A Hike to Remember: Adventure Is Calling
A few years ago, a friend of mine floated the idea: “Let’s do a girls backcountry hiking trip in Algonquin Park.”
It sounded awesome. Whatever we could carry on our backs, that’s what we had. Three days of hiking, camping, and hauling ourselves through the wild. No flushable toilets. No running water. Just us, the forest, and whatever trouble we got ourselves into.
I was all in, and before I knew it, we had a group of six women ready to head out into the wilderness together.
I’ve always loved being outdoors. Long runs, kayaking, a weekend of camping, I’m in. When Greg and I got together, I was the one who brought the camping gear into the relationship, and we make sure to bust it out a couple times a year. So when the chance came up to combine my love of the outdoors with a group of badass women, I said yes.
There was something about this trip that felt unconventional. A group of women packing it in, hiking it out, and roughing it for three days. I loved that part. It wasn’t just an adventure. It was our adventure. Some of us were seasoned, some of us were definitely not, but that made it even better.
The days leading up to our trip brought a ridiculous amount of rain, and by the time we hit the trail, Algonquin was a soggy mess. What was supposed to be a nice four-hour hike to our first site turned into about seven hours of mudslides, raging streams, and hills so slick we had to literally pull each other up by hand.
Instead of hopping over little creeks, we were scooting across logs on our butts, praying we wouldn’t fall in. And every single one of us was always one wrong step away from rolling an ankle. It’s honestly a miracle no one had to be airlifted out.
By the end of day one, we were wrecked, muddy, soaked, and pretty sure we’d bitten off more than we could chew. But we finally made it to camp, and there was no turning back.
I took a note in my notes app on my phone (which I’m so glad I did) of the hilarious things that were said during the hikes so I wouldn’t forget. Some of the highlights were:
“Do f*cking trolls live here?”
“Who lets people just wander into these woods?”
“My low is yet to come.”
and one of my personal favourites… “Okay so when one of us slips and goes down the waterfall, what is the f*cking plan?!”
Day two was more of the same. Blisters. Tears. Toenails sacrificed. Swearing flying in every direction. At least once an hour, someone insisted the group should just go on without them. Half-joking. Half not. One of my favourite quotes from that day was, “Jesussss take the wheel!!” It still makes me burst out laughing even as I write this.
By day three, when we finally stumbled out of the forest with no band-aids to spare, way too much leftover tuna, and smelling worse than we ever thought possible, we were all emotional. Not because of the pain, but because we had frickin’ done it. We survived. And we survived together.
And the wildest part of all is that we all LOVED it and would do it again in a heartbeat… though maybe with less tuna and a little more boxed wine.
This is the classic BEFORE shot. All smiles, clean clothes, and no idea what we were in for.
There are no stories quite like those stories. The kind you only get when you are pushed way past your comfort zone with people who become your lifeline. That trip bonded us. We have been on more adventures since. But that first one will always take the cake.
It also helped remind me of something I’d forgotten. Adventure is a part of who I am. Somewhere along the way, between being a mom, building a career, and creating a life, I stopped prioritizing it. I told myself it was fine, that adventure was something I could let go of as I got older. That was total BS.
Adventure matters. And not just to me.
Here is why I think it’s worth prioritizing for all of us:
It connects us. Share an adventure with others and you will walk away bonded. Being out of your element forces you to be present, and that presence builds real connection.
It makes you tougher. You figure out real quick that you can do hard things. When life throws curveballs later, you already know you have the grit to handle it.
It gives life meaning. Adventure reminds you that life is not just work, laundry, and paying bills. It’s short but also long enough that you get to fill it with good stuff if you choose to.
That Algonquin trip gave me all of that, in spades. And while not every adventure has to be a three-day mud-soaked death hike, we all need something that gets us outside our routine and a little outside our comfort zone.
Adventure is calling. Maybe it’s time you listened.
“It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads of any particular era... It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts... sunrises and sunsets.”
