Missy Wilson calls her coming eight-day all-women backpacking trip in the Alaskan wilderness “a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
Her journey starts August 4th when she flies to Anchorage and drives to Palmer, where she and nine other women will get a gear shakedown and orientation from the two NOLS instructors leading the trip. Then they’ll board a bush plane for a flight into the backcountry.
She won’t know where the trek will lead her until reaching Alaska, mainly because NOLS—the National Outdoor Leadership School—wants the women to learn route-finding and team skills when they’re on the ground, not poring over maps in advance to study the terrain.
Missy will know one other person on the trip—a fellow Texan—and is looking forward to meeting her fellow adventurers.
And though it will be Missy’s first backpacking trip, she’s been preparing for this all her life.
As a girl growing up Atlanta she was introduced to the outdoors through a relative. But there weren’t other Black people like her on camping trips or at outdoor camps she went to as a young girl.
That has changed, Missy believes, as the outdoor community has become more diverse, and outdoor companies—including NOLS—are reaching out to that expanded community. And she has worked to instill a love of the outdoors in her four-year-old son, Patrick.
“This is a source of healing. This is a source of fun,” Missy says of the outdoors.
When Missy and her husband moved from Atlanta to suburban Houston in 2020, and she Googled Black women and kayak, she was happy to find Black Woman Who Kayak +, an Austin-based group started by Tanya Walker in 2018.
Missy met Tanya, liked what she saw, and joined Black Women Who Kayak+. She eventually became Houston chapter team leader for the nonprofit, which now has seven chapters nationwide and more than 1,000 members. The plus in the name, Missy says, means the group is about more than kayaking, and “brings in all kinds of activities.”
The Alaska trip came about when Missy and Kim Fields, a member of the Austin chapter of Black Women Who Kayak+, were selected for the NOLS trip of their choice. Kim received a NOLS scholarship covering expenses; Missy did not.
Enter Grape-Nuts cereal, celebrating its 125th anniversary this year and Women’s History month in March by sponsoring women adventurers. The company searched GoFundMe petitions from women adventurers, found an appeal by Black Women Who Kayak+ for the NOLS trip expenses, and awarded the group $12,500.
“We thought it was a joke,” Missy said, when GoFundMe sent an email saying the fundraising goal had been reached. Until then about $1,600 had been raised, far below the necessary funds for the Alaska adventure.
Now Missy and Kim are preparing for their trip.
Missy has been training since April, doing cardio, climbing stairs, working with a trainer, and hiking with a pack weighing 30-40 pounds, the weight range she expects to carry in Alaska.
“I personally feel I’m ready,” Missy says. “I’m so excited.”
While Missy and Kim are in the Alaskan wilderness, Missy will celebrate one more highlight in a life of achievement: her 35th birthday.
