Force of Nature and Embracing “Do It While Scared”
Nature is one of life’s great equalizers. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich and famous or poor and unknown. Once you’re in nature, the trials of trails and the elements of the wild are free to impact anyone caught in its wake without discretion. But that indiscretion means that nature is intended to accept you as you are too, with no judgment or expectation of who you’re supposed to be outside of its claim. Nature is a neutralizer, which can be both terrifying and exhilarating to experience.
There is no greater example of this cruel yet fulfilling embrace than with Force of Nature by Joan M. Griffin.
Force of Nature by Joan M. Griffin is a memoir following the author’s journey with two other women as they hiked the challenging John Muir Trail, a 211 mile hiking path located in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California, passing through Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. Throughout this book as told on a day by day basis of the journey, the Three Women experience both the cruelty and beauty of nature, encountering perilous experiences in the midst of some truly gorgeous scenery and sights unseen from civilization. It’s a compelling narrative that truly brings the reader along for the adventure, describing each and every (sometimes extremely painful) bump along the road and celebrating each victory with exuberant hiking pole high fives.
I’m not going to lie to you folks - Force of Nature was legitimately one of my favorite reads of the year. It was legitimately so charming and so fun to tag along with Joan, Cappy, Jane, and later Zoe on their adventure through one of the most challenging hiking trails in the United States. I truly felt like I was a fourth woman on the journey. The descriptions of the incredible scenery were so detailed, really putting me right in the moment with the author as she was experiencing the gorgeous sight. I felt every blister, every anxiety, and every moment of joy as it was presented on the journey. I even found myself growing as sad as the author when I realized the days were coming to a close as they neared the end of the trail. I too never wanted to leave the natural escapism of this book and return to civilization, although (spoiler alert) ending on the author finally consuming a bacon cheeseburger after weeks of dehydrated food (and almost no food at points) was incredibly satisfying and truly proved this was a woman after my own heart.
The other satisfaction about this book was that the author absolutely did not hide the fact that hiking the John Muir Trail and embracing nature fully in all of its equalizing power was hard. While there’s very little doubt that a 211 mile trail through the mountains wouldn’t be hard, it would be very easy when writing your own narrative about the experience to present yourself as the fearless hero fully prepared for every obstacle. That scary log perched over a rushing river that’s your only way to continue the trail? Absolutely you walked over that triumphantly, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t!
But that’s not how the narrative is presented in this book. Joan M. Griffin is honest about her fears and anxieties and, yes, even her annoyances with her hiking partners. She’s not the fearless hero. In fact, she’s a very fearful hero for a large portion fo the book. While on this journey, these women faced harrowing challenges that seemed downright terrifying to this beginner hiker who just bought her first hiking poles a few months ago. And you know what? They still did them. They had to - they were in the backcountry with no easy way out. If they didn't complete their task, they would be stranding themselves on a trail miles away from civilization with limited food and resources. Nature didn’t care that the Three Women were in pain, craving a bacon cheeseburger, and scared about the obstacle in front of them. Nature required them to do the thing despite all of these other things in order to move forward with their life and so they did the thing.
It’s a powerful lesson for all of us even if we’ll never find ourselves lost in the middle of a 211 mile trail in the Sierra Nevadas. We all have our own scary logs perched over rushing rivers to cross on a day by day basis. Sometimes a scary log can be an unexpected bill hitting your savings accounts where it hurts or telling your crush how you feel or teaching yourself how to cook when you had no experience with it in the past or confronting your anxiety disorder after years of denying it. Whatever your scary log is, you don’t need to pretend you’re brave and walk over it triumphantly as a confident hiker. You can cross the scary log as Joan M. Griffin did it in Force of Nature: sitting down and scooting your butt over it.
However you need to get across that log, you just need to learn how to do it while scared. Then, one day, like Joan M. Griffin learned, when you encounter another scary log over a rushing river, you’ll be able to cross it with confidence and laugh at your previous bootie scooting method from earlier in the journey. As Force of Nature reminds us, life is an adventure - don’t miss out on it just because you’re scared. Just do it while scared.
Disclaimer: A free copy of this book was provided in exchange for this review. You may read more about this blog tour at the following link: https://muffin.wow-womenonwriting.com/2023/10/force-of-nature-by-joan-m-griffin-blog.html
Purchase a copy of Force of Nature on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookshop.org. You can also add this to your GoodReads reading list.