blissful hiker ❤︎ inspiring you to hike your own hike
Long-distance backpacker Alison “Blissful Hiker” Young has logged more than 14,000 miles across six continents, tackling iconic routes such as New Zealand’s Te Araroa, Europe’s Pyrenean Haute Route, South Africa’s Drakensberg Traverse, Nepal’s Great Himalayan Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail in the United States.
An award-winning professional musician and syndicated American Public Media host, Alison approaches storytelling through a deeply attuned ear. Her series of intimate personal essays — coupled with field recordings gathered on trail — trace a path of self-discovery as a middle-aged, titanium-reinforced cancer thriver. They reveal the often unglamorous but essential truths of empowerment, inviting listeners to find the courage to blaze their own trails on the journey we call life.
blissful hiker ❤︎ inspiring you to hike your own hike
Inhabiting the Vulnerable Space
As Blissful heals from a bilateral mastectomy due to breast cancer, she reflects on the person she wants to be going forward.
- Blissful is incredibly lucky in only having to undergo a radical surgery to rid her body of cancer.
- Step by step walking through her neighborhood, she slowly recovers back to her hiker self.
- The American writer Joyce Carol Oates speaks of the moment we realize that loss is part of our experience. “When that starts to happen to you, it is quite stunning.”
- Being out of control with illness is falling-to-the-knees humbling for Blissful and it's a challenge to stay positive and "bad ass."
- But she's inspired by the late actor Julian Sands who spoke of climbing summits as "not so much a celebration of oneself, but the eradication of one’s self-consciousness. And so on these walks you lose yourself, you become a vessel of energy in harmony, hopefully with your environment.”
- What a way to live!
MUSIC: Poema del Pastor Coya by Angel Lasala as played by Alison Young, flute and Vicki Seldon, piano.
