Why women over 50 could/should hike and write their own story

Have you noticed that as we age and slip into our 50's, we start losing our need to be what everyone else thinks we should be? We may change our hair, the way we dress, and maybe even get a tattoo. I sure did make a big change! I quit my job and started a new business (one that I had no idea about). I went from a nurse and teacher to a clothing creator and manufacturer. I could hand stitch a baby quilt, but anything else was completely out of my league. How much marketing or manufacturing experience do you think an emergency room nurse has? NONE!  At 60, I also decided to walk the Camino de Santiago. Again, no experience, really, but I was bound and determined to do it. I even had friends and family bet I wouldn’t last two weeks. I surely showed them finishing the whole 500 miles in 36 days without ever getting inside a moving vehicle. Hiking is now my thing. The Camino went beyond the physical. It certainly worked my muscles the first two weeks daily. I found myself wondering what in the heck I had been thinking. I would take ten steps, then have to stop and breathe, then take ten more. At one point, I told my husband to just think I was an old woman with a walker. Smart man that he is, he didn’t tell me what he was thinking too much later. It was “I think that old woman would pass you.” I did get physically strong, though. I went from being the slowest walker on our hikes to unintentionally being the leader. So, strength and heart health are wonderful gifts, but hiking goes beyond the obvious physical benefits into the spiritual and emotional benefits. We all end up on the trails for a reason.  We met people on the Camino who went to hide. We all may have something we are hiding from, even if it is that we just can’t watch one more TV show. Then there are those who find themselves in the wild because something is demanding to be healed. We ran into people who had lost their spouse or their job. One young man had lost his job and his girlfriend, and he had turned to drugs. His mother took him to a hotel to spend the night and put him on a plane to walk away from his sadness. Celebration is another reason to go outside. I was celebrating the fact that I was 60, and I was celebrating my Latin heritage. You may go out onto the trail to reflect. How lovely the mornings can be when starting outside or maybe even ending your day on the trail! Perhaps you are enjoying the birds and taking a walk, just soaking up the feel of the forest. Maybe you are walking or hiking in your neighborhood. You can reflect anywhere you are able to move your body and breath. How about just reveling in the fact that you have the ability to get out?  How many others don’t have that option? If we're persistent, we may, at times, get to experience all of those things. Hiking in the end allows us, if nothing else, to connect with ourselves along with the amazing peace and beauty of the natural world, and if we choose to go with another, to connect with them. For me, this is truly a way to feed my soul. Hiking over 50 has given me confidence and peace in myself in a way that counteracts whatever narrative anyone wants to give me. I'm continuing to write my own story: a 69+ badass lady hiker with grey hair and plenty of tattoos, one for my granddaughter Lyric, one from graduating nursing school, and the next and probably not the last, a poppy for my walking the Camino—all things I never would have believed myself capable of doing.