About

Hello and welcome! I’m so glad you’re here. I’m Whitney. I’m an avid day hiker, hiking group leader and North Carolina native. I have lived and hiked throughout the state, all my life really, but especially in the past five years. I’m also a certified Wilderness First Responder and Forest Therapy Guide and I have completed the Associate in Wilderness Medicine program through the University of Utah School of Medicine.

The Story Behind the Book

So, why did I decide to write North Carolina Day Hiking for Every Body? I have spent my adult life living in a body that wasn’t exactly what people thought of when they heard “hiker.” And at times it wasn’t just my ability to hike that was questioned, but my character, intelligence, creativity…even my worth…was doubted because they were housed in a larger body.

So for the longest time I did not like or trust my body. I actively spent time trying to live my life inside my head, rather than in my body. “Tuning into my body”—a phrase often heard in wellness spaces—wasn’t something I wanted to do, because it only reminded me of the emotional hurt associated with my physical container.

But then I started spending time outdoors, hiking alone. My feet, my heart, my lungs, my body, took me to some amazingly beautiful places. Places I wouldn’t have experienced any other way. I learned that I could do things that I didn’t think I could do. I started listening to my body. I learned to rest when I needed to. I learned to pay attention to how I felt in the heat and the cold. I learned how to know when I needed more energy. I learned to stop and “smell the roses,” literally and metaphorically. And I spent time with myself. My entire self. My self that was truly part of and belonged in the wider world around me.

The outdoors can be a pretty uninviting place to people in bigger bodies. Everything from a lack of available gear that fits to unreliable information on trail accessibility and difficulty to worrying about group activities and being the last one or holding up the group can hinder some people in getting outdoors and really forming a relationship with the natural world. But the more I got out there and found myself, the more I noticed others like me, as well as many others who didn’t seem to “fit” in the hiking world for any number of reasons, starting to make themselves known. Not hiding in the background. Starting to take up space. I identified with them and their messages and started to think more about building a welcoming, accepting community among hikers.

So, in 2023 I started the Piedmont Plus-Size Hikers group. And I discovered there were lots more people like me who wanted to find a place on the trail where they felt like they belonged. Our group motto became: Come as you are, do what you can, and no hiker left behind. And we developed rules around the kinds of conversation we would allow that respected each member’s journey with their own body and promoted a message that we were there to appreciate what our bodies could do in the present moment—no requirements to change or shrink ourselves to belong. Alongside my training, my experiences on the trail and leading the hiking group informed the content of North Carolina Day Hiking for Every Body.

In case no one has told you before, you belong in the wild, on the trail. It doesn’t matter what you look like, how big or small your body is, if you have a disability or not. You belong. You are part of the micro and the macro, an observer and a participant. You, every part of you, belongs with nature, just as surely as the flowers, stones, and hawks do. The trail is waiting for you. Just as you are.