Rebecca Sperry

After being diagnosed with cancer, I have become all too familiar with the power of words. A simple phrase can impact how someone feels, perhaps more than the one saying it even realizes, and the dialogue that is used towards women from birth especially in the outdoors community is long overdue for an overhaul. 

In 2015 I set out on my first solo day hike. I chose to go solo because my spouse didn’t want to hike with me and, why should I need someone to go with me, anyway, I thought, I’m a strong, independent woman, there’s nothing to fear. That hike changed my life. It gave me confidence that I had never experienced before and ever since then I’ve gone on hundreds of day hikes alone and backpacked alone, too. What continues to surprise me, though, even with thousands of miles alone under my feet, is how many people still say, “be safe” or “be careful” to me when they find out I’m hiking solo.

It’s hypocritical and sexist. Just because I am female from birth, why should I have to be told that I need to be careful or be safe? Would they say that to me if I were a man? Would they say that to me if I were with a group of people? I’d venture to guess they wouldn’t. What’s worse is when another woman is shocked to learn that I’m hiking solo. I thought we were on the same team, I wonder after being lowkey shamed by other women for hiking alone in the Pemigewasset Wilderness. I know that what they are saying is not necessarily what they mean - that I am in danger because I’m hiking alone and a woman - but there are a few things wrong with the phrases “be safe” or “be careful” spoken to someone in the backcountry and I want to address them in this blog.

First of all I want to say that in the hundreds of days that I’ve spent alone in the wilderness I’ve only ever felt unsafe one time around other people and that was this year in Baxter State Park. The situation has a long backstory and the reason I felt unsafe is a one-off situation involving someone I know and have a history with. Other than that, I’ve never felt as though the other people I run into in the woods are “unsafe”, ever. Conversely, I feel unsafe all of the time when I walk around my local city. There are sections that you just don’t go to alone, if you’re a woman. I feel unsafe when I’m driving on the highway and someone is engaging in dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, driving under the influence, or has road rage. And I feel unsafe when I go to work and have to go into a lockdown because of a shooter in the vicinity of the school that I work in. Nobody tells me to “be safe” when I go to work, nor do they tell me to “be safe” when I drive somewhere; and I would be willing to bet the chances of me getting hurt are much higher on the drive to the hike than they are when I’m out in the woods hiking.

We tell people to “be safe” in the woods because hiking alone is presented by the media as not safe. We tell people to “be safe” in the woods because as a general rule people spend less time outside in the woods alone than they do driving around in their cars. We are fearful of what we don’t know much about, and the more we engage in an activity safely, the less scary it becomes. People just don’t spend a lot of time hiking, and that’s why it is seen as “dangerous” or scary. We fear the unknown. So how do we change this? How do we shift the narrative? By talking about how that dialogue affects us, as women from birth, when it is said to us. By helping people understand why hiking isn’t scary and is no more dangerous than driving a metal box down the highway at 80 mph. 

I know that I will receive push-back for this article. I know that people will say, “we’re just trying to be nice” or “well hiking is dangerous, you could fall, get hypothermia, or be attacked by an animal” and I’m not saying that hiking isn’t, in some ways, dangerous. But the assumption is made that because I am a woman, I am automatically less capable of being safe outdoors and that is not true or ok.

Rather than saying, “be safe” you can say, “have fun”. Rather than saying, “wow you’re out here alone? Aren’t you scared?” say, “hiking is such an empowering activity.” There are ways to acknowledge me and show that you care about my safety that are not sexist. And to be brutally honest, telling me to “be safe” only makes me think that I am in some sort of danger and should be on my guard, when I absolutely am not.

The last three years we have seen a huge shift in the rhetoric used in a variety of spaces. There has been a huge push for reevaluating how we engage with each other, and within the hiking community inclusion of all individuals has been a very big talking point. Let’s shift how we engage with women in the backcountry. Let’s stop saying “be safe” to young, solo, female hikers who may actually have more experience than their male counterparts. The outdoors are for everybody and should be a place where we are all on an equal playing ground regardless of gender, ethnicity, race, or size. Stop telling female hikers to “be safe” and start telling them, “have fun.”