In this memoir, Alicia Varnedoe traces her journey back to the woods of her childhood, where family backpacking trips in the Sipsey Wilderness became an early education in resilience—and a foundation for the writer she would become.

My dad had a different idea for the ideal family Fall Break outing. While our friends napped on the beach, we–my parents, my two siblings, and I–marched into the woods with only the necessities strapped to our backs, already dreaming of sleeping on the ground after a long day of backpacking. 

The first night was easy. After the drive down from Tennessee to Sipsey, we’d only hike a couple miles. We’d feast on bratwursts and s’mores. However, our next dinners were lasagna-adjacent, “just add water” food, and the only way to enjoy them was to hike at least seven miles with a third of your body weight on your back. We adored them. You do the math.  

Dad started us young; I was six, my sister four, and my brother two on our first trip. My siblings carried only their pillows while my dad carried them, along with his own pack. My mother demanded a bigger tent afterwards.

When I asked Dad why he didn’t wait till we were older, he emphasized that he wanted us to not flinch when an owl hooted. He wanted us unafraid. 

To his credit, it worked. Once, a bad storm blew in overnight, and we needed to cross a raging river by tight-rope walking over a wet log to get out. I remember being challenged, but not afraid.  

Our outings faded in high school. Fall Break got eaten up by sports. But, my husband and I recently revisited Sipsey with my parents for a backpacking trip. Over the campfire, we recounted memory after memory. We also shared current dilemmas: I wanted to write as a career, but I didn’t know how to start. I had no idea how the industry worked. Worse, I was unforgivably sentimental about my writing, and the thought of constant rejection (the one thing I did know about the industry) frightened me. No one had much advice, but the candor felt good. 

On our way out of the woods, my feet started to burn. I’d forgotten to break in my boots, and blisters the size of stars formed on my heel. Every step felt like a knife-stab, but we had three miles to go. There was nothing to do but tough through it. Yet, I found myself oddly at peace. Well, not peace. But properly challenged. I knew I could do it, so… I simply did it.

You see, the night before, I’d wondered if the only reason I’d been brave as a kid was because I hadn’t understood the dangers. After all, I hadn’t done anything all that tough in a while. I wasn’t sure that I even could if the occasion called for it. 

But the occasion did call. And I rose to it. 

When I finally got into the car and thought it over, I realized that somewhere down the line, I’d stopped believing that I could do hard things, which made everything scarier—especially writing. But the trek out of the Sipsey reminded me of the lessons my father wanted us to learn, which I belatedly realized were about much more than just backpacking. The gift he had given us at Sipsey every year was not a pep talk about those things, but an experience in doing them: an exercise in becoming them. 

Those lessons made us who we are today. My brother graduated from Marine boot camp this year; my sister is a multifaceted entrepreneur. And me? I’m a writer.

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