I Wasn’t Lost, Exactly, But…

The topography of California’s Joshua Tree National Park is deceptively complex. Driving through the park or hiking one of its most popular trails, you can see across the landscape for miles, and what you see is mostly sloping plains dotted by Joshua trees and boulder archipelagos, with mountains ringing the periphery. It seems impossible that anyone could disappear on a day hike and never be found again. But it happens. They do. And the reason is that on a smaller, more intimate scale, Joshua Tree is a jumble of high-grit granite, prickly flora, dead-end canyons, ankle-breaking crevices, and keeper caves. The most interesting objectives don’t have trails and getting from point A to B often requires several alphabets of exploration.

One day last spring, I headed out to JT with an ambitious plan to scramble up three of the park’s highest peaks, spread out over many miles. Not wanting to waste time with route-finding, I’d downloaded a GPS track from a climbing site, but the approach from the trailhead toward Queen Mountain, Joshua Tree’s second-highest peak, was obvious, so I just started walking. An hour later, at the top of a long gully, I found a use trail and took it to the left, west, and only when it bent north and started circling the summit, hidden behind boulders several hundred feet above, did I suspect I was going the wrong way. I pulled out my phone to compare my location to the GPS track and found…nothing. The track hadn’t downloaded and there was no cell signal to do so.

Now, this wasn’t exactly a pickle. I wasn’t lost, I just wasn’t where I thought I was supposed to be. I had a paper map and compass. My phone and watch both showed my location. I could retrace my steps and find the common way to the summit—this was only an issue if one was trying to get up and down a peak as expeditiously as possible. Was that why I was here, simply to get to the top?

The quote, ascribed to Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, that “it’s not an adventure until things go wrong,” is perhaps apocryphal but it points to a truth at the heart of adventure, which is that it’s really an exercise in problem solving—topographical, logistical, physical, emotional, and other. Any good outing is a series of three-act narratives, where you have a goal, something stands in the way, and you resolve the problem to achieve your goal. Miss the standard path to the top? Now you have to decide whether to plot your own way over rougher ground or backtrack and follow someone else’s easier steps.

Overcoming obstacles lies at the heart of many of the stories in this issue, but one piece in particular stands out: Shawnté Salabert’s report on the boom in new outdoor brands and organizations created by and for women, from gear and apparel companies to advocacy groups. Frustrated with entrenched discrimination, lower pay, higher expectations, and fewer opportunities, many women are choosing to follow their own steps. As Shawnté writes, “These trailblazers aren’t begging for a place at the table—they’re saying screw the whole thing, we’ll build our own.”

Thank you. It’s not just long overdue that women are better represented in the outdoor industry, culture, and media, it’s overdue that they’re remaking the industry, culture, and media in their own form, through their own companies. Getting established outdoor brands to create more opportunities for female executives, workers, and customers is important, yes, but the kind of radical reinvention we need today should come from independent, scrappy, and deeply committed entrepreneurs, who are driven by a sense of mission and have the nimbleness to take exactly the path they think is the right one. Nothing invests you like doing your own thing.

That spring day in Joshua Tree, I left the use trail, aimed toward the direction of the summit, and found myself in a technical bushwhack. Junipers clawed at me, and duff filled my shoes. Crawling became mandatory. I stemmed up a chimney and found a dead end. I finally made it to the top, only to discover the real top was a hundred yards away. When I got there at last, I was bleeding and my pants were abraded. It had taken me an hour to go the final quarter mile. It was never going to be easy, climbing that mountain, but doing it my own way made it that much sweeter.