Wild Ideas Worth Living

When we’re fantasizing about our next outdoor trip, we often conveniently forget about the less-than-glamorous parts. Backpacker Diana Helmuth talks about the realities of getting on the trail in her hilarious book “How to Suffer Outside: A Beginner's Guide to Hiking and Backpacking”.

Diana is skilled at making even the most mundane subjects funny, interesting and informative for everyone. In this episode, she talks about how sometimes leggings on the trail aren't the greatest idea (hello, mosquitoes!), the best way to plan your route, her tips on going to the bathroom outside and much more.

Connect with Diana:

• Website
• TikTok
• Twitter
• Instagram

Resources:

• How to Suffer Outside: A Beginner's Guide to Hiking and Backpacking

Over the past few years, Moondog Roop has done three major thru-skates. First in 2021, he spent 45 days on the 1,100 mile Florida Trail. In 2022, he thru-skated across the entire state of New Mexico, and in 2023 he skateboarded 444 miles on the historic Natchez Trace, a trail which passes through parts of Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Connect with Moondog:

• Instagram

If you enjoyed this episode:

• Listen to Cindy Whitehead - Stories From a Female Skateboarding Pioneer

Thank you to our sponsor:

• Capital One: Check out the REI Co-op Mastercard program and learn about local REI Fund grantees

Check out:

• REI Re/Supply

In 2020, Emily Pennington set off on the trip of a lifetime. Her goal was to visit every national park in the United States. Emily wasn’t sure what she’d find out there in the wilderness, but she needed a change - she was burnt out from her life in Los Angeles and reeling from personal losses. The time was right for Emily to quit her job, hit the road, and find her way outside.

Connect with Emily:

• Website
• Instagram
• Purchase a copy of Emily's new book, Feral: Losing Myself and Finding My Way in America's National Parks

Episode Sponsors:

• Check out Danner's all-new Mountain 600 Leaf GTX
• Check out REI’s trade-in program

Mirna’s Wild Idea: To run ultra-marathons and advocate for body positivity, showing others fitness comes in many sizes.

You may have seen Mirna Valerio, “The Mirnavator.” Her video with REI had millions of views on Facebook. It starts with her reading an angry letter from a guy who wrote to her while she was doing a 50k run. He called her a “fraud,” a “liar,” and said she is not only faking running ultra-marathons, but she’s making a bad name for runners because she is overweight and doesn’t “look like a runner.”

Well, Mirna can not only run, but she’s a true force of nature. She’s also a teacher, coach, diversity leader, trained opera singer, mom, wife, and recently added author and brand ambassador to her resume. A few years ago, when Mirna started doing longer runs, she started the site called Fat Girl Running. There weren’t a lot of people who looked like her on the trail, and she wanted to get more people outside running.

Her story was featured in the Wall Street Journal in 2015, and then was picked up by Runner’s World, NBC Nightly, CNN, and REI. She has now added a few more titles to her resume: brand ambassador, author of her new book, A Beautiful Work in Progress, and my own addition, total badass!

Listening to Mirna talk is inspiring. She has an incredible outlook on the world, she laughs easily, and she isn’t afraid to go deep. We talked about diving into the uncomfortable, dealing with haters, how to create opportunities for yourself, and how you can be a runner no matter what your size, shape, or background.

Presented by REI

Listen to this episode if:

• You want to start running.
• You are self-conscious about your body or fitness level.
• You need a dose of positivity.
• You want to break out of your comfort zone.
• You hate when people tell you that you can’t do something.

For full show notes, including guest links and books mentioned during the episode, visit: http://wildideasworthliving.com/59

Jerry Holl, Julie Hotz, and Ryan Higginbotham are three ordinary people who decided to drop everything and pursue extraordinary adventures. Each of them wanted to shake themselves free from their routines, push themselves to extremes, and become the best versions of themselves. Setting off on bike, foot, and on paddleboard to travel the length of the west coast of the U.S., these three proved that there is so much we can learn from doing something that pushes our limits in the wild.