7. Blogs and Articles by Disabled Outdoor Enthusiasts
- Gabrielle Watkins
- May 16, 2021
- 7 min read
Cover image: art by Kris Grenier, a white and grey mountain landscape with a cloudy blue sky
For this post, I really want to highlight these bloggers and writers who talk about their experiences in the outdoors with disabilities. It is really important that these conversations surrounding access and the outdoors include the experiences, voices, and knowledge from people with disabilities. These blogs and articles are a great resource for people wanting to learn more. I attached a link to each blog or article that I am discussing.
Article: “Learning to Hike with a Disability” by Elizabeth Wright
Elizabeth Wright ends her article with the line, “But as hard as the day had been, I was satisfied: With the right goals and some forethought, the wilderness was still open to me in all its beauty” (1). I really enjoyed this article because it outlines her process of getting both mentally and physically comfortable hiking. Wright wears a prosthetic leg, and because of this she has to expend significantly more energy than nondisabled people do to walk. Therefore, hiking is more of a process for her. She discusses how it took her some time to build up physical strength as well as to learn other tactics, such as looking up trail conditions in advance, so that she could find hiking trails within her limitations. I thought that this really stressed the importance of including detailed trail information as an access practice for people with disabilities. Wright’s story also reminded me of interdependence, as she leaned on her friend to support herself when descending a steep hill. Leaning on him did not detract from her or her friend’s experience and I felt that including this in the post normalized how help and support are a necessary fact of life and worked against tropes that over-value independence. Her story also reminded me of Eli Clare’s “The Mountain” in which Clare wants turning around on a hike when it gets too strenuous to not feel like a failure. In Wright’s article, the mountain is not a “proving ground”. Wright is content with acknowledging her limits on certain trails and needs to lean on friends at times, but this does not inherently detract from her experience and love of the outdoors. Though it does require extra thinking, she has found ways to make her ideal experience of wilderness work for her.
Article: “Eight Survival Tips for Camping with a Chronic Illness” by Kristie Edwards
This article is about a mother with chronic illness’s experience of going camping with her family, the additional hardships associated with it, and tips for others on how to make the best of it. Edwards says, “Would I recommend camping while chronically ill? No. I’m afraid if I’m honest, I wouldn’t… If you, like me are foolish enough to attempt this kind of mission, then I have some top tips for survival you might like to consider” (1). Although she may not enthusiastically recommend it, she goes on to say that their family grew closer as a whole as a result of the trip and practicing problem solving to improve their experience. I won’t list all of the tips because they are very clearly and thoroughly outlined in the link, but I think that this is a great resource for people living with chronic illness to use in deciding and/or preparing for camping trips. It also shows that while being disabled does pose additional, very real challenges and deterrents from getting into wilderness, there are strategies and gear that can mitigate this. Furthermore, building disability community by publishing articles such as these is a great way to spread awareness and information about how to make outdoor experiences more comfortable for people with disabilities.
Blog: The Sweet Adventurer
This website is by The Sweet Adventurer and is a blog by a woman who lives an outdoorsy, adventurous lifestyle with type one diabetes. This blog has been in existence since 2014 and has tons of amazing posts to read through, so I unfortunately cannot highlight them all but I would recommend reading as many as you can! She also links to some great resources like blogs, nonprofits, etc. relating to diabetes and the outdoors. The most recent post at the time that I am writing this is called “Planning For Fear”. This post discusses a recent backpacking trip she went on and how she has moved on from a feeling of fear surrounding being in the wilderness with diabetes to a place of confidence in herself and her ability to plan and manage it. There was one passage in particular that really resonated with me:
I remember being so disturbed when I was first diagnosed that I could no longer run off into the woods and survive “on my own.” That I was dependent not just on two types of insulin, but on meters and batteries and test strips and ketone strips and glucagon kits and glucose tabs and carbs and lancets and alcohol swabs and lancet devices and pen needles and frio packs© and backup of all those things – and that’s just diabetes. All these details and what to do with them and when. It wasn’t really that I was learning how to backpack with diabetes, but more like I was learning how to diabetes through backpacking.
This excerpt reminded me of a piece of Ray’s text that says, “Technology is central to outdoor adventure culture. Machines are dismissed as impure, but adventure culture relies on, even fetishizes its gear” (58). Everyone in adventure culture is dependent on gear and technology in order to be safe and comfortable in the wilderness, and I know I’ve definitely met people who are almost obsessed with getting the best gear possible. Alternatively, when it comes to wheelchairs, or certain technology that disabled people may need, this technology is seen more as a separation or alienation from nature and a form of dependency that adventure culture does not promote. I think that this is evident when The Sweet Adventurer says that she can no longer survive on her own because of her newfound dependency on monitors and medicine. However, in reality, nearly all of us are already dependent on many forms of technology outdoors, it is not just people with illnesses or disabilities. Devaluing certain gear and technologies but not others as well as placing so much value on solo survival is a deep form of ableism that easily be internalized. I think that there is something really powerful about acknowledging limitations as well as one’s reliance on technology and/or people without letting it impede on your sense of self or overall experience.
Blog Post: Cross-Country Crutching: how #vanlife helped me come to terms with disability, by Kit Carmona
I was really excited to come across this blog (there are three posts, but I would like to focus on the first one) because I have definitely been fantasizing about van life for some time now but had not thought much on how that experience would be for someone with an illness or disability. Carmona’s post describes how buying a van and traveling the country with friends is what was able to help her come to terms with gradually losing her mobility and increasingly experiencing chronic pain. Initially, things like camping and mountains were triggering to her because she realized she would not be able to climb them or reach certain spots ever again, however, she later says, “It was in the woods that eventually showed me the beauty of stillness” (1). I think this speaks to how beneficial getting outside is for mental health and that one does not necessarily have to “adventure” to benefit from being outside. Another really interesting excerpt from her post was,
The wild was easier than civilization, I found. Out in the forest you establish a campsite and stay close. Walking on dirt hurts less than pounding pavement, and your priorities are simpler: make fire. Cook food. Read. Sing. Touch. Stay warm. Sleep. Cities bring with them a whole bevy of destinations, each involving micro-commutes: between the van and your friend’s house; the van and the restaurant; the upstairs bathroom and the kitchen; the couch and the bathroom. In the wild, everywhere is your bathroom (Carmona 1).
I think that I had always had the conception that the outdoors are much more difficult than cities in terms of access, and I suppose this could definitely be true for some people with disabilities (especially those camping without vans) and depending on the location, but in reading this it made total sense that the opposite is true for Carmona. You do not have to stray far from your camp to do any daily tasks or to appreciate being surrounded by wilderness. I also know that when I camp life has always felt much more slowed down for me in an amazing and refreshing way. I would highly recommend reading her full post because it has much more detail and a lot of great content.
Website: Wonderstruck Studio, blog and art by Kris Grenier
This website is a blog and art portfolio by Kris Grenier, an avid hiker and artist who also has experienced chronic illness. She has blog posts about trails she has done- over 7,500 miles!- as well as images of artwork she has created out of wool from her family’s sheep that represent her favorite images from her hiking. She has some awesome blog posts about her time on trails around the U.S. and here is an image of her and her artwork. Check out her website to support her and her art more!
Image: a thick blue river in the foreground surrounded by green forest and a light grey mountain behind it
Conclusion
These blogs and articles are a great resource to learn and get valuable advice about how certain people with disabilities and chronic illness have benefitted from and grown more comfortable in outdoor environments. I believe that they also work to create disability community, especially with those looking to get into the outdoors. One thing I wanted to add is that some of these posts focus on individual stories of getting comfortable with and adapting to experiencing the outdoors with disability which is great and empowering. However, the barriers to the outdoors are not something that should only be solved by the individual. As well as sharing stories like these, we must also make tangible changes in outdoor spaces that create accessibility.
Additional References:
Ray, Sarah Jaquette. “Risking Bodies in the Wild: The ‘Corporeal Unconscious’ of American Adventure Culture.” Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities, 2017.
Clare, Eli. “The Mountain.” Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation. Duke University Press, 2015.
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