by Vera Hurst aka “Missing Kink”. I have always been an outdoor, rugged kind of girl. Spending hours in the yard looking at bugs, walking barefoot in the yard, playing baseball and catching tadpoles were the things that took up my time as a child. Through Girl Scouting, I learned to camp, make fire and live. It felt like home being in a tent in the wilderness. But, I grew up, went to college, met someone, got married, had kids. Life showed up with its stressors and hormonal issues and anger. It was normal to feel upset when you had all this happening at the same time, right? Back then doctors dismissed these things as woman’s problems and I was just told to deal with it.

by Ally Lang. I #hikeOctober because the outdoors is my happy place. I discovered in my early 20’s that staying in one place was, at once; uncomfortable , yet what most of society expected – settling down. Add to that a multi-focal mental illness diagnosis and it spelled disaster. From and even earlier age, I’ve always felt more calm outdoors. Nature has that healing quality that seems to be neglected as technology moves us indoors. It slows me. I thinking of hiking as a medicine. Forget to take it and my system is thrown into a dysfunctional state.

I’m Casey Chon, and I #hikeOctober to raise awareness of diversity and of the outdoors. In third grade, I read a book called Halfway to the Sky. My nine-year-old self became obsessed with the Appalachian Trail and hiking. However, growing up in the suburbs of New York City, I was nowhere near the Appalachian Trail, and you can’t really go hardcore hiking in the suburbs. I played a lot of sports, but never went camping and did “real” outdoors-y things.