WHY WOMEN LEAVE HIKES EARLY AND RARELY SAY WHY
Women do not usually announce why they are leaving early.
We say I am tired. Or I should probably head back. Or I have stuff to do.
But sometimes the real reason is much quieter than that.
I know because I was that woman on a mountain in Spain.
500 miles into the Camino de Santiago. Day 19. The trail stretched ahead through golden wheat fields and ancient Roman roads and the kind of silence that only exists when you are very far from everything familiar.
And nature called.
Loudly.
No bushes. No trees. No options. And a family of five coming around the bend.
In that moment I was not a pilgrim. I was not a nurse with 35 years of clinical composure. I was just a woman doing the math that women have always done outdoors.
Distance. Timing. Exposure. Risk.
We do it so automatically we barely notice we are doing it anymore.
Before the road trip we map the rest stops. Before the hike we calculate how much water we can drink. Before the boat trip we note where the bathroom is and how accessible it will be. Before the trail run we plan our exit points.
And sometimes after all that calculating we just decide not to go.
We say we are tired. We say we have stuff to do. We say maybe next time.
But what we rarely say out loud is the real reason.
I spent 35 years as an ER nurse and Life Flight paramedic watching women manage invisible things. In emergency rooms. In courtrooms. On helicopters. And what I understood in my bones long before that mountain in Spain is that women are extraordinarily skilled at adapting to conditions that were never designed with them in mind.
We do not complain. We adjust.
We do not demand better options. We work around the ones we have.
We shrink our world by degrees so slowly and so quietly that we stop noticing it is happening.
Until one day we realize we have not been on a long hike in years. Or we always volunteer to drive home early. Or we are the one who sits near the exit at every outdoor event just in case.
And we call it being practical.
But what if it is something else.
What if it is the accumulated cost of a thousand small calculations that were never ours to make in the first place.
I came home from Spain and I built something about it. The Stealth Skort. A patent pending skort with an unsnappable brief and four pockets designed so women never have to do that particular calculation again. On the trail. On the boat. On the golf course. In the garden. Anywhere life takes them without a bathroom in sight.
Because removing one barrier changes how a woman moves through everything.
Not just on the trail.
In her whole life.
That is what the Everyday Pilgrim is about. The quiet adaptations we have been making our whole lives without realizing how much they have cost us. The invisible calculations we call practical. The places we stopped going without ever fully understanding why.
The next time you leave somewhere early I want you to ask yourself one honest question.
Is it because you are tired.
Or is it because you did the math and the math did not add up in your favor.
You are allowed to want better math.
You are allowed to take up space.
You are allowed to stay.
The river always knew you belonged on that trail.
Buen Camino.
Reverend Morgan Patterson
Founder Cover Yr Assets and The Everyday Pilgrim
www.coveryrassets.com
