On being a solo female hiker

It is nighttime at the hiker hostel and the guy next to me says to the group, “I hate it when a girl goes around a shelter. I mean, I don’t want sloppy thirds.”

I say, “I’m surprised you made it in the top five.” Then I smile (a technique that my friends Jade and Monika taught me), so he is unsure of whether he should feel insulted or not.

Just to clarify, I did mean it as an insult.

I am up to my ears in testosterone, and I’m losing patience with it by the minute. Last night a guy in the shelter talked about how he thought being a gynecologist would be great, but his friend who is in that profession says, “It’s not all its cracked up to be. For every one hot chick, you get ten heifers.” That’s wrong on so many levels. Besides the demeaning nature of describing women as farm animals, what kind of perverted OBGYN sets up his practice for a daily peep show. Porn is a lot cheaper than Med School.

This same guy started talking about a young woman he met on the trail. According to him, she had “big plastic boobs” and was wearing a tight mini-skirt and a sequined tube top. He said, “It’s just so rare to see a hot chick on the trail.”

My first thought was sheepish, “Oh, um. I guess I don’t fall into that category here.” My second thought, “Can you imagine how much chafing hiking in a sequined tube top would cause?”

It’s not just that it’s rare to see a woman who is “hot” on the trail, there aren’t that many of us to begin with, and very few who are hiking solo (especially Southbound). I can understand why. Being a solo female hiker can be rough. Despite smelling bad and being grimy, I have still gotten hit on a lot, and if you want to get away from someone, you don’t always have many options.

In southern Maine, I hiked without my tent so that I could carry less weight. This worked pretty well until a middle aged man started hiking the same pace as me. I told him that I like to hike alone during the day, but because I didn’t have my tent, I had to stay in the shelters and he also stayed there. Being with him was bit like being around an un-neutered dog.

“I once gave a girl an orgasm with a foot massage,” he told me.

I said, “Dr. Bill, I don’t want to hear about that.”

Later he said, “This woman heard I was a thru-hiker and she wanted to jump my bones right then and there.”

I stopped and made him look at me, “Dr. Bill, just so we are absolutely 100% clear, I am not interested in that at all. Do you understand? Are we clear?”

He nodded.

Then he said, “You can tell people that I’m your Dad or that we’re dating.”

I said, “Dr. Bill, it should never be the case that those both are options at the same time.” And then I said, “Let’s have quiet time.”

As it turns out, when you tell a man in his 50′s that you want to play “quiet time,” he gets pissed off, leaves early, and you never have to see him again. I may have just found my favorite game.

Dealing with men like this has been getting increasingly frustrating and I’m losing any ability to laugh and play it off. It really bothers me. In a recent town, I went to an outfitter and the guy behind the counter was pretty aggressive and rude to me. The next day, I went back with a few male hikers, and that same salesman started telling us how easy the trail was and how we weren’t working that hard. Then he started talking about Russians. “I don’t like to make generalizations about race,” he said.

“But you will,” I interjected.

“Right,” he said. “It’s just that the Russians are so entitled. Czechs, on the other hand, they have been invaded so many times that they are passive and will let anything happen. They just wait it out.”

Then he started talking in hushed tones to the male hikers about his Czech girlfriend, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the gist of that conversation.

For reasons I don’t understand, the male hikers that I was hanging out with (and I like them) invited that guy out to dinner with us. We got there early and had a few drinks. As I am a real lightweight, I got a little tipsy.

When the man from the store met us, he said to me, “You’re wearing that skirt you bought.”

I said, “Yes, and I don’t want to sleep with you.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment and then one of the hikers said, “You’ll have to excuse her. We’ve been drinking and she’s a little bit happy. She’s normally a beautiful person.”

I felt a little guilty. Perhaps I was being mean? So when he joked and said, “Well, I have a hot tub, maybe you should reconsider,” I tried to roll with it.

But he wouldn’t stop picking on me and I looked down and away to avoid drawing his attention.

“Wow. She really is drunk,” he said. “Look how her eyes are glazed over.”

I turned to him and said, “No. It’s you. I don’t feel comfortable with you. So you can talk to any of these guys (I pointed to the male hikers), but don’t talk to me. In fact, I’m leaving.”

And I did.

One of the male hikers caught up with me in the parking lot and told me that he didn’t like the things that man said about women and asked me if I was ok, which was nice, but I don’t understand why men don’t stand up to other men about things like this.

A guy friend of mine said that he has to pick his battles, and I can understand that. I feel the same way-it’s just hard to know which battles to choose. It is clear to me that if a guy is hassling me, I should stand up for myself. But if I take every opportunity to speak up when a man says something degrading about women, I’ll get exhausted and run the risk of being called a “femi-nazi” or a “man-hater,” and perhaps that’s the way I’m coming off right now.

I don’t really care. If I hear one more guy talk about Nobo-ho’s (women who hike Northbound and sleep with more than one man) or call certain female thru-hikers sluts, I swear someone is going to lose a testicle by my hiking pole.

I should say that I have met a lot of great guys on the trail, and I am glad to have them as my friends. But give a girl a break! I’m sick of dealing with jerks.

Tagged as: backpacking solo, women