OK so a little rant about the “sexual harrassment” on the trail.
Believe it or not I was at one point relieved at how different things were on the Pacific Crest Trail compared to the Portland Oregon cycling circle jerky community I had come from. In the bike community I tried to have a little half-dressed fun cheering cycling races which I was also RACING IN, and then got called all sorts of names by strangers AND friends. “Whore,” “slut,” “butterface,” “anti-feminist.” OMG. Next thing I knew, after I’d been beaten down into silence, it was a huge trend to cheer races like that. Ahead of my time, I guess. What folks didn’t know is I came from a childhood of grade school bullying about my body, questioning whether I was a boy or a girl, and whether I was straight or gay. This shit hurt.
During my time mingling with the Portland bikey elite, also encountered really unsavory stuff from industry-leading (married) men who didn’t have a sliver of fidelity or respect for me as a human being. I made one big mistake there which I am sorry about, but in the other instances I stormed away angry. Who did they think I was, just because I wore less clothing at what were essentially (race) parties?
Meanwhile, I had joined feminist allies battling the “shrink it or pink it” trend in women’s wear. I rode hard, I placed well in races, then I broke my collarbone dirt jumping and took up hiking. Over five years I donated a big chunk (>2%) of my income to trail and city cycling alliances. I just tried to be a good person.
Sometimes people pissed me off, though! And I’m not the kind of person to just let inequities or cruelty or injustice slide. I made quite a few enemies by speaking up. I started to notice that it closed doors for me, while my “enemies” shot up the ranks in the community, becoming even more powerful and popular. This made no sense! “Didn’t anyone know that so-and-so is a womanizer sick pig who XYZ?” I’d wonder. It never seemed to matter. Sometimes I think the only way to get ahead in this world is by cheating. And I’m not a cheater.
When I got on the PCT in 2013, I noticed the guys seemed to be better behaved. I developed a theory, built around these two ideas:
- Women can hike as fast and hard as men, and can generally take more pain, so compared to other sports, the playing field is pretty level
- In the woods there is no sexist propaganda. The guys are less exposed to ads, media, porn, etc.
- We all poop in holes, we all smell bad
Pretty equalizing, right? My theory seemed pretty bullet-proof for a while. I was encountering a lot less sexual harrassment and other bullshit on trail than I was on the bike.
Well, shit. I guess all that sorta crumbled when it came to dealing with hikers off trail these past couple weeks at Hiker Heaven. I thought I was safe at a trail angel’s house, but that house is near Los Angeles, there’s a toilet and a shower, there’s propaganda, and there is a fence holding all the women and men in together. I was slapped in the face with disgusting bullshit almost immediately after picking up one of Donna’s 3 helper volunteers late one night at the Acton train station. I’ll call him “Blunders.”
OH MY GOD. Blunders. Donna thinks I should give him a break because “maybe he’s on the spectrum,” but fuck I disagree. There’s more to it than that.
Blunders has been here basically to have a free place to stay and show off to all the 2018 hikers how cool he is as a 2017 returnee, while meanwhile ignoring most his volunteer duties. There was so much to do but he only liked/volunteered to run the shuttle, so he could show off that he had truck privileges. He would seem to get upset when I called seniority and took a shuttle run from him (because yeah, sometimes I too liked in on the action, and needed something in town). It seemed he had a plan I was interrupting. But I was Donna. I was in charge of the place and decisions about it, and could do that. Boy, my helpers did not like that, even though nothing I was doing was out of the ordinary from any other day with Donna around. So odd.
Blunders has not helped with laundry hardly at all, and has to be reminded to take out the trash. Where do I usually find him, when he’s not doing the Q30min shuttle? Flirting with girls in a really… mansplainy way. He corners females on the 2 acre lot and starts talking gear with them, offers all sorts of unsolicited advice and “can I help you pitch your tent?” He’s doing shakedowns. Jesus, kid, that’s not your job.
I’m here watching the place while Donna takes some time off, and I have the distinct orders to BE DONNA. She’s particular and doesn’t like her rules changed, and yet when I told Blunders these rules, especially the rule where NO I DO NOT WANT TO STAY UP PAST 11PM AFTER A 16 HOUR SHIFT AFTER PICKING YOUR ASS UP AT THE TRAIN STATION TO “TELL YOU A LITTLE BIT ABOUT MYSELF.” REALLY? AND NO YOU CANNOT HANG OUT IN THE GARAGE WITH ME AFTER HOURS AND SIT CLOSE AND TRY TO FLIRT AFTER I’VE MADE IT CLEAR I’M EXHAUSTED AND NOBODY SHOULD BE IN THE GARAGE BUT ME. When I set boundaries, he turned on me and got mean. Classic, not classy. Behaving like an incel, basically. So he’s on the property to pick up a girl, and treats me like shit; not helpful at all, to anyone but himself.
I would literally catch him spying on me outside the garage window, maybe trying to catch me shit-talking about him in the garage or something. Or I’d see him just staring at me from across the yard, often with Doug, laughing together and making it pretty clear they were disgruntled with my management. From their body language it was clear they were both not happy with me. They stood around a lot, except Doug, who had the chore of caring for the animals, and at least did that. The pair worked on each new volunteer who showed up, and the staff morale was low. The mood at “Hiker Heaven” sorta SUCKED. It wasn’t fair that I was resented and treated poorly for just doing my job how Donna told me to do it.
Look, I’ve worked for Donna long enough to know exactly how she likes it, and fuck all y’all for your attitude and for not helping. This week has been hellishly hard, taking care of about 30-50 hikers a day, and often feeling like I’m doing too much of the work alone. Two acres, several dozen hikers, three deadbeat helpers, 3 horses, 5 dogs, 2 cats, 2 birds, plants, and ME. I count, too! Yet I’ve hardly had a moment to myself, have barely had time to take care of myself because I don’t have reliable help. Donna left me with a seriously motley crew (OMG nevermind the religious volunteer who is trying to hide the skimpy clothes from the hikers), but I don’t want to complain because she’s having a good time.
On top of all that, there is a lot of headache around water deliveries. Hikers want to shower, but the water delivery trucks aren’t coming on time and the tank keeps running way low.
This feels nothing like the Hiker Heaven I enjoyed last year with Rocco and John Deere and Sugar Momma and Ron, like the carefree and kind interaction between men and women I was used to. Where did this goofy ass person come from? How did he turn Doug against me so fast? So much icky energy. Not right.
Update 2020: I confronted Donna about this last March. I told her it was not cool that she didn’t back me up, that it really hurt my feelings. I made it clear to her how Blunders was just useless as a volunteer and tormenting the females. As girlfriends (“sisters,” essentially), I had hoped she’d back me up and send him packing, and give the rest of the staff a talking to.
But instead — and in front of Sugar Momma! — she told me I was wrong to expect her to agree with me. I was really upset. I left pretty weirded out and we had a long period of silence between us. In general, Donna has a Jesus-like policy of non-judgement (except when she is L-Rod and feeling opinionated on FaceBook). She lets hikers get away with A LOT. Most the time I thought this was sweet, and since it’s her property, it’s her privilege. This only bothered me a couple times, another example being when she tried to explain away Guino’s misbehaviors (such as swinging his naked dick in my face). But this time it really got under my skin, because the guy was basically bothering all Donna’s female guests trying to link up… which can veer into sexual harassment in a flash.
Now Donna is back apologizing, telling me I was right about Blunders. He apparently eventually hiked off with a female after bothering every single one of them who came through the gate. And she admitted she saw it. Donna heard similar stories to mine about him from other females and did in fact notice what I said at the time in 2018. Sigh. It’s nice to hear her apologize, but I’m still hurt that she didn’t have my back at the time. This community can suck. Why would I make that shit up? The only thing I stood to gain by HAVING BOUNDARIES was HAVING BOUNDARIES. Blunders had ZERO respect for me, or my boundaries, and yet still somehow thought he’d get in my pants. Kiddo has NO IDEA WHO HE WAS FUCKING WITH.
I’ll leave you with this precious May 9 2018 screenshot from Donna’s cellphone, from when Donna got back from her vacation. She handed me her phone because Carrot was blitzing her with angry messages. I feel so fucking conflicted about all this shit. Even the people you love and respect and who you assume respect you, can have these behaviors which allow this stuff to perpetuate, and creeps to continue plaguing women.
It’s like why? Why can’t we all just be fucking nice to each other? Here I am VOLUNTEERING to help hundreds of people with their PCT hike and trail angels with their vacation and I’m put in charge of some other people and I just get SHIT ON. This is only part of the story about why the past couple weeks have sucked ass. Last year was SO MUCH MORE FUN at the Saufleys. Last year we laughed til we cried. I decorated a porta potty like a tiki hut and grew confident with a megaphone and at one point had 32 PCT hikers in Donnas F350 extended cab. THIRTY TWO HUMANS in my care as driver, yikes!
I just get sorta wiped out by the fact that so much fun can be ruined by the ego or prerogative of one or two people, and the failure of women to back one another up. Pretty burned out on this crowd right now. In the end I was sexually harrassed, then I was just harrassed, and I had to just swallow it. I suppose the apology is pretty cool, but the time I spent in heartache about the whole thing for over a year SUCKED ASS. Ladies, we all make mistakes, but we need to do better backing each other up, and quicker to apologize when we don’t get it right. Carrot was right about that, at least.