Almost thirty years ago, Suzanne Roberts, author of Animal Bodies and Bad Tourist, embarked on a twenty-eight-day hike on California’s John Muir Trail that changed her life. Her story of a month in the backcountry, Almost Somewhere was first published in 2012. The new edition, forthcoming from Bison Books in October, includes an afterword from the author looking back on the ways she and the trail have changed over the past thirty years. In this blog series, Suzanne Roberts shares postcards from her time on the trail, both then and now. Roberts’ previous postcards can be found under the heading “Postcards from the John Muir Trail”.

Our last night on the John Muir Trail, we were harassed by some very drunk men. Rather than shrink into our sweatshirts, we shouted back at them to which they replied: “The three wise women,” and about that, they were right. We had learned so much about ourselves on that trip. I was no longer as afraid out in the wilderness as I once was, and I have found that the more time spent in wild places, the more the fear has receded. I learned I could make my own maps, rather than follow the lines drawn for me. After spending twenty-eight days on the John Muir Trail during that summer of 1993, my own first summer on the Sierra, I felt ready to claim my place in nature and my own unique language for the landscape: one based on intimacy rather than independence, community rather than competition, connection rather than conquer.

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Almost Somewhere is available now. Visit Suzanne’s website for more.