This winter, a New Hampshire Appalachian Mountain Club hike leader posted an essay about her return to hiking. MJo McCarthy writes that for decades, she avoided the outdoors because of a sexual assault that happened on a New Hampshire trail when she was young.
“It kept me off of trail for many, many years, and then I rediscovered it,” Mcarthy said. “And I almost never knew, and it's been so fabulous. I don't want that to happen to someone else.”
NHPR Morning Edition producer Jackie Harris spoke with McCarthy about a new series of hikes she's leading to promote sexual assault awareness for the New Hampshire AMC chapter.
Transcript:
You wrote this essay on the AMC website about your experience with sexual assault while hiking. How did your experience affect your relationship with the outdoors?
I did not feel safe alone outdoors after that. It was very wrecked. I tried over decades because I'm just sort of naturally an outdoorsy person, and being outside offers something that I think I was just sort of built for. But I never got comfortable. So every time I would try, I would always be out there looking over my shoulder, worried, and it just wasn't worth the stress. So I just never got into it or back to it.
So what changed? How did you get back into it then?
It was a 2020 thing. A lot of people had a bad 2020, but a lot went right for me. It'll sound weird at first – I had a health scare, and it really shook me up. I went to get healthier, and I started in my basement on my treadmill, just walking. I would walk for four minutes and I'd try to run for one, and I'd do that repeatedly for 40 minutes every day.
That was in late fall. And by spring I could run six miles, but only in my basement. I wanted to take it outside, but I was afraid to be seen running outside. I was self-conscious, so I went to my rail trail because I thought it would be private with my dog. And I fell in love with nature, and I did so much of it and went to conservation areas and whatnot.
And I realized I needed to learn safety practices. So I signed up for an AMC hike of Mount Cabot and found a community and an absolute love for hiking with the AMC, and discovered that there are so many other women out there all the time. It's been wonderful.
I follow a lot of Facebook hiking groups, and there are a lot of groups specifically for women. There's a lot of posts about the fear of hiking alone, of being out on the trail while also loving it. And in your AMC blog post, you write that you have to take care to be empowering and not fear mongering, but also wanting to raise awareness about sexual assault. Can you tell me more about that distinction?
There is so much on the internet, as everybody knows, and in the media, and we see things that happen all over the country and everybody's reactions to them. And sometimes, that can – whether or not you've had a sexual assault experience – that in itself can almost be assaulting because it adds this fear of doing anything everywhere. And what you don't see is the faces and the stories of the women that are out there doing things all the time.
If you look in some of the online community groups, you'll see that there are women all over our White Mountains enjoying them safely all the time. On my first Mount Cabot hike with the AMC, in the middle of the hike, in a remote area above 3,000 feet, we encountered a woman with her very large dog who had been backpacking for five days just because she wanted to. It was pivotal to me, and she has no idea that she was a superhero. She was just an ordinary person. And I've become one of those people out there doing that. And I guess I want to share that message.
What do you want to communicate to hikers about how to get outdoors responsibly?
Men and women, when they encounter each other, in my experience on trail, are often having two very different conversations. I've noticed this with my hike leading peers too
For example, if we're on a hike and we're leading and we see two men who are very unprepared coming up the trail. My male peers seem to immediately zero in on safety issues for the other people -- hyperthermia, they're not dressed, how could this go badly? And I will have that reaction second. My first reaction is they're not prepared. What are they doing here? Is there a threat to me? Something's not right. They're not thinking well.
When I encounter a solo male on the trail, if they stop to talk to me and they are standing in the middle of the trail and not moving, they're between me and my direction of travel. This happens frequently. I cannot have a fully equal conversation with the person – even if they're the most well-meaning person in the world – if they're blocking my direction of travel. I'm always conscious of feeling a little bit trapped, and they may be completely oblivious to that. So just things like that if people are aware of them maybe we can reduce that barrier to feeling comfortable out there.
What else do you want listeners to know before we head out?
It's important to remember that sexual assault doesn't only affect women. Men experience sexual assault, too. It can affect any of us out there. It really is something that we all need to be aware of because it affects us all. And if we can have open conversations, not have so much taboo and speak about it more openly, maybe we can help understand and raise the comfort level out there on trail and take care of each other so that we can all enjoy the outdoors, because it really is too good to miss.
