18. A "hello" and "hello again"
An introduction and reintroduction to new and old readers
Well, last year’s “summer break” turned out to be a year-long holiday.
When I put this newsletter on pause last summer, it was with my mind full of vague but exciting ideas of where I wanted to take this. Life, as it does, had other ideas, and I went from being too busy with paying work to be able to spare the time, to no motivation or energy, to looking after a sick pet, to being busy again… all the while, this newsletter in the back of my mind.
I’m excited to pick it up again – finally. I have a cool outdoor adventure in the works, a brilliant opportunity that I’m so grateful to be a part of and SO keen to share, but will hold off for a little while. For now, I want to do a little recap for the readers who have stuck around, and an introduction for the new faces who have slowly joined in the last year.
I’m Ameena – a London-based writer and photographer who equally loves long-distance walking, outdoor adventures, and extremely lazy days in. I was inspired to start this newsletter after publishing a one-off “travelogue” style newsletter of my 900km+ trek across Spain, following the Via de la Plata route of the famed Camino de Santiago pilgrimage.
I wanted to share my love of walking and adventuring solo, and build a platform to talk about the realities of going solo as women: the hard times, the boredom, the loneliness, the unsafe times, the moments of pure joy, the fulfilment, the nourishing solitude, the magnificent places I’ve had the privilege to travel through.
The plan has always been to open the platform up to more voices other than my own, to more women and woman-identifying adventurers, particularly POC adventurers, inspiring all in how they go it alone. I’m hopeful that, this time next year, the newsletter will be filled with guest essays and interviews, looking like the resource I imagined when I first put this together.
In the meantime, please enjoy the journal I published about walking the West Highland Way to celebrate my 30th birthday, or this essay I wrote on “the wild gaze” which remains one of my favourite write-ups to date.
I’ll leave you now with part of a poem by Elizabeth Austen. ‘The Girl Who Goes Alone’ was the inspiration for the name, the newsletter itself, and I haven’t come across anything which speaks to the feeling of going alone more than this deeply-affecting poem:
...The thing about being a girl alone in the woods is you know too much about the grain of truth in the warnings. Even if you seem impervious, weird good luck leaving you so far unscathed you know the other girls’ stories—your sister date raped after a party in college, a friend raped by a stranger at knife-point, the two women shot on the Pinnacle Lake trail, the singer killed by coyotes in Nova Scotia. The thing about being a girl who goes alone is that you feel like you shouldn’t go if you’re afraid. If you go it should mean you’re not afraid, that you’re never afraid. Your friends will think that you go unafraid. This girl who goes alone is always afraid, always negotiating to keep the voices in her head at a manageable pitch of hysteria. I go knowing that there will be a moment—maybe long moments, maybe hours of them, maybe the whole trip— when I curse myself for going alone. When I lie in the tent and all I am is fear. I walk into the wilderness alone because the animal in me needs to fill her nose with the scent of stone and lichen, ocean salt and pine forest warming in early sun. I walk in the wilderness alone so I can hear myself. So I can feel real to myself. I go because I know I’m lucky to have a car, gas money, days off the back and legs and appetite to take me there. I go while I still can. The girl who goes alone claims for herself the madrona juniper daybreak. She claims hemlock prairie falcon nightfall nurse log sea star glacial moraine huckleberry trillium salal snowmelt avalanche lily waterfall birdsong limestone granite moonlight schist cirque saddle summit ocean she claims the curve of the earth. The girl who goes alone says with her body the world is worth the risk.
Tipping jar
Enjoyed this newsletter and would like to share the love? You can buy me a coffee ☕
You can also support me for free by sharing this newsletter! Forward it to a friend you think would enjoy it too, or share it on socials.
A bit about me
Hey! I’m Ameena – a writer and photographer based in London. I love to tell stories about adventure, the outdoors, and our relationship with the natural world.