One fun fact about me is that my primary method of dealing with men is climbing mountains.
Another fun fact is that I’m a huge nerd about Jane Austen.
Now, you might be saying, “Emily, those two fun facts seem pretty unrelated”. And while I would be sympathetic to your misconception (one I myself held for years), I would point you toward one of my favorite exclamations from heroine Lizzy Bennett of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: “What are men to rocks and mountains”?
Early last summer, I found myself experiencing quite the same sentiments as miss Bennett, texting my sister “need to climb some mountains about it” in reference to a Man situation (fortunately, I already had a pacific northwest trip planned for just a few days later). My last hiking-centric escape from Illinois, the previous February, had found me wandering San Franscisco’s Presidio National Park contemplating whether to break up with my then-boyfriend. Even the earliest days of my love affair with the mountains line up uncannily with an outdoorsy pandemic situationship, the conclusion of which compelled me to hike with an arguably startling vengeance. To beat you to your question, yes, I do deeply relate to the lyrics “and I walked off you/and I walked off an old me” and “I’m headed to the mountains/where the air is sweet and new/don’t you try to reach me, cause I don’t want to talk to you/ I’ve got some thinking to do”.
In the last five-or-so years, I’ve fallen in love with hiking – and not just as a method to deal with boy problems. In hiking I found a way to joyfully exert my body and relish in its strength in a way distinctly separate from my physical performing arts career. In steep elevations and stunningly clear mountain lakes, I found some perspective on the stresses and uncertainties that had seemed so world-defining at sea level.
And then somewhere along the way, hiking may have become particularly therapeutic for me in relationship to my feelings about men. When something makes me feel insecure, anxious about my future, or some-sort-of-way about my body – when something imbues the small details of my life with new weight and maybe painful emotional associations – when I feel like things are not going how I wanted and I am not in control – (all things men can be particularly good at doing) – walking up and down hills seems to offer a great band-aid. Look at what my body can do! I am so agentively in charge of it! Look how big and beautiful the world is in comparison to me and my problems! I just climbed such a big mountain and it was so hard but great and emotionally straightforward!
In September of 2023, I was on an incredible trip to England, doing my thing wandering the hills and forests of the countryside, when I realized just to what extent I was not alone in this experience. I’d just visited Jane Austen’s house, and I found myself reflecting on just how much women throughout Austen (and, I suppose, British literature in general) really do love to walk.
Not only that, but it is often on these walks that important narrative events take place – from the gossip and overhearing of Anne’s social circle on their outdoor excursions in Persuasion, to Marianne’s heartbroken and life-endangering dash through the rain in Sense and Sensibility, to Elizabeth’s transgressive tramp through the mud to take care of her sister in Pride and Prejudice.
Women of these novels lived pretty physically restricted lives: within a world that granted women very little big-picture independence or agency over their own lives and bodies, even basic physical behavior was limited and careful. For many women, the only options for physical exertion were pretty much dancing or walking (maybe riding, if you had a horse and a groom).
And of course, dancing came with its own intricate social baggage. So for independent free exertion – for some slight expression of bodily autonomy and physical agency -- Austen’s women were really left with just walking. So walk they did. (And walk I do.)
The thing that makes Austen so enduring is that she writes about real human things we still experience – so of course her walking women on their emotional rambles toward agency are no exception. And thus in words written two hundred years ago, I can discover stunning sisterly understanding and validation of my boy-therapy hiking habits. I can bemoan my inability to send certain poignantly relevant indie-folk tracks to a woman who died several centuries prior to their writing.
But within her timeless ambulatory insights, Jane embedded some deeper wisdom – wisdom to which my unserious hiking frenzy had blinded me just as much as Marianne’s teary storm.
Because the thing is, Austen’s novels don’t end among the rocks and mountains, or with her heroines dashing off into the sunset. And however beautiful the view is at the top of the mountain, eventually you have to climb back down.
My latest climb to the top this summer – no matter how much I proclaimed my romantic need for it – proved the point. The hikes were beautiful and wonderful and did feed my soul and offer perspective. But halfway up Mount Rainier, my feelings were still about as clear and resolved as the souplike fog that completely obscured my view of the mountain I was literally standing on. When the sun finally came out a few days later, it wasn’t the freshly cleared skies over my next hike that had me newly cheered, but an anxiously-awaited text from a man. I basked in views of snowy peaks over mountain lakes – but still found myself eager to board my plane home.
Austen should have taught me better. Why didn’t I remember: The lake district visit over which Lizzy had exclaimed her pro-mountain, anti-man excitement would never actually come to fruition – instead she and her aunt and uncle toured Pemberly, where even in his empty home, Lizzy began to fall in love with Mr. Darcy.
Aggressively reclaiming the mountains for myself may have helped me say goodbye to lockdown-hiking-date-boy, but it was my vivacious community in the flat Midwest that brought me back to full and connected life.
Why didn’t I remember: Marianne’s soaked sprint just left her with a life-threatening illness -- her happy ending came from acts of care at her bedside.
Sure, I’d come to some conclusions after processing things on the paths of the Presidio last winter– but I’d done so on the phone with a dear friend from home, whose loving insights offered as much if not more guidance than the hills.
Why didn’t I remember: Anne was only hurt by her woodland overhearing – she and Wentworth would only find each other via some brave conversation in crowded parlors in the city of bath.
Foggy hikes hadn’t changed the facts of my early summer feelings: mountain climbing could be no substitute for talking and time.
The walks of Austen’s women were important parts of their journey – but they weren’t the end of it. So maybe I’ll take a note from my favorite heroines and stop counting on high elevations to hold the solutions I seek. But I’ll still think of Lizzy and Anne and Marianne every time I lace up my hiking boots – knowing that when I seize ownership of my body and process my emotions about life and about the world and, yes, about men, by clambering up the nearest mountain, I am joining a long lineage of women grasping for agency by running for the hills.
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