Where's my lady wilderness hero?

An Adult Book Report.

I grew up on the works of Gary Paulson and Wilson Rawls. I found inspiration in Billy Colman’s hard work, independence, and adventurous spirit. In a way, ever since I read Where the Red Fern Grows I’ve wanted to go on long walks in the wilderness, finding respite in caves and playing with puppy dogs by firelight. That seemed like the best life to me…giving dogs names found carved in the trees and catching raccoons with my grandpa to teach the dogs to hunt. A spirited feral childhood, reliant on the intertwining of nature and adventure.

I first fell in love with Brian Robeson, a fellow child of divorce, in elementary school. He seemed so rugged, a multitool of a Leatherman with a streak of sadness that arises with time after a trauma or two. “Trauma is a part of childhood. When we deal with it…is when we become adults,” he would wisely say, I imagine. I wanted to be an adult with Brian as long as I could remember. Playing house with the original wayfarer, a Levi Strauss-clad James Dean rebel without a cause.

These were my badass outdoorsy heroes of youth, with guest appearances by Thoreau, Waldo, Wordsworth, and Wadsworth.  I suppose I’ve always been a romantic. But who doesn’t enjoy the musicality of a long walk with Frost? Perhaps that explains my love for long flights to locales both desolate and frigid. “And be one traveler, long I stood.”

Oh I should not forget Edgar and later, Abbey and Service. Poe was my preteen crush. My goth phase didn’t involve black shirts and comically baggy JNCO jeans, but an inordinate amount of Edgar Allan Poe. Thus is the life of a well-read (at the time) budding rebel with or without a cause, depending on the day. Well, what can I say? “Judge none, choose one."

And so, when kids pop up in my life, as they are wont to do, I desperately await the age when they can read these novels and readily supply the children with the hard copies. They too can be inspired by Billy and Brian! They too can learn about resilience and survival! But then I notice something.

Billy.

Brian.

Two boys with B names.

Two boys.

Why not a girl? Could not a girl want for puppies and adventure? Could not a girl experience an unforeseen traumatic plane crash and be left alone in the wild by circumstance and misfortune?

So when I look to find my lady-hero, I immediately joke about their only being Little Ann, Billy’s female coonhound. Then I think of Julie of the Wolves, which in my opinion should have been presented alongside Hatchet but came later for me after some digging. A heart-wrenching tale of a young Native Alaskan who experiences the ordeals of being an orphan and sexual assault only to find herself lost in the Arctic. The most visceral. The most real. The most intense and even today, the most relevant. Geez we were unafraid of powerful books growing up.

Is Miyax (Julie) my heroine? Maybe so. Overcoming the arctic harshness, coexisting with a pack of wolves and struggling between the old ways and the modern. Certainly Miyax is the strong, hardy lady-hero girls need. Certainly. Here I am writing today from Alaska. Methinks Julie still lives deep inside of me and has for a long time. An inspiration to the life I currently live. But still, I think the narrative is lacking. I want another wild lady hero. Annie Oakley and Fannie Quigley can only inspire you for so long before you start to see their flaws and want another great adventurous wild woman. Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz? She’s a heroine, I suppose. She went on some grand adventures but I’m not sure she’s a role model of strength and ingenuity in the same way Julie is.

So here I call for more women of the wolves, more women in the wild, and more lady-heroes. We need more stories of strong resilient women in all aspects both rural and urbane, both real and fictional. Surely, they already exist and their story just needs to be propelled to the forefront. So, let’s do it already. Share with the world! Girls need role models that they see themselves in, not apart from…or just alongside by some happenstance of romance. Bring on the Katniss Everdeens, the Bridget Joneses, the Laura Crofts. Show us that we are more than a singular Thelma or Louise, that we are indeed a nation of brilliant and diverse badass women. Just the same as that day last January full of anger and hope, where the country marched on behalf of women. This is what I, along with 2,000 others, stood out in the frozen Fairbanks streets for. This is what the nation marched for. This what I want to instill in my children, if I should choose to have them. For women are not only our mothers and daughters, but our collective future.

We shall not be ruled by our genders but by the endurance of our spirits. We shall exist by what our dreams dictate and not our precepted notions of conformity. We shall be civilized or wild, whichever we choose. We shall never let go our freedoms, our dreams or our hearts. We shall be the strong resilient women we look to find. We shall fight until every last glass ceiling is shattered and we’re finally perceived as equal. We are not weak, meek, or mild. We are women and we roar.