Renee Patrick is a triple-crown through-hiker with over 20 years of experience planning, hiking, and improving long-distance trails. She is an environmentalist and passionate outdoor enthusiast who believes that long-distance hiking can deepen our relationship with the landscapes and environmental issues that desperately need more advocates.
I reached out to Renee (trail name She-Ra) because I think one of the best ways to mend our sense of separation from the lands we’re in is to walk them — and for decades, over more than 12,000 miles, and wearing holes through God knows how many pairs of boots, Renee has been doing just that. She’s one of the most grounded people I’ve ever met.
Since the Columbia River basin is the muse for this first season of Kinward podcast, I was particularly excited to ask Renee about the embodied insights she’s gleaned among the trails, waterways, landforms, creatures, and patterns of this part of the world, in this time.
Intentional Hiking, one of Renee’s current projects, affirms the intimacy that hikers develop over hours, days, weeks, or months on foot in a place, and channels that intimacy toward advocacy and care. It’s an awesome project, and if you spend time hiking, you should definitely check it out.
Renee walks us into this episode with a case study of Intentional Hiking from her own life, sharing examples of how she immerses herself into her journeys with the intention of growing deeper connections with the place she’s hiking through: studying its histories; its people; its needs, conservation priorities, and resource conflicts; and then feeling into the ways that a particular place nourishes, holds, and shapes those who move through it.
Consider this first part of the episode a mini practicum, suggesting ways that any of us might deepen our commitments to the lands and waters we walk among.
If you hike or otherwise recreate (i.e. re-create yourself) outdoors, and this episode got you thinking about ways you might show up more fully for the places that nourish you—your home while you’re out there—I hope you’ll check out intentionalhiking.com for practical guidance and opportunities to connect with others who are bringing more intention to their time outside. You can follow Renee’s journeys at sherahikes.com, or on instagram @wearehikertrash.
If this episode made your feet itch, maybe go download a few more episodes of Kinward to listen to as you get yourself to a trailhead. Share this one with a friend or two; follow, subscribe, and rate the podcast wherever you listen. Thank you!
Gratitudes for this episode include to Renee for sharing her grounded energy with us; to my first wildflower hikes of the spring (exquisite); to Oregon Natural Desert Association and Greater Hells Canyon Council for developing long distance trails as advocacy portals (check out the Blue Mountains Trail and the Oregon Desert Trail), and to all of you for listening.
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