A conversation with my wonderful friend Nicole Antoinette about hiking, writing, and self-publishing an adventure memoir called How To Be Alone, expectations, reality, next steps, and acts of closure.
Today, I am talking with my friend Nicole Antoinette, a writer, and long-distance hiker. We chat about her journey solo hiking all 800 miles of the rugged Arizona Trail and her decision to write and self-publish an adventure memoir called How to Be Alone - about that journey. Our conversation dives into the gap between the expectation of the thing and the reality of the thing, how the next right step is often the thing you can’t stop thinking about, and the value of acts of closure and celebrating endings.
About How To Be Alone:
In 2017, stuck in a loop of codependency and people-pleasing, 32-year-old novice backpacker Nicole Antoinette sets off to find her self-belief and inner resilience by doing something she does not for one second believe she can actually do: solo-hike all 800 miles of the rugged Arizona Trail.
The guiding question she brings with her is this: What do we find when we push ourselves further than we ever thought we could go?
How To Be Alone is a cathartic adventure memoir that explores the privilege to be able to choose your own suffering, as well as the process of becoming a better friend to yourself along the way.
About Nicole:
Nicole Antoinette is a writer, long-distance hiker, and former indoor kid who never imagined she’d wind up spending months of each year pooping in the woods.
She is the author of two adventure memoirs, HOW TO BE ALONE (April 3, 2023) and WHAT WE OWE TO OURSELVES (September 5, 2023), and she writes a weekly newsletter on Substack called Wild Letters. You can find more about her books at backpackingbooks.com.
You can learn more about her writing and other work at nicoleantoinette.com, read Wild Letters at nicantoinette.substack.com, and follow her hikes on Instagram at @nic.antoinette.
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