I love a good story about addiction, grief, and self destruction, don’t you? Maybe you don’t and you’re looking at me funny now. Let me give you an example of such an addition-like book the mountaineering front: I thoroughly enjoyed Margot Talbot’s autobiography All that Glitters, Paul Pritchard’s books, and, of course, David Roberts memoir On the Ridge Between Life and Death. I also tend to be drawn to them in non-climbing books, from esoteric memoirs like Amy McMullen’s Flat Ass Calm to popular self destruction stories of public and semi-public figures like Hunter Biden’s tell-all Beautiful Things.

I am not an addict or grieving or taking notes on how to self abuse myself more effectively. Rather, these stories are honest about how hard life is, and the reader usually demonstrates grit, which Angela Duckworth defines as passion and perseverance. These books also take us through the experience and sometimes how they overcame them. With nonfiction like this, I don’t need to make stuff up. We all suffer and some more than others, and in interesting ways. As a person of faith, and as someone working for better human outcomes in general, I am always looking for stories that lend more insight into what makes us human and give us more encouragement, particularly that you can endure and get through it, too. (It’s for these reasons I love the longueurs of a great climbing story.)

I am, however, hard on myself, and find the world hard, too. I deal with my own grief, bad habits, and though I try to do the right things, I am not always getting richer or stronger. I love to climb because I forget all about my troubles. I love the act of self improvement, whether it’s climbing in my gym or improving my performance on a golf course or the quality of work at the nonprofit I run. And then there is being loving husband and a good dad. Well, nothing is easy when you care about it immensely. It doesn’t count as trauma, but it is stress.

A publicist for another book mentioned realized this and suggested sharing “something different,” he said. So that brought me to Sydney Williams book, Hiking Your Feelings: Blazing a Trail to Self-Love (2024) from Mandala (an imprint of Simon & Schuster,) which is mostly about dealing with her own grief, and guiding her readers through some therapy — on a trail. To be the most complimentary to William’s work, Hiking Your Feelings is a self-help book in disguise as a hiking book.

After recounting her grief, which included a colleague at work, Chris, who took his own life, and a boss that was insensitive, unsupported, and turned out to be involved in other improprieties, Williams is going to delve into sorting out her feelings and work her way back to self love. Parallel to that, she is actually going to guide her reader on this while telling her story of hiking the Trans-Catalina Trail, a 38.5 miles/61.9 kilometers trail across a small island 22 miles/35 kilometers from Southern California.

Williams dives into the trail and recounting her experiences and the feelings and issues that arise from them. Each chapter ends with applications that the reader can apply. She also discusses the nuances of some of the solutions. For instance, in stepping away from social media or other content, she is careful to point out that removing the things that make you feel insufficient or insignificant should be blocked and unfollowed, but challenging yourself to improve shouldn’t be ignored, and she discusses the difference.

At the firsts chapter, it was more than obvious Williams is speaking to female audience, and the anecdotes and stories are not gender universal. I am hungry for self-love and wholeness advice, and I decided to read on despite this and pull out the relevant nuggets. And I found some. My favorite was knowing when to call “bullshit” on stories you tell yourself or negative talk. Are you really sure that’s the case?

She said several times in the book how she was “eating and drinking her feelings,” but I thought it was an illustration of living life and just being unintentional. I didn’t know what she meant. I realized after the third or fourth reference to it she meant comfort food and “comfort” alcohol. And clearly, she hadn’t explained what we mean by feelings. Perhaps I take them for granted, but I wish she explained that if we’re not being deliberate with out minds, and reacting to our emotions alone, which many of us do unconsciously, then we do things unconsciously to comfort ourselves through suffering of various levels. I still think Hiking Your Feelings is very approachable. Through the anecdotes and storytelling of the hike across the island, Williams lets the reader have a friend show them the way to some worthwhile introspection.

It didn’t help my self-love. But I think it was because she didn’t speak my language with anecdotes I could relate to. Plus, I was distracted by her reoccurring conversation about body image talk. What am I supposed to do with a pep talk that I can lay on the beach in a bikini?

I related to the trail situations. But I hoped that Williams would connect the way the trail helped her. She leaves it mostly as a backdrop and setting for her therapy session. The book is about your feelings and not actually hiking as a means to delve into them. It’s a shame, because so many great stories come from the introspection of a long solo journey. The longueurs of adventures are often the most insightful and human part of the book. You won’t get that here and I think Williams lost an opportunity.

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