:45 And preserving doesn't necessarily mean setting aside
42:48 as totally untrammeled, undeveloped national parks.
42:52 It could mean farmers setting aside a certain amount
42:57 of acreage to allow wildlife corridors to migrate through.
43:01 So things like that, it's really cool to see
43:03 how other countries are taking it upon themselves
43:07 to make conservation look a bit different
43:10 than it does here, but still effective.
43:12 - Yeah, absolutely.
43:13 And it's so important that we work together, right?
43:15 - Yeah, exactly.
43:16 And I think that even though the national parks
43:19 are often credited as America's best idea
43:21 because we have this American exceptionalism gene
43:25 in all of us, I think that there are other countries
43:30 that are really improving upon it.
43:32 Like I think it's Chile and Patagonia.
43:35 They have like, they recently or somewhat recently
43:39 connected a bunch of different parks
43:41 and I think former farmlands that Vaqueros inhabited.
43:45 And now it's huge coastal fjord landscape
43:49 that goes from north to south for many, many miles.
43:53 And it allows the wildlife to move from place to place
43:58 pretty unencumbered, which is great.
44:00 - Those are the, maybe the good wrenches
44:04 that we're seeing.
44:05 - Yes, we need to throw some more good wrenches
44:08 and just like, let's just have more untrammeled
44:13 wildlife corridors.
44:15 I mean, even things like in Los Angeles,
44:18 there's a lot of talk right now
44:19 because we had a celebrity mountain lion die
44:22 a month or two ago named P-22.
44:25 And there's a lot of talk about getting more
44:28 like wilderness bridges over the big freeways
44:31 so that big cats and large mammals can more easily migrate
44:35 around to our very few wild spaces in our big city.
44:40 - That's cool.
44:40 Nice to see the bigger cities stepping in in that way
44:43 and finding ways to make it work.
44:45 - Yeah, and I think that's something
44:46 we might've even taken from Europe.
44:48 I know they're much more common over there.
44:49 So it's a great example of like something that we
44:52 might be learning from other countries.
44:53 - Yeah, is there anything else that you would like to add?
44:57 Other wisdom you'd like to impart?
44:59 - Just the parting notion that if anyone is contemplating
45:01 taking a really massive journey like this
45:05 that terrifies you, I would say,
45:07 definitely go out and do it.
45:09 Tell someone where you're going and make sure you have
45:11 a little bit of a nest egg in case
45:13 something goes horribly wrong.
45:15 But you're never gonna be younger than you are
45:17 in this moment right now.
45:19 And there's no better time than the present
45:23 to test yourself against the beautiful, chaotic space
45:28 and the chaotic, strange, difficult landscapes
45:33 of the American wilderness.
45:35 - Excellent advice.
45:36 Emily, if people wanna find more about you,
45:38 where can they find you?
45:40 - I can be found on Instagram @brazenbackpacker.
45:44 And I also have a column for Outside Magazine
45:47 that goes into the parks from a more
45:49 service-oriented perspective.
45:51 So exploring trails and hotel recommendations
45:54 and things like that.
45:56 And then at the end of the book,
45:57 which is a much more personal, like PG-13 rated journey
46:02 of behind the scenes of the column.
46:04 (both laughing)
46:06 - Okay, well, thank you so much for being with us today.
46:11 I really appreciate it.
46:12 - Thank you for having me.
46:13 This was awesome.
46:14 (upbeat music)
46:16 - And that's it for this week's episode.
46:19 Thanks, Emily, and thanks everyone for listening.
46:22 As you heard, Emily shared her social media handles,
46:25 which we'll link to in the show notes,
46:26 along with a link to buying her book and her audio book.
46:29 And if you wanna find out more about Emily,
46:31 you can visit her website, brazenbackpacker.com.
46:34 Before we part, I want to share a new segment
46:39 that we're testing, inspired by our very popular
46:42 and often very challenging travel trivia game,
46:45 which is a regular part of our newsletters.
46:48 Our copy editor, Pat Tompkins,
46:50 who was very nearly a contestant on Jeopardy,
46:53 puts together these devilish quizzes,
46:56 so she is the one to blame for any stumpers.
46:59 Okay, this week's question.
47:02 Which country has the most islands?
47:05 Canada, Indonesia, Sweden, or the Philippines?
47:09 I'm not gonna tell you the answer now,
47:11 and of course you can just Google it,
47:13 but if you are too busy or you're just really patient,
47:16 we'll also reveal the answer in next week's episode.
47:19 So stay tuned for more.
47:21 (upbeat music)
47:23 Ready for more unpacking?
47:25 Visit afar.com and be sure to follow us
47:27 on Instagram and Twitter.
47:29 The magazine is @afarmedia.
47:31 If you enjoyed today's exploration,
47:34 I hope you'll come back for more great stories.
47:37 Subscribing makes this easy.
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47:45 And be sure to rate and review the show.
47:47 It helps other travelers find it.
47:50 This season, we also want to hear from you.
47:53 Is there a travel dilemma, trend,
47:55 or topic you'd like us to explore?
47:57 Drop us a line at afar.com/feedback
47:59 or email us at unpacked@afar.com.
48:03 This has been "Unpacked," a production of Afar Media.
48:06 The podcast is produced by Aislinn Green
48:08 and Nikki Galteland.
48:09 Music composition by Chris Collin.
48:12 And remember, the world is complicated.
48:14 We're here to help you unpack it.
48:16 (upbeat music)
48:19 (whooshing)
48:21 (silence)
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