Impermeable: A Story of Re-Wilding

At Kootenay Wildcrafting, our days are usually measured in the rhythm of the seasons—dandelion harvests, the slow drip of pine resin, and the forest antics of the kids and our beloved canine foraging companions.  But occasionally, a deeper conversation comes into view.

This is more than a story; it is a call to action. It is a mission for the mothers, fathers, and grandparents who are already doing the heavy, holy work of re-wilding the next generation.

There is a cold wind blowing out of our modern "pop culture" again.

The "ultra-thin" look of decades past is being rebranded as a trend, as if our bodies were nothing more than a hemline to be raised or lowered for the season. From the "Ozempic pivot" of icons back to fragility, to the dark corners of social media where starvation is again a status symbol, the message to our children is clear: shrink.

There is a happy ending. But there is also a mission.

We must get the children back into the forest. We must return them to the animal delight of their own strength and vitality. If a child’s sense of self is rooted in the earth, there is simply no room for a screen to tell them who they are.

I am the mother of two fierce, wild girls. I see my younger self in their mud-caked knees and freckled faces, and I’ll be gosh darned if I watch them get sucked into the same hollow war that nearly broke me. I am sharing this story to show why the wild is the only shield strong enough to make a spirit truly impermeable.

This is a brief history of my relationship with my body.

Innocence

The moment I became aware of my body as my own was when the trouble started.  I was sneaking up on eleven, and had spent ten long summers running around mostly dressed, swinging from any structure that looked likely, eating what I liked and just not caring about my long, long hair. 

My father had made moccasins for my eight birthday, just like his grandfather had shown him: complete with beautiful beading, soft brown fringes, and smooth flat soles.  For the next two years I wore nothing else, not even in the winter-time, not even to school.  My childhood feet were bulbous and hardened from trail-running on roots barefoot, my fingernails were always long and dirty, and my skin was constantly recovering from sunburn.  When I swung myself down from a tree, I could feel the springy strength in my bones, which never broke once. 

I was a wild creature, aware that some adults saw me as unseemly, and completely impervious to this judgement.  In fact, the inevitable sidelong looks often left me feeling more free and gleeful than ever.  Didn’t they wish they didn’t have to act like trained seals.

 

Womanhood

When my breasts began to blossom in earnest, it wasn’t two months before my first cycle came to visit.   There was a confusing period during which one after another, none of my old raggedy favorites fit the way they used to.

I found myself whisked to various stores and so many dressing rooms, all cold and garish under fluorescent lights.  One after another I tried and set aside frilly girls’ shirts, blouses and training bras that seemed laughably unprepared to enrobe and support my new curves as advertised.  

During one such frustrating excursion when I finally had to put a junior’s size C bra onto my 11-year-old thorax, my ultra-conservative mother sighed and said, “You’ve been blessed, dear.  Now you must save your body for your husband”.  I had no idea what she was talking about.  Whatever she was implying, I wanted none of it.

 

The Great War

After a painfully long wait for all of the girls at school to develop breasts and start wearing “older” clothes along with me, high school finally arrived in all of its brutal glory.  At fifteen, I got a job and started going to the mall to pick out my own clothes and make-up.  I found that my strong, healthy body was too thick to fit into the expensive jeans that my pretty classmates were all wearing.  I searched online to find how to lose weight and discovered the world of “Ana”. 

A whole dark, terrifying online community for anorexia was there waiting for me, with thousands of girls (or Dark Angels as they called themselves) from all over the world chatting, sharing strategies for food avoidance; posting inspirational images of models, or themselves, close to starvation; posting “hate inspo” of woefully unattractive heavy girls; keeping each other accountable; goading each other to new heights of self-control.  I developed an avid taste for tea: chocolate-flavored tea for indulgences, vegetable root tea to make me feel strong, and lemon tea to cleanse when I had eaten too much. 

The 2-4-6-8 diet (200 calories on day one, all the way to day 4 with 800 calories, then back to 200 on day 5) helped me lose forty pounds, giving me the coveted fragile rag-doll look that made the other girls jealous.  My favorite teacher would often complement my new look, telling me I looked “willowy”. 

I would plan a week in advance how I could escape family dinner on a “200” day, would research meticulously to find the lowest-calorie stomach fillers (dried tomatoes were a favorite).  I never embraced the bulimic mindset, as it seemed piggish to me: a weak way to compensate for lack of discipline. 

I would often wake after dreaming that I had eaten a large, warm meal and tell myself that the dream was just as good as the physical action. 

For years, I kept a daily journal of every little morsel that crossed my lips, and I can still tell you the caloric content of a single chocolate chip, half of an apple without the core, or a quarter-cup of pasta no oil.

I felt that all of this was a raging success.  My mind was stronger than my body, and I did have complete control over what I would put into my mouth.  No one could take that control away from me, and no one could tell me that I couldn’t be the beautiful figure that I wanted to be.  This was me against my body, me against my base animal cravings, me ascending to a higher level of being.  This absolutely was a war, and I was winning.

 

The Forest and Me

The week after high school graduation, I left for an adventure that had been a year in the making: an epic solo journey through the Cabinet Mountain Wilderness in Western Montana.  I had spent twelve months saving, making list after list of what should go into my backpack, shopping for the very best gear available, deciding between the weights of a bottle of sunscreen or one more book in the pack. 

After four years of exhaustion, working full-time while earning perfect grades, of emotional war with myself and family, of self-inflicted terrors, this would be my summer of rest.  To almost everyone’s horror, I had made it clear that this would be a solo adventure; I un-invited curious friends and clingy boys just as fast as they invited themselves. 

One fine summer day in 2007, I drove across the border, parked my ancient Jeep in a storage unit I’d already rented, turned off my cell phone, and hiked out of Libby, Montana.  When I reached the wilderness boundary I paused to snap a picture, then hoisted my pack and marched right past that invisible line.

 

I may as well have wandered through a portal to an alternate dimension.

 

In every life there is the one Summer That Changed Everything.  There’s a novel waiting in those memory archives.  Twenty years on, the story is still written all over me.

 

That was a season of dusty trails in mazes, nameless jeweled lakes, and songs that would come to my lips uninvited, words that must sing themselves.  This was the journey home to myself, the return to the wild, unapologetic, brilliant creature I had known a decade before. 

A day trekking through the sodden forest, in drenching cold rain, was a day of cleansing.  A sleepless night stoking the fire, listening for real and imagined beasts in the darkness, was a training session, reminding me that I am a warrior.  A shared meal with passing sojourners, exchanging reading material or swapping sunscreen for granola bars, nourished and grounded me as I cherished these interactions so full of mutual respect.

That summer, the earth was alive with her own music, and I was there to listen. Those were the days when I would spend what seemed like eternity just looking, looking into the endless blue that arched over and around the world like a pure and perfect truth.

I left the wilderness three times that summer to return with supplies, and when I walked out of those blessed mountains on the very last day of summer, I walked out with a straight spine, clear eyes, and a deep love for myself and the place that gave me back to myself.

 

Peace

That summer in the mountains was the end of the Great War, but it was only the beginning of my real history.

Today, the "willowy" girl is gone. In her place stands a woman built of mountain air and dense, functional muscle. I am the mother of two fierce, wild girls, and I see my own path mirrored in their freckled faces. I have traded the hollow pursuit of less for a life of abundant, roaring more.

In our home, the scale is an extinct relic. I do not weigh myself—ever. My value is no longer a number etched in plastic; it is the springy strength in my spine when I hoist a laughing, fifty-pound child onto my shoulders for a trek through the larch trees. I lift weights daily not to shrink, but to become a sturdier vessel for this life. I do squats with my daughters in my arms, tickling them as needed to get just a couple more reps in, training my body to be the pillar they need.

I eat with the same reverence I give the forest medicine I harvest. I fuel myself with clean, earth-born foods because I respect the work my body does—not out of a spirit of deprivation, but out of a deep love for the wonder of my body. We just had a double princess birthday party for our two girls last week- and we’re still feasting on the leftover cake. We have eaten it for days now, sweet and celebratory, with no aftertaste of guilt. A bear does not apologize to the berry patch for its hunger, and I will not apologize for mine.

I am stronger now than I have ever been. I have returned to the wild creature who ran barefoot in her father's moccasins, only now, I am the one leading the way into the trees.

I have never, ever disrespected myself in that way again.

And why would I? I’m just as divine as you.

 

Strong. Capable. Whole. This is what the forest gave back to me.

 

Final Thoughts: The Mission

I share this not to dwell on the dark years, but to remind us all of the stakes. The "Great War" is still being fought, but the battlefield has moved to our children’s minds and bodies.

The antidote isn't a new diet or a better filter. The antidote is the dirt. It is the climb. It is the "animal delight" of a body that knows it is capable, strong, and deeply connected to the land.

So, here is your mission: Take them out.

Take them to the places where the trees don't ask for permission to grow and the mountains don't ever question their own grandeur. Show them that their bodies are not ornaments to be looked at, but magnificent tools for exploring a wild and beautiful world.

To the parents and grandparents already out there in the rain and the mud: Keep on keeping on. You are building a fortress of self around those children that no trend can ever tear down.

I’ll see you out on the trails.

Stay wild,

Sarah.