Reading an old 1967 edition of “The Sierra Club Wilderness Handbook,” I’m both edified and horrified by the obvious chasm separating 2021 thinking about female hikers and attitudes in the previous century (see 4.1.1. Books).
Edited by David Brower, there was plenty of good information and wise counsel in this 270-page tome, and I have great respect for the Sierra Club today and for its influential role in the past (founded in 1892 by John Muir). Even so, growing up in the middle of a sea of four sisters, married a half-century to the same wonderful cisgender normative woman, appreciating several female bosses during a long teaching career as well as all of my female teaching colleagues, the prevalent mid-20th century attitude toward American women reflected in those yellowed pages still stupefies the 2021 reader.
In the future, sociologists of the American West will examine 60-year-old books like Brower’s because the approach and writing highlight the extraordinary disparities between views of the wilderness and of women hiking back then (and about women hiking alone). While the legacies of Muir and President Teddy Roosevelt have lost some of their pristine luster, looking at the assumed role of women hiking into the wilderness around 1960 may help us understand gender attitudes today.
“The Sierra Club Wilderness Handbook” never mentions female hikers or backpackers heading out alone, although it accepts they may have “hen parties.” In this collection, women are almost always accompanied by males, who automatically assume patriarchal leadership authority.
A glance at the Table of Contents reveals 17 chapters on the usual camping topics, but “Children” (No. 14) and “Women” (No. 12) need their own special sections since the wilderness will be so darned difficult for them.
We learn that “the doe is quite as well adapted to her environment as the stag” (p. 163), that “women seem, in general, to be more susceptible to cold feet than men” (p. 166) and about “one luxury item: If you are curvaceous, dig a hole for your hips at night” (p. 168).
Thus, in mid-20th-century American backpacking, “the fairer sex” should be treated like children, and they’re allotted a maximum backpacking load of 25 pounds while the big, white studs can lug up to 80 pounds. (I am 6 feet 1 inch tall and an experienced backpacker, but hauling even 30 pounds is too much for me!) As I recall, neither Muir nor Roosevelt ever took their ladies out for real camping.
The hilariously titled Chapter 13, “Especially for Men,” has excerpts from a doughty female hiker who wrote directly “to the guys,” and it dates to 1949. She gives three major rules for the man who dares to bring “his” woman out onto the trail. Writing to men, she emphasizes:
» 1. Don’t let her get tired (p. 173)
» 2. Don’t let her get scared (p. 174)
» 3. Don’t let her get bored (p. 176)
This Sierra Club female writer tells the fellas that getting the spouse outdoors “doesn’t mean to say that the little woman will necessarily be able to wave an American flag beside you on the summit of K2,” but she can with good tutelage learn to enjoy camping anyway (p. 173).
“Theory of Mind” is something that anthropologists believe had enormous survival value to Stone Age humans. Somewhere in evolutionary development, homo sapiens evolved the mental capacity to surmise what another human being was thinking, an enormous aid to communication, and it also leads to the birth of empathy (Torrey in 4.1.1.).
Despite a lifetime of working with many females both here and abroad — my hiking sisters, teaching at coed schools, and so on — as a cisgender normative male I realize I still lack some of the empathy necessary to even begin to comprehend the female (and other genders). My sisters, my partner and various women friends school me often, but my theory of mind remains deficient. Here’s proof.
I have a dear hiking friend, and since she’s a noted naturalist, we would take long jaunts where I’d learn exciting details about flora and fauna (especially birds) I’d never get out of books. A longtime Sierra Club member, she rambled everywhere in California and still has an admirable thirst for adventure and the wild.
I love solo backpacking and believe these short bursts of relative isolation in nature stimulate spirit and mind. After several years of this, I realized my friend never went out solo. I guess I’d remained locked in patriarchal thinking like we read in Brower’s book — but then reflected further that none of my other female hiking friends backpacked solo into wilderness areas either.
I then innocently (stupidly) addressed my naturalist friend, asking why she never went out alone, noting that Manzana Narrows Camp is a fantastic solo, adding that she was missing out on a key aspect of nature immersion and remarkable opportunities for deep thinking. She looked at me coolly and with a bit of friendly disdain.
“Dan, I am a 5-foot, 6-inch woman, and tough as nails, but as a female out there, I am much more at risk than you in your 6-foot, aggressive male body. I also refuse to carry a sidearm or bear spray.”
What a thoughtless question, I realized with great chagrin — lacking theory of mind and without empathy for the female of the species.
Ach! I apologized. There may be limitations for female packers in our violent society that do not hit the males as hard. Smaller body size, an unwillingness to carry a firearm, over-protective patriarchal spouses or male family members, the power of patriarchal traditions … just the social norm of “never backpack alone.” As a society, we need to look at these limits and mitigate them where possible.
My sister hikes in the areas around Boise, and she goes alone sometimes with some trepidation but also some strategies. Keychain alarms, pepper spray and perhaps taking a fit trail dog all could help. (I’ve been advised at times to carry bear spray or a firearm, but won’t do so and honestly have never needed either — yet being a male likely helps, sadly.)
For the record, there are no recommendations for loner backpacking in any of my columns, but I confess that heading out to camp solo along the Sisquoc or Manzana remains among the backcountry’s greatest lures for my lumbering male body and stressed urban mind.
Perhaps adventurous outdoor women (in the Sierra Club and outside it) are like novelist Edith Sitwell, who once wrote about herself: “I am not eccentric. It’s just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of catfish.” We all want to wander outside our urban ponds and savor the less traveled lands, and often solo, and why shouldn’t the female and other genders feel safe to go solo?
Edward Abbey wrote, “Why this cult of wilderness? … Because we like the taste of freedom, because we like the smell of danger.” Thus, the real question is, does the solo backpacker tote a cellphone or emergency beacon (and does s/he know if there’s coverage where they hike solo)?
I note that I have always supported the Sierra Club and its four Santa Barbara-area chapters, and I know it boasts powerful female campers. I applaud the club’s particularly vigorous stance against oil development in our county.
4.1.1.
» Books: “The Sierra Club Wilderness Handbook,” edited by David Brower, 1967 (with some 1951 sections); “Emerging Brains, Evolving God” by E.F. Torrey, Columbia University Press, 2017.
— Dan McCaslin is the author of Stone Anchors in Antiquity and has written extensively about the local backcountry. His latest book, Autobiography in the Anthropocene, is available at Lulu.com. He serves as an archaeological site steward for the U.S. Forest Service in Los Padres National Forest. He welcomes reader ideas for future Noozhawk columns, and can be reached at cazmania3@gmail.com. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
