The Stories We Carry

By Kitty Galloway, produced by Out There Podcast

Released on March 11, 2021

Welcome to Out There Podcast. Our stories are written for the ear, so for those able, we recommend listening while reading along. Transcripts may contain minor errors; please check the audio before quoting.

WILLOW BELDEN: It’s the end of a long workday...and I’m in the mood for a beer. But I don’t actually want the alcohol — I just want the taste, and the FEELING of drinking a beer. I want that emotional relaxation. 

So I’m trying out a beer from Athletic Brewing company.

Athletic Brewing is one of our sponsors. They make non-alcoholic craft brews.

(Sound of beer can opening)

Oh, that’s good! This is their All Out Stout, and I really like dark beer. Um, but this is really nice. It’s a little nutty.

If I didn’t know that this was non-alcoholic, I would never have guessed. It tastes just like a really nice, tasty stout.

And as for the emotional relaxation I was craving? I wasn’t sure if non-alcoholic beer would do the trick, but it totally did!

For 20% off your order of non-alcoholic beer from athleticbrewing.com, just enter the promo code “OUTTHERE20” at checkout. That’s athleticbrewing.com, promo code “OUTTHERE20”.

(Out There theme music starts)

WILLOW: Hi, I’m Willow Belden, and you’re listening to Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories outdoors.

When you’re doing a long distance hike, chances are, you don’t enjoy the parts where you have to walk on roads. 

Asphalt is hot. It’s tough on your joints…and you’re out there to enjoy the wilderness, not to breathe in exhaust fumes from passing cars.

But sometimes, the edges of roads can offer powerful lessons. Turns out, road walking has just as much capacity to change us as traversing alpine ridgelines.

On this episode, a woman named Kitty Galloway tells the story of something that happened at the side of a highway in Idaho…which shifted her worldview.

(theme music comes to an end)

It’s a story about strength, and fear, and vulnerability. And it’s about learning to accept that two opposing narratives can be true at the same time. 

I’ll let Kitty take it from here. 

And, just so you know, this story does contain a scene about assault.

(quiet, steady music begins)

KITTY GALLOWAY: The bear cub, or what was left of her, was small. Just a loose pile of bones and fur. 

I paused, looking. The hot afternoon sun beat down. 

It was the summer of 2010, and my partner at the time, Miles, and I, along with our dog Zeek, were walking from Bellingham, Washington, to Missoula, Montana. We were moving, and we had decided to make the move by walking.

The day we saw the bear cub, it was the middle of July. We were in Idaho, walking the edge of Highway 200. There were weeks of dust on our backpacks and in our shoes.

(music ends)

There’s a lot of answers to why we walked, and I could say it amounted on its surface to curiosity. What does the world look like, between here and there? 

I say “on the surface,” because for me, the walking carried more weight, or at least a longer history. 

(upbeat music starts)

I was raised by a mother who was a worrier, and I think sometimes it was her worrying, combined with my own fierce stubbornness, that pushed me to take risks when I was young...which I did. As a teenager, I ran alone at night. I hitch-hiked. I left for long solo trips as soon as I had access to a car and could drive.

A while after high school, I moved into my truck. I was a rock climber by then, and figured I could live off my savings while I drove around from crag to crag...alone. 

My mother didn’t want me to go. She worried constantly, and told me so.

(music grows louder and then fades out)

It was a story I’d heard often growing up – that women on their own would get harassed, or raped, or killed. That a woman alone in the woods was even worse, even more vulnerable. I heard the story from my mom, sure, but it came from everywhere else too. Movies, books…a story fundamental to my own culture. 

Women, I was taught, were vulnerable. Victims in the making. 

I’d always struggled with that narrative. I didn’t want that story to belong to me, so at some point, I guess I just decided it didn’t. My mom was a person that worried. The world was full of people that worried. And the story was overtold. 

I was as strong, competent and smart as any guy out there, I figured. And that had to be enough. I made the choice to simply ignore risks, ignore dangers, because that felt easier than accepting a narrative I didn’t want to believe in. 

I perfected the art of looking away from the hard things. 

And then? At 19 years old, on that same solo road trip my mother argued so bitterly against, I was assaulted. 

(somber music begins)

It was a guy I’d met at a hostel one afternoon. He’d seemed nice, even if he was already drinking at 3 p.m. We spent the day together and then the evening, and then, much later, after I said goodnight, he followed me upstairs to the empty women’s dormitory.  

And he would not accept no for an answer. 

I managed eventually to fight him off me. Away from me. Out of that room. But there was no lock on the door. I pushed every piece of furniture I could move then, against the door, to barricade him out of the room. Still, he kept coming back for what felt like hours and maybe was. He would apologize, then he would hiss insults through the wood. He would pound his fists against the door, then grow quiet, then begin again.

I’ll never understand why no one else in the hostel heard. Or if they did, why no one got out of their bed to help.

But it’s easier to look away.

The furniture held, but so, too, did the shame and the silence that made a home in me during those dark, dragging hours before dawn. I sat there with my back pressed against the wall, knees pulled up, eyes on the door. Every story I’d ever heard about women and vulnerability tumbling through my head. 

It felt like MY FAULT. I had been warned.

When the sun finally rose the next morning, I moved the barricaded furniture from the door, piece by piece. I tiptoed down the stairs. I ran to my truck. I got out of that place as fast as my wheels would turn.

I think maybe I thought that if I could drive fast enough, far enough, I could just leave the whole thing behind. 

But it doesn’t work like that.  

The first few years after the assault, I managed to keep convincing myself it didn’t matter. I told my friends about it, but in the same breath told them I was fine. 

Even as my self-confidence tanked. 

Even as I found myself nauseous anytime a man so much as looked at me wrong. 

I spent years telling myself the same script, which was that I was strong. Independent. Invincible.

Over the years, I finally started admitting to myself that the assault HAD affected me. I did my first long, solo thru-hike. I went to therapy, made art, filled journals. But I still had trouble reconciling what had happened to me, and what that meant for who I thought I was. For what I believed about the world. 

I was learning to admit that I wasn’t invincible. But I still didn’t want to believe that my mother’s anxious version of the world could be true — even a little true. I didn’t want to believe that the world was a dangerous place, and that fear was the right answer.

I didn’t want to believe that you should live your life NOT doing things because you are afraid.

(music ends)

The summer that Miles and I walked across three states, I was still trying to believe in MY version of the world. A version of the world where the assault was a fluke. 

Before we left for the hike that summer, my mother tried to gift us a GPS SPOT device to carry with us. It was a tiny, expensive piece of equipment that would allow us to send out an SOS signal if we got in trouble. It was light. It would have taken very little effort on my part to carry, and it would have offered my mom a lot of peace of mind. 

I hate to admit that I said no to taking it along. 

I wanted THAT BADLY for the world to prove itself to be different. 

To prove my mom wrong. Even if she’d been right once already. 

(quiet guitar music begins)

When we decided to walk to Montana, we realized pretty quickly we’d have to walk on some roads. Most long trails angle north/south. They follow ridges and mountain ranges: the Pacific Crest or the Continental Divide. 

Yet we wanted to go east. East meant crossing ridgelines and watersheds. And east meant, at least to some extent, following roads. 

Which leads me back to the dead bear cub. 

(music ends)

That day in July, two months into the walk, I stood on the side of the highway, looking down. The bear’s heft only barely suggested what she used to be. Brown fur matted, long past impact, heart stopping, dust settling.

It was the first roadkill bear I’d seen that summer, but not the first dead animal. There’d been elk and deer, mice and birds, foxes and raccoons, snakes and bats. I’d seen several possum. And coyotes, countless. One time there was a moose. 

Now this, a bear cub. 

The trip had been different than we expected. Our prior winter spent poring over maps didn’t convey the monotony of road walking, the mental space those miles would take. Not to mention the dead animals. It is not often we are asked to stop, witness the casualties of our collective speed. But one million animals are killed crossing roads in the U.S. daily. That’s an animal killed every 11.5 seconds. 

The animals are usually a flash as we drive past. Matted fur, legs akimbo, ruptured guts. It’s easier, looking out the window, not to look. To look through, or look past. To the beautiful river, scenic valley, awe-inspiring mountain, highway, prairie, city, park, sunset over buildings, twinkly lights, look! 

It’s easier to look at that. 

(meandering music begins)

That day in July, the day we saw the dead bear cub, was our longest stretch of highway yet. Miles was two steps behind me, Zeek following last, panting. Cars careened close and made us all think of near misses. 

When we reached the bear cub, we all stopped. We stared at her dark, coarse fur. There was dirt and gravel mixed in with limbs. One paw was still intact, the pads still visible and angled just so, outstretched. This was often the case with the animals we saw that summer, their paws so often still whole beneath the oncoming decay.

I considered how the bear cub may have died. Screech of brakes, careening car, swerve, impact. 

Maybe she was with her mama, or a sibling, or several. Maybe it was dark. Maybe the driver didn’t see her. 

After a while, we turned away and continued on. As we always did. 

(music ends)

WILLOW: Hey, it’s Willow. We’ll hear the rest of Kitty’s story in a moment. But first…

We’ve been talking about some pretty heavy things on this episode. And I want to acknowledge that, while we can gain a lot of wisdom and healing from outdoor experiences, sometimes you need more than that. 

Sometimes you need the support of a professional. 

Better Help can provide that support. 

Better Help is one of Out There’s sponsors. They provide professional online counseling to clients all over the world. They have specialists in all sorts of areas from depression and anxiety, to LGBTQ matters, to grief and trauma.

If there’s something that’s interfering with your happiness, or preventing you from meeting your goals, get the support you need.

For 10% off your first month of counseling, go to betterhelp.com/outthere. That’s betterhelp.com/outthere.

Speaking of things that might be interfering with your happiness….

Do you ever feel like no matter how hard you work, you just can’t seem to get ahead? 

If you look back at the past few years, have you ever had money in the bank, or do you only have enough to pay your bills?

First of all, please know that you’re not alone. Almost 70% of Americans die with credit card debt and no money in the bank.

But also — please know that there are solutions. And you don’t have to figure out everything on your own.

One of Out There’s sponsors is a company called TurboDebt. TurboDebt can help you with credit card debt, payday loans, medical debt, and more. 

If you have over $10,000 in debt, go to turbodebt.com/OUTTHERE for a free consultation. That’s turbodebt.com/OUTTHERE. 

TurboDebt. Start investing in your future.

And now, back to Kitty’s story.

KITTY: It wasn’t long after we passed the dead bear cub that day on Highway 200, that the police officer showed up. She slowed as she first passed us. Then the lights clicked on. The flashes arced — bright, muted, bright — in the high noon sun.

The cop pulled over to the shoulder behind us, and we turned to face her. She waited a minute, sitting in the car, eyes on us, mouth on radio, then cracked the door, got out.

Her first line was an accusation, not a question. “Hitch-hiking’s illegal in Idaho,” she said.  

Miles and I interrupted, “We’re not hitching, we’re walking!”   

But she’d already gotten going, so we were forced to listen as she explained that no one in their right mind would walk this highway.

“We were hitching”, she said...again. 

The pavement, in direct sun, oozed heat as Zeek lifted one paw, then the next. He leaned on the leash toward shade. 

A few more questions and still no one was budging. We couldn’t change our story, and the cop couldn’t believe us. 

She turned back to her car. The radio crackling, air conditioning on high. 

The lights kept flashing, and we kept our backpacks on. Cars thundered by. 

Then the officer was back. She turned to me.

“Ok,” she said, “Can I talk to you?”

I was taken by surprise at this. Why was she singling me out? Still, I followed her around to the other side of the car. 

The officer squared up, angled to intimidate, but what came out of her mouth was instead an attempt to be kind.

“So. What are you two actually doing? You hitching?”

“No!” I said, shaking my head, “We’re walking. We…”

“Fine.” She cut me off. “But I’m just telling you. Hitchhiking is illegal in Idaho. And girls like you…it can end up bad.”

(quiet, solemn music begins)

Her story was the same story I’d pushed back on all my life.

This narrative that I could be a “type” – a type who takes risks, a type who makes herself vulnerable. A type who looks for trouble, and when that trouble comes, it’s her own damn fault. 

Yet something had shifted in me that summer. Something in hiking all those miles along the edges of all those highways and roads. I had been forced to look and really SEE. Mile after mile, day after day, I had been forced to witness the unwitnessed violence of all those roadkill animals. 

I thought of the bear cub again, then. Why had I assumed it to be female? 

I realized then that the cop did actually have her reasons for worrying. My mother, all those mothers, they each had their reasons to feel worried about their daughters. 

We are collectively processing a history of trauma, and the trauma seems at times to be unending. 

I realized this. But I realized, too, that I had a choice. I could choose what to do with that fear.

Maybe I was just finally — finally! —  learning to accept the truth: that we live in a world where people are hurt, where women and queer people and brown people are more often hurt, and where animals are left for dead on the side of the road every minute without acknowledgement. I was learning that I needed to be a person who did, in fact, acknowledge all that. I had to stop looking away.

(music ends)

But that didn’t mean I had to live my life governed by fear.  

I spent years before the assault refusing to acknowledge my mother’s narrative: that I, as a woman, may be vulnerable – more vulnerable than if I were a man. And I spent years after the assault still refusing to admit that it was NOT an anomaly, NOT some rare trick of fate that I was unlucky enough to stumble into. 

It was common. My story of assault was common. Not rare. 

(more upbeat music begins to play)

Ignoring the truth of inequities and risk does not make them go away. It perpetuates them. And accepting the reality of this world? It doesn’t mean we agree with it. And it doesn’t mean we’re weak, or incapable of pursuing the lives we want to live. 

It means we have a solid grounding to launch from. It means we understand what needs to be changed.

I thought of the bear cub as I stood there with the cop.

I thought for some reason of telling her what I’d seen. About all those bodies that summer, pushed to the edges of the asphalt. 

Perhaps there was strength in acknowledgement, power in looking toward rather than away. Maybe optimism doesn’t necessitate denial. 

Strength and courage do not mean the absence of fear. 

“Girls like you, it can end up bad”, she’d said.  

I looked away from her, up to the trees, but I didn’t know how to say any of it.

(music fades away)

The cop had a few more questions, but eventually she let us go. Loose stones scattered as she drove off and picked up speed. We watched her, around the bend and away. 

She drove past us several more times that afternoon as we walked, and I assumed she was looking for outstretched thumbs. But maybe she was just checking to see if I was ok. 

(music begins)

Perhaps it’s a strange thing to learn from: roadkill and all that road walking. But I learned something that summer, about stories and casualties, fear and how to move forward. 

Years later, I’d do another long distance hike, solo again. I still didn’t carry a GPS SPOT that summer, but I did call my mom every chance I got. 

To tell her I was ok. 

To tell her I was being careful. 

To tell her that I understood.  

WILLOW: That was Kitty Galloway. She’s a writer and educator based in Frenchtown, Montana. She’s currently working on her first book, which is about healing, walking and what can come from slowing down. You can find more of her work at www.kittygalloway.com.

Special thanks to Forrest Wood for editorial assistance on this story. And thank you to the Freeflow Podcast for production assistance.

(music ends)

If you enjoyed this episode, you might like a story we ran a while back, called “Acceptance”. It’s about rock climbing, not walking. But, like this one, it explores questions of trauma, and strength, and making sense out of our own realities. I have a link to that episode in the show notes, and you can also listen to it wherever you stream podcasts. Again, that episode is called “Acceptance”.

One of the things I love about hosting a podcast is hearing your feedback. For example, in a recent review on Apple Podcasts, one listener referred to Out There as – quote – “storytelling at its best.” Another listener said we are their new favorite podcast. 

Reviews like that are so encouraging to me, and to our whole team! And they also help new listeners find our show. So if you’d like to help us out, and brighten my day, leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. I might even read your comments on a future episode of the show!

A big thank you to Phil Timm, Doug Frick, Mike Ludders, Tara Joslin, Deb and Vince Garcia, and a listener named Sheila, who asked that we only use her first name, for their financial contributions to Out There.

If you’d like to make a contribution of your own, you can find us on Venmo @outthere-podcast, or go to our website – outtherepodcast.com – and click support. 

(Out There theme music plays)

If you’re new to Out There, check out the “Best of Out There” playlist. This is a collection of some of our favorite episodes of all time — and it’s a great introduction to the range of stories we do on the show. You can find “Best of Out There” on Spotify, and at our website, outtherepodcast.com.

That’s it for this episode. Our strategic advisor is Alex Eggerking. Our audience growth director is Sheeba Joseph. Jessica Taylor is our advertising manager. Cara Schaefer is our print content coordinator. Our interns are Forrest Wood and Cecily Mauran. Our ambassadors are Tiffany Duong, Ashley White, and Stacia Bennet. And our theme music was written by Jared Arnold. 

(Out There theme music ends)