From Addiction Recovery to a 100-Mile Solo Hike: How Jenni Found Confidence on the Trail

What happens when the safety net you've relied on your entire life suddenly disappears?

In this inspiring episode of Roam Alone, Jenni shares her remarkable journey from addiction recovery, financial hardship, and self-doubt to becoming a confident solo backpacker and hiker.

Although she has been sober for more than 20 years, Jenni admits that she spent much of her adult life depending on her mother for support, especially financially. After her mother's death, Jenni inherited money but soon found herself facing bankruptcy and a difficult reality: she had never learned how to fully trust herself.

Then she discovered hiking.

What began with a single night sleeping in a tent in a friend's backyard slowly evolved into solo camping trips, overnight backpacking adventures, and eventually multi-day wilderness treks. Along the way, Jenni faced fear, made mistakes, learned hard lessons, and developed a level of confidence she never imagined possible.

Most recently, she completed a solo 100-mile hike across Georgia over two weeks—a challenge that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Jenni's journey through addiction and long-term recovery
 • Losing her mother and navigating life without a safety net
 • Bankruptcy and rebuilding her life
 • Why she chose solo hiking instead of group adventures
 • Her first overnight camping experiences
 • Mistakes she made as a beginner backpacker
 • How solo travel and hiking build confidence
 • Lessons learned from spending days alone on the trail
 • Completing a 100-mile solo trek in Georgia
 • The connection between outdoor adventure and personal growth
 • Advice for women interested in solo hiking and backpacking

This episode is a powerful reminder that confidence isn't something you're born with—it's something you build, one courageous step at a time.

Roam Alone is hosted by Theresa Stephens.

Instagram: @theresaannstephens

Facebook: /theresastephens

Facebook: /RoamAlone

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to Rome Alone. I'm your host, Teresa Stevens. Today you'll meet Jenny, whose journey to self-reliance began after a lifetime of depending on others. Despite more than 20 years of sobriety, Jenny struggled with financial independence and personal confidence after the death of her mother, who had long been her safety net. What happened next surprised even her. A passion for solo hiking and backpacking was sparked that would eventually lead her to complete a 100-mile two-week trek through Georgia alone. In this conversation, Jenny shares how solo hiking helped her overcome fear, embrace responsibility, build resilience, and discover strengths she never knew she had. Whether you're interested in solo travel, outdoor adventure, addiction, recovery, or personal growth, this episode is packed with inspiration and practical lessons about finding confidence one step at a time. Let's get started. So my guest today is Jenny Bell. Welcome to the show, Jenny. I'm so glad you came on today. Hi, thanks for inviting me. It's an honor. Absolutely. We did a little talking before ever getting started with the interview, and you just wrapped up this amazing 16-day wilderness trip all alone. And I cannot wait to start talking about that. But before we get started, I wanted to get a little sense of where you were in your life and who you were, just a few years leading up to these solo hikes that you started to go on.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Yeah. So life was is I was kind of a mess not very long ago. My mom passed away about 10 years ago, and we'll talk about that a little bit more. But that was kind of the beginning of sort of an unraveling for me. I mean, it's you know, not unique to have lost my mother. We'd had a complicated relationship. I had serious problems with alcohol and drugs and shoplifting and ditching school and you know, all that stuff. Was in treatment centers 11 times. You know, it was rough on my mom, but she did everything that she could in those years to keep me as safe as she possibly could. It's the world from completely destroying me. She paid a lot of money for treatment, but you know, um, she also, like during, you know, my last years when I was pretty much unemployable and and all of that. She really just paid for me to survive long enough for me to figure it out. Um so so you know, my mom loved me unconditionally. She was extremely generous with me, and she did. She helped me get to that point where I finally could get sober. That became this, it was this codependent relationship that didn't automatically change as soon as I quit drinking, right? I mean, it was a lifelong, lifelong patterns that we had, and they continued until her death. And a lot of that, a huge amount of that was financial. My mom had money, she was very generous, and she wanted, I think she wanted my life to be as easy as it could be, given my difficulties.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Do you think that as helpful as that was, that it also created some problems? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

And that protected you too much. Absolutely. You know, she certainly meant no harm. Yeah, of course. Considering how much, you know, trouble I was in with alcohol, I lived a pretty consequence-free life. You know, I amazing, yes. Yeah. My mom was elected mayor of our city when I was in high school, which was it was a blessing and a curse at the time. Um, I never got arrested, right? My friends got arrested, I got to ride home. And I never, you know, even when I was, you know, I was given the choice of going to school or moving out, like when I was 17, and I chose to move out. She still supplemented that life, right? It was I had to work, but if I wasn't gonna be able to pay my electric bill, she paid my electric bill. If I was running low altitude, she would fill up my kitchen, right? Like I never had, I never had to really figure out how to stretch my money because there was always was a safety net.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

And I didn't realize that was happening, and neither did she until she was gone. And it'd like my whole life, she'd always been there. Even after I got this house, you know, my mom bought my house, she paid for it in full, and then she became my mortgage broker. So I basically was taking my mom the way I would pay a mortgage broker, and then with the deal that when she passed away, the house would be mine. So we had that deal going on, but while that was, and I was paying her, but she considered herself my landlord. So she would pay for my landscaping, she paid when my dishwasher broke down. So I never had to do that. I never had to like buy a new refrigerator or or fix the air conditioning because my mom just did it. I knew that a lot of people didn't have that extra boost, but they didn't really realize how huge it was. She was paying for everything that I should that a responsible adult would have been paying for themselves. Well, I was like buying expensive clothes and going on expensive trips.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

In retrospect, do you think having failed would have been better for you?

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Having been allowed to fail. I you know, I don't know. When I look back at like the, you know, the drinking and the path to sobriety there, I really believe that I probably would have died if my mom hadn't paid for paid my rent and my electric bills and all that stuff and given me a small stipend to buy groceries and things during that period. I don't know. I'm maybe, you know, I know my mom got a lot of grief for it after I got sober from, you know, it's from 12-step groups that she should have, you know, tough loved me and and stuff. And maybe she should have, I don't know. She loved me no matter what, right? Yeah. And she saw in me the person that I could be if I would just quit the stupid drinking. She got to see me become a mother and start to raise my kids. She got to see me graduate from nursing school. She did get to see me succeed. But yes, I do think that if she had set some limits on me or, you know, allowed me to have my electricity turned off or something. Yes, exactly. You know, then the next time my bill was late, I would think, ooh, maybe I should budget for this this time. Yeah, because you felt the consequences. Right. Absolutely. I was just going through money, right? She she left me money, but I was just spending and I wasn't, and I was I knew in my head that, you know, I shouldn't be doing this. This is finite, but I don't know. You know, I I just thought it would somehow work itself out because it always had. And I had to declare bankruptcy, and that was really hard. Not very long after my mom had left me a nice chunk of money, and that was that was a really scary process. I finished decade.bankruptcy off last year. Doing that has been part of this whole thing. This last few years when I, you know, I declared bankruptcy, and I also got this hiking idea into my head. Really, we're kind of from the same time. And I don't know if they're really maybe they're related. I don't know. But um, that was my next question.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

How how do you think what happened with your mom passing away, losing the money that you got? How do you think that connected to this idea of wanting to go on these hikes and specifically wanting to go on them alone?

SPEAKER_00 7:51

You know, I grew up in outside of Chicago. Um, I live in Oregon now, but I just I was never an outdoorsy person. I didn't have friends that were outdoorsy people, right? We didn't go hiking and and and you know, I went to the we went to the beach a lot, but uh it just was never my thing. And after I moved to Oregon, I went on a couple hikes with people and they were fine, but I didn't I it was never something that like sparked something in me. Several years ago in my 20s, I'd had a boyfriend who a few years before that had hiked like a long section of the AT, the Appalachian Trail. Yeah. And I remember that I I thought at the time that that was just the coolest thing I'd ever heard. I'd never met anybody who did anything like that. And the stories he told me about it sounded so cool. And I thought, someday I'm gonna do that, right? And it was just kind of this back in my mind bucket list thing. Every few years I would think about it and think, yeah, someday I'm gonna do that. And then it would go away. And then right wrong, yeah, the time I turned 50, I've been saying this for a really long time. And if I was actually gonna do something like that, I need to first decide whether or not I actually liked hiking, right? Yeah, either do it or move on, but stop telling myself every few years I'm gonna do it and then do nothing, right? Right, right. Come up with another bucket list dream if this isn't the one, but you know, so yeah, so I went for a hike just nearby. There's a state park near where I live, Silver Falls State Park, which is beautiful. And I'd been there a few times before with people, it's really beautiful, but I just did the the loop, the trail of Ten Falls by myself. It was like the noise stopped, not just the exterior noise of the phone and IV pumps and people yelling and the TV and stuff, but the inner noise, the inner criticism and self-doubt, and all that stuff. It was just it was like it was physical, like like there was a weight off my chest, like I could breathe, right? And I just I loved it. And and I so I just started hiking a lot. At that point, it wasn't specifically going to be a solo thing. I wasn't really thinking one way about it or another. In the beginning, it was just like, oh my god, I love this, right? Yeah. I then came up with my dream changed, and it's changed a few times over the years, but I decided um anybody can hike the Appalachian Trail, but you know, I what I wanted, I want to do something spectacular. So I came up with this idea that I was gonna hike across the United States. There's a trail that goes from Delaware to California called the American Discovery Trail.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Man, that would be cool, but it's it's not something that that fits in my life. But it in the very beginning, that's what I was thinking when I first came up with these hiking plans.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

I'm gonna use this epic hike. And I gave myself this kind of loose five-year plan. How is how was I gonna figure this out? And meanwhile, I was just gonna keep hiking and getting in shape and you know, thinking about this big plan. Uh I asked my kids if they wanted to go with me. My son was initially interested. My son, Emmett, my daughter had no interest. And so for a very brief period, Emmett and I were planning on hiking across the United States. Wow. And then the more interested I got, kind of he sort of pulled away. He realized it was kind of a bigger commitment than he. But I was still thinking, you know, going across the country. So once I started getting being able to hike, you know, longer day hikes, I wasn't really carrying a full backpack, but a full day pack, trying to carry some stuff on my back, trying to get in a little bit of shape. I was nervous about camping because I'd never done that before. But I bought some equipment and I just started camping in like friends' yards. Right. So I would like backpack to my friend's house and then set up my pet in her yard. Yeah. Right. Setting it up, being somewhere safe and you know. Absolutely. And that was so that was my initial. I did that for a little while. Um, that was really fun. And then I decided I was gonna go, okay, I'm gonna do a real, I'm gonna do a one night backpacking trip to the woods. And I, it was very last minute. It was, you know, kind of I thought, you know, tomorrow I'm gonna do this. And I had some equipment. I went to REI and I bought a bunch of stuff. I picked a trail on all trails, put together a backpack that was way too heavy. I went to a trail out in Gifford Pinchot of State Park. It's like it's like the area kind of around Mount St. Helens. Okay. Um, I set out and you know, it was a beautiful day on the trail. It was in October. I got to my campsite, I set up, I made myself dinner, I slept, I had the best sleep I'd ever had in my life. And I woke up the next morning and it had snowed and I'd lost the trail, and my phone map thing wasn't working. Oh my. So all I had were like my sleep clothes, which were like cotton leggings and a shirt. Yeah. Um, I was lost and I was freezing cold. Oh my goodness. And I had all this stuff on my back. My hands were so cold. I was trying to call 911 on my phone, which was failing, but I kept dropping it in the snow and then it got wet, so it wasn't even working at all anymore. And I was yelling, like, oh, is anybody out there? It was really scary. I was out there for maybe three or four hours. Um, you know, I never got to the point where I was hungry or had to, you know, shelter myself. Um, but I was lost. And I and I I got back to my car. And how did you get back? How did you get back to your car? I knew that I was heading in sort of the right general direction. I really didn't know how to follow the sun and stuff like that. And I hadn't been paying attention to it coming in. But I I knew I'd kind of come from that way, right? So I just kind of walked in vaguely that direction. And I figured eventually I will find a trail or a road. Like, yeah, and I did. I just finally found the main trail that I spiked off of. And then I made it back to my car. My car was like, it, I mean, it was like half covered in snow. I had to like dig it out. Yeah, it was serious. No, oh my goodness. No, it had snowed a lot. I was soaking wet. I was uh anyway. I got back to my car and made it home, and I had this combination that had really scared me. And I really I I was mostly thinking that okay, I'm obviously not cut out for this. Like I just this is it was a nice idea, but like I clearly am not built for this kind of thing. But there was part of me that really wanted to keep doing it, right? And that's pretty rare for me to like fail for lack of a better word at something and then want to do it, try it again, right? Absolutely. Um I I just I really love being out there, and so I decided to take a wilderness survival course. So smart. It was five days up in northern Washington, and yeah, we and I learned I learned how to rescue how to self-rescue. I learned how to read the sun and the trees and how to find water and how to build shelter and how to behave around wildlife and stuff, you know, the stuff that just I mean, I'm no surviv wilderness survival expert, but it was enough for me to feel like I could I'd be okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

Yeah, that's so smart to do.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

And yeah, I was so glad I did it. It just gave me it gave me a new confidence. And then I I started before I really did any backpacking trips immediately after that. I started staying at instead of just going to like friends' houses, I started there's a there's a website called Hip Camp. It's kind of like Airbnb, but it's people's properties you can camp on. Oh, that's fantastic. Hip and then HIP? Yeah, it's it's and so there's you so there's for tent camping and RV camping or glamping. There's a bunch of different ways you could do it. Yeah. But I started doing that. So I was going further out, but I was still staying. I wasn't really backpacking, but I was venturing further from home and I would like set up my tent there for the day, and then I'd go hiking, and then I'd come back. So it was just kind of easing my way into the overnights again. Yeah. Um, and then once I felt really comfortable doing that, then I started doing like one and two and three night trips and around Oregon. The the first couple, my pack was ridiculously heavy. I brought way too much food. The mosquitoes were a nightmare. It was so hot. It was like like I remember my first bag hacking trip after that survival course. I went to Mount Jefferson here in Oregon, and it's such a beautiful trail, but it was over a hundred degrees, and the mosquitoes were like clouds, and my path was so heavy. I I remember like getting to my first campsite and just being in tears and like throwing my backpack, hated it. I never wanted to pick it up again, and you know, and yet I still like there's pictures of me from that trip where I'm like thumbs up and smiling because I was like really excited to be out there, even though I was miserable. Yes, I was absolutely miserable. I was so hot, I got bitten by mosquitoes so badly that I broke out into hives. Oh right. So I was like baking in my tent with my eyes swollen and hives all over. And I love this so much. I was like, I hate this, but at the same time, like as soon as I was done, I was like, I want to go back, you know, and and that's really exciting to me because I've never had anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

So I also host another podcast. It's called Type Two Fun. That's the name of the podcast. Yeah, and that phrase comes from type two fun is when something is miserable in the moment, right? But amazing in retrospect, it's amazing. That perfectly describes you know, exactly what uh you experience. Because, and I've been there before, I've hiked a couple of mountains, and it's just, I mean, I'm dying. Everything hurts, I can barely breathe. And then afterwards, it's like, all right, well, what am I gonna do next?

SPEAKER_00 17:55

And there's always something, even on those hikes, there's even like a moment where you just get this like like you catch your breath with this like spectacular view of a mountain or this beautiful little babbling stream, right? You just have like one of those moments, even if you only get one, it's like uh the rest of the stuff was worth it because you got that.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

Absolutely, absolutely. So at this point, you've done the one, two, three day trips, you've started the the hip camp experiences. Uh was this always solo?

SPEAKER_00 18:30

And did you Yeah, it really just became like I said, it initially it didn't start as specifically to be solo, it just kind of worked out that way, and then nobody was really interested in doing what I was doing, so I just kept doing it alone. And then I got to a point where that's what actually I really wanted to do it, you know. I went backpacking with my cousin last year. I love my cousin, but our backpacking trip together just didn't. We're gonna try it again this summer, and having learned a lot from the last one. But you know, we walk at different paces and we want to stop at different places, and we have different energy levels, and you know what I mean? And that's cool. And even though we love each other and we have a lot of fun together, it was, you know, there was a lot of tension on that trip. I hurt myself on that trip. It just it wasn't it wasn't great. And really, that's the only thing I haven't gone backpacking with anybody else since then. I discovered, you know, when you're alone, even if you're with somebody that that you have fun with, even if you're meshing, even if you know you're going the same pace and you want to stop at the same place, at least for me, if somebody else is in my vicinity, I'm certainly concerned about what they're thinking about me, right? Yes. Um, I'm worried that they what if are they having a good time? Like, am I being too boring? Am I being weird? Am I talking about something they don't want to talk? Right, like I'm so focused on that interaction that I'm not thinking about anything. And are you getting that fulfillment? I totally get that. Absolutely. And so so that's become now why I it's not necessarily to get away from people, but it's just I don't have to do that.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Yeah, right. You know, you think you were you've been trying to prove something to yourself or or even to your mom with these solo hikes?

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Certainly myself. Discovering at the age of 45 that I had no freaking idea how to take care of myself was a really shocking, jarring moment in my life. And I still have a ways to go, right? I'm still figuring out money, even after all this stuff. I'm still bad at maintaining a household. I still have, you know, I've got a lot, I've got a ways to go. But we're all in progress, that's for sure. But but doing this and not only, you know, persevering through setbacks, I really I can take a hundred percent care of myself. Like from the planning of the trip all the way through the entire execution and the problem solving and everything. Nobody else is involved in my planning at all. Yeah. Right? And the days go. I mean, obviously, your plans don't always go perfectly when you're in the woods, but generally the days go the way that I want them to go. I wake up when I feel like it and I leave camp when I feel like it, and I stop for a break, or I keep going on when I feel like it. It's all bed earlier, I go to bed late if I feel like it. Exactly. Exactly. I listen to music or listen to nothing. I get to decide.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

So all of this kind of culminated, at least recently. You may have even bigger goals now, but all of this culminated into the 16 day wilderness trip. Tell us all about that.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Right. Okay. So still, you know, I finally I I decided a couple of years ago, like, okay, I'm not gonna hike across the United States. Like it's just that would be great. Maybe if I was starting, you know, 20 years old now and I. Had like many years to plan this, but it's not, it's it is likely something that will never fit in my life. But I'd still like to do a really long hike. Yeah. Maybe the Appalachian Trail after all, maybe the PCT. I don't know. So I decided I would try something, a longer trail, just not that long. And I sat my sites on the superior hiking trail in Minnesota for last year. So I planned this for like a year. I took five weeks off of work. My plan was it's a 300-mile trail that goes from the Canadian border to Duluth, Minnesota, down the eastern shore of Lake Superior. Wow. Really beautiful. It's 300 miles long. I thought, okay, I'm gonna do 300 miles in 30 days. Wow. I got, you know, I had this planned out and food sent to myself at various places. And and I I set out on this trip. And within the first couple of days, I realized that there was no way I was gonna be able to do this 300 miles in 30 days.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Yeah, that's 10 miles a day. My goodness.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Right. But like I'm comparing myself to people who have been doing long hikes for a long time. So I I read a lot of like through hiker blogs and watch YouTube videos of hikers. And these are people that have been hiking for a really long time. And so to them, a 20 mile day is like an average day, right? Right. So to me, 10 miles a day sounded doable, right? Because like I know I can't do 20 miles a day. I'm not crazy. I could do 10 miles a day, though. That's not gonna be that big of a deal. Yeah. Um, but I'm you know, I'm not in the greatest shape of my life, but I'm just I'm also not a seasoned hiker. I'm not used to hearing a heavy backpack. Um, so there was that. It was it was physically harder than I thought it would be. But also when I started, like I had a nasty cold, it rained the first few days. I started the experience not feeling good, and then quickly kind of realizing that my goal was not, I wasn't gonna, I wasn't gonna be able to do what I had set up to do. I went through several days of I was really depressed, I was really angry at myself. I felt like I had failed, I was worried what people would think about me. Right. I was taken in by a they call themselves trail angels, a woman in Minnesota let me stay at her house for a few days while I kind of got my brain together and came up with what I was gonna do. Oh, that's and in that time I decided just to change my goal, right? Like, yeah, why do why do I have to go 300 miles? Like just because the trail is 300 miles long doesn't mean that I have to go 300 miles, right? That's right, right arbitrary goal. It was a good goal. Um, and maybe someday I'll be able to walk 300 miles in a month, but I can't do it now. Yeah. And and I still have three weeks off, right? So I can go home and just be really mad at myself, or I can just like hike the cool parts of this trail, not worry about make you know, crushing miles and making time and just enjoy it. And I had the best time, right? And and like it just it complete so it totally changed my expectations of what I want from a hike, how long I want to go. Like I realized a month is too long for me to be alone for that long and hiking. I needed people more than that, right? But also that it's not enjoy that's not enjoyable. So I decided to come up with something shorter, like something I could do over two weeks, or you know, um, and even even shorter miles, right? So, okay, I can do a hundred miles in two weeks. Like that's less than 10 miles a day. Um, I can do that. And I've I learned a lot from the pathing mistakes I made on the first trip that I might I could make my pack significantly lighter. Yeah. Um, and so then so I decided on that I would find something that was around 100 miles long. I would take some time off in the spring. And I so I did I took the time off first, and then I just started searching around for something that would be a good hundred-mile hike to do in the spring. At that time, I wasn't really thinking I was gonna be, I was thinking I'd be hitting towns more frequently. Yeah. You know, my plan wasn't to to be out for that, you know, in the woods that long, but just to hike something shorter. And I discovered the Bet and Mackay Trail, which is kind of AT adjacent. They both start at the same spot in Georgia. Gotcha. And through the smoky mountains, there's a hundred-mile stretch of the Bet and Mackay. Oh, I bet that was gorgeous. Which is absolutely gorgeous. You know, it's a national park, so there is some infrastructure there, right? I'm not just heading off into the Canadian wilderness, right? I will see people. So even if I've hurt myself or I get into a bind, somebody will see me that, you know, within a few days, right? If not immediately. And there were campsites. When I'd been in Minnesota, there were campsites too. The campsites in Minnesota, you didn't you didn't have to reserve, you could just go to any of them. In the smokies, I had to reserve campsites, and so I planned it out. All days were less than 10 miles. That was very specific how I wanted to do it. And I laid out my map and I figured out the places, and you know, I looked at elevation profiles and determined, you know, which days I would do shorter and longer. And I based my mileage around where water was.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

And look at this knowledge that you gained over these years. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

And then figuring out how to get the right amount of calories and fat and protein and carbs. I mean, all this stuff. And most of this I learned on that trip in Minnesota. I learned what I don't need, what I really do need. The food I was bringing was all wrong. Not only did I bring way too much, but I brought way too much like sweet stuff. And what I really wanted was salty stuff, right? So I was carrying pounds and pounds of candy bars when I really just wanted like nuts and chips and you know, things like that.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

So, how long did it take you to kind of settle into the experience? Because from my trips, the longest they've ever been uh was like 11 days. One uh to ever say's camp was 11, 12 days. And where your body goes through certain experiences as you go day by day, and you kind of your body kind of settles into the rhythm of hiking mentally, you do the same thing. So, how long were you on the trail before mentally you started settling into this experience?

SPEAKER_00 28:38

Probably like the fourth day, I think. I think the first three days, my pack was so heavy that even though it was beautiful weather and that you know I was on relatively flat trail, it was just so heavy. Every day it got a little bit lighter, and it when it was like a feather on the last day. But those first three days, you know, it was it was really heavy. So that part of it, because in your head, it's hard to imagine that it's gonna be lighter. All you can think of is how miserable it is now. It was a great experience, but it also it really was really hard, and I didn't enjoy it, and so I was kind of waiting for that to be less of a burden. Also, it took a couple days to get used to not seeing people because even like on the superior hiking trail, I saw it wasn't crowded, but I saw people throughout the day, and there were usually at least one or two other people at the campsites. Um I was uh never far from a town, so and there were some really crowded areas in the smokies. I would go, you know, three, four days without seeing anybody.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

And so that took a little bit of getting used to, just because even though I knew that I was doing that, I still hadn't really experienced that.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Unless somebody's done this before, it is hard to really imagine what it is like to hike for that long out you're out in the woods in the wilderness, going for three or four days and not seeing anybody. And I mean, you can really it can get to you, you know, it can get in your head and feel really alone and really small in a really big world.

SPEAKER_02 30:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

So like I said, it took a little getting used to, but I also I really liked it. I was prepared to be really afraid. I was really afraid of bears like going in. That was probably one of my biggest outside fears, right? My biggest fears were bears and like snapping my ankle. Those were my two. And the bear fear went away pretty quick because I just didn't see them, right? I saw one bear that I there was an interaction with that wasn't that big of a deal. And that was it. And that was close to the end of my trip, right? So after a few days, I was like, oh my god, I had honestly believed that I was gonna see like bears every day. I'd be like tired of bears by the end, right? Because I just want another one, right? Um, and so that fear went away pretty quick. And I'm pretty careful when I hike, you know, simply because I I'm aware that I'm alone, right? I don't want to hurt myself. I never want to hurt myself, but I I really I don't want to be stuck with an infected, you know, leg. Doesn't sound fun. So I am I'm very careful, but anytime I lose my balance, my life flashes before my eyes, you know. Yes, that's that's my biggest fear, really, is you know, hurting myself and being stuck out there. I never really had fears of you know running into weird people. It can happen, right? I mean, there's people everywhere. My general experience with the hiking community is that most people are pretty cool, most people are out there because they love being out there, not because they want to scope stab people. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's been my experience as well. Yeah, and the people that I come across, most of the people that I come across hiking in that kind of solitude are out there for the same reason as me. So people hike the Appalachian Trail because they want it's a very social trail. You're you're you you stay at the shelters and you become really close with other hikers, and I think that's really cool. But people hike where I did because they don't want to do that, because they want to be alone. So even when you come across other people on the trail, there's you know, maybe a couple minutes of friendly chit-chat, but we're both out there to be alone, and neither of us is really interested in having a you know becoming new friends. It's nice to see somebody who say hello and you know, it does it does make you feel less alone. I don't know that you know I felt lonely. I never felt lonely on the trail, but alone, certainly, right? Right, yeah, and that can feel very big sometimes when it's absolutely so quiet, and all you can hear is nothing. I love that anything.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

The one thing that I always ask for anybody that I interview about roaming alone is what you gained, and just hearing you talk about it, I can already tell how much you've gained in your knowledge and your confidence and your self-esteem. But what was it about all of these hikes that you took by yourself? How does that change who you are when you get back home?

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Uh it's really easy for me to I think a lot of us have this, you know, where we we uh all the negative self-talk that I give myself about it's it's it's easy for me to forget the accomplishments that I've made and focus on the thing places I've screwed up or the places that I haven't succeeded yet. And you know, you're 56 years old and you still can't do this thing. And you still, you know, you're still single and whatever, right? And so doing something like this is this kind of immediate, you know, it's I can look back and say, oh, well, you know, I've raised great children and I have this great career and I've accomplished this thing and this thing. But there those were a while ago coming back from a trip like this and having not only having like survived it, but like persevered through the hard times and waking up and carrying the pack anyway, right? Even when it's really hard, it reminds me that I can do that in my regular life. Absolutely. It's it's a very metaphorical thing, but a quick way to remind myself. You asked if I was trying to prove something to anyone, certainly to myself, to prove to myself that I absolutely am capable of taking care of myself. Thank you very much, right? Yeah, exactly. Shut up, brain. Look what I just did. Did that exactly ago. This wasn't years ago. This wasn't something that my mom helped me do. This was an idea that I came up with all by myself, and I bought all the stuff all by myself, and I made the mistakes and learned from them all by myself. It's a huge boost, not just for ego, but for just confidence. Like I'm I'm doing it, I'm a nurse, I'm doing a thing at work right now. I'm training in the ICU, and it's really, really scary because I'm used to having pretty low acuity patients, and my I work in a rural hospital and I've worked there for a long time and I love it. And and now I'm doing this ICU stuff, which is really scary, but I can draw on strength that I gained and knowledge I gained about myself. Absolutely. Like, you know, 25 years ago, 20 I got sober 26 years ago. There's no way that I ever would have believed that I first of all, I wouldn't have thought that that was anything that I even wanted to do. Like why exactly? Why would you want to do that?

SPEAKER_01 35:33

No, I think my mom can see you now. What do you think she would say? I think what would she think?

SPEAKER_00 35:38

I think that she'd be horrified at the idea of me being alone. Um but I think she'd think it's your mom, of course. Yeah, I think she'd think it's pretty cool. I think I I mean I know my mom's proud of me, and I I know that she'd be proud of me doing this.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Absolutely. And if you could somehow meet up with yourself 26 years ago, yeah, what would you tell that woman now, now that you've seen what you can do?

SPEAKER_00 36:07

The person I was then, like I I honestly felt just done. Truly, I mean, my mother actually flew out from Oregon and took me, like, not against my will. I I didn't have much of a will at that point, but just took me to to treatment and I I went because it would make her feel better. Like I had already given up and I didn't I didn't see anything beyond the immediate, and I thought that I was just gonna die soon, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, that happened when I was 29, and I had never planned beyond 30, like even when I was a little kid, I honestly never thought I was gonna live past 30. So I never had dreams past 30. I didn't have any what am I gonna be when I grow up dreams. I didn't have a plan, I just thought I was gonna die young, right? So telling myself when I was, you know, 28 or 29 years old that, you know, I was gonna be like a successful nurse with kids, and um, you know, that I was gonna go on these wildlife excursions by myself, it just would have, it would have been so far out of the realm of any possibility that it I don't know that I would I'd be like, okay, whatever. It just wasn't I like I'm not even gonna be alive when I'm 56. How are you telling me that I'm gonna do this stuff too? And I know, you know, people who knew me before, right? Pre-s and write either. I don't have a lot of those people still in my life, but I still have some of you know some of the voices in my head from back then. Those never go away.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

But but the solitude and the quiet of the wilderness will definitely quite those voices as well. Yeah. Yeah. Jenny, I'm so impressed. And I know I really don't even have any right to say it, but just listening to your story and knowing you just for this short time, I'm just I'm amazed and I'm in awe. And I think, I mean, I think you're just amazing. And I'm so glad you came on. I'm so glad you talked to me about this. I know you were reluctant to do this, but I'm so glad that you allowed yourself to be honest with me and just sit down and talk with me about this because I think your story, it resonates with so many people. It will resonate to people listening to this show because we all struggle in different ways and maybe not, you know, in the same way that you have. But taking these things and trusting yourself in even when it sucks and you hate it and you don't ever want to do it again, but then you start thinking, well, maybe I'll do it one more time, and then you learn, and then you learn some more, and then you love it, and then even through the struggling of the backpack, you love it even more, and it gets you to this place. And I just I think it's amazing. And I'm so glad you came on today. Well, thank you. No, this was really fun. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to Rome Alone. If Jenny's story inspired you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who could use a reminder that it's never too late to start over, learn new skills, and build confidence. You can find links, resources, and more episodes about solo travel and personal transformation in the show notes. Until next time, keep exploring, keep growing. And remember, sometimes the most important journey you'll ever take is the one you take alone.