Much of her journey is a fumbling exercise in figuring out how she relates to men in the aftermath of being raped, and more cringe-worthy decisions are made along the way. There were five men on the trail for every woman, and most of the other women were hiking with their significant others. And out on the trail, Matis quickly realized she was surrounded by men. Her mother refused to let her tell the rest of her family that she had been raped, and offered to donate $1000 to RAINN herself in exchange for her daughter’s silence. Matis initially wanted to hike in order to be alone, and maybe raise some money for the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, which provided her with the support she did not receive at her college. Given how harshly women’s memoirs of self-discovery are often treated, I suspect there is much more judgement and condescension to come. On the trail she is by turns vulnerable and brash, trying to figure out how to present herself to the people she encounters, and weathering their judgement. Matis was painfully immature when she went off to college, unable to put in her own contact lenses, or even swallow a pill. The insecurities that were exacerbated by her rape were already present, thanks to a distant father and a suffocating mother so intensive that she dressed her daughter until she was sixteen.

Matis’ memoir follows the common format of beginning at a tense moment in medias res, and then flashing back to her childhood and the events that put her on the path to the PCT. Girl in the Woods chronicles her journey from the Mexican border to the hills of southern British Columbia, and all the bumps along the way. Alone in her dorm room at night, researching the PCT and planning her hike helped propel Matis through the year. She moved off campus so that she would not have to live in the same dorm as her rapist, and began planning her escape. The college’s rape counsellor was kind, but advised Matis to pursue mediation, and the mediator’s inconclusive finding plunged her into depression and drinking. Matis’ college career went off the rails before classes even began on her second night on campus, she was raped. In 2009, at the age of nineteen, Aspen Matis dropped out of Colorado College only weeks before completing her first year, and headed south to join the 2650 mile Pacific Crest Trail, where it begins at the Mexico-California border. And yet leaving college to walk was such a massive leap of faith already, and nothing I’d ever trusted or believed in seemed true any longer.”

It seemed like a tremendous leap of faith to forsake the tools I’d always been told I needed. “I doubted I could survive in the woods without these very basic things to help me. All quotes are based on an uncorrected text. Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this book at ALA Annual 2015.

Girl in the Woods by Aspen Matis