Nature Helped Me Heal After I Was Diagnosed With Lupus. I'm Never Giving That Up.

In our All Access issue, we're spotlighting how the disability community is making the outdoors more accessible for everyone. Explore the package here.

There's a story that my mom likes to tell about teaching me how to swim. When I was around 2, she enrolled me in a tadpole class at the YMCA. As she sat in an upper viewing room, she panicked as I jumped into the deep end of the pool. In my defense, Mom didn't hear the instructor telling us to jump, and while she was upstairs worried that her child was going to die, I was jumping in the pool, throwing caution to the wind. I'd say that's a pretty accurate description of who I was as a kid. There were so many new things to try, and I wanted to experience them all.

That drive carried over into adulthood. My family, originally from Virginia, decided to stay put. I was eager to see the world. For college, I stayed in the state, but afterward, I found myself in Atlanta, then Puerto Rico, and then California.

When I was diagnosed with lupus across 2014-15 (I had spent years in pain without any answers), my travels and time outdoors became limited. I was experiencing pain and fatigue that kept me from having a normal level of activity. I had to stop playing pickup soccer and softball games and taking long walks in New York City, where I currently live.

But in 2019, after having learned to manage my condition for several years, I spontaneously booked a trip to Reykjavik, Iceland — a place I'd always wanted to go. I'd planned on doing a dry snorkeling excursion, but I met another traveler who told me about glacier hiking and I thought, "I'm here — why not?" After climbing in an ice cave (with clamps on our feet and a helmet on my head), I thought that was cool enough — but then the guides told me to climb some more. They harnessed me, gave me an ice pick, and I clawed my way up a sheet of ice. I did it and it reminded me of my normal sense of being. I felt like an Olympian. Better yet, I felt like that little girl who dove headfirst into the pool so many years ago.

Once I left Iceland, I booked a trip to Bali and started doing more regular hikes at home. I was walking between five and 10 miles a day, plus taking four- to five-hour hikes on the weekend.

Then I set my eyes on the Pacific Northwest Trail, which starts in Glacier National Park, Montana, and ends at Cape Alava in Olympic National Park, Washington. This would be my biggest hike yet — 1,200 miles in total.

To prepare, I researched and started walking and hiking a lot. After telling a few friends, I was recommended "Tom Brown's Field Guide to Wilderness Survival." Then a friend of mine introduced me to Tom Brown III, and he became my wilderness guide. For eight months, we went on training excursions twice a month. I did longer hikes alone every weekend. It was challenging, but I felt prepared.

When I told my doctors about the hike, they expressed concern, reminding me of the fissures already present in the tendons of my feet. I decided to go anyway.

Day one of conquering the Pacific Northwest Trail started out late to begin with. My hiking group, consisting of me and two friends doubling as sound and cameramen, started the hike at 1 p.m. instead of in the morning, which wasn't smart, because you shouldn't be out at night in bear country. We calculated that the first day would be 14 to 16 miles, and it was actually closer to 20.

This planned hike came with an immense amount of pressure, too, because I am a fat, Black woman with an autoimmune disease. I was about to break barriers and I'd raised a lot of money at this point from sponsors supporting the hike. We were planning to chronicle the experience for a documentary.

Toward the end of our first day, things took a turn. The pack I was wearing was 55 pounds, which was unanticipated, and it was significantly heavier than the one I'd used during preparations. I also found myself pushing to hike farther than what I thought it was going to be, in terrain that you can't really train for until you're there.

When I got to a suspension bridge that was three-fourths of the way to where our reservation camp was, the bridge started to swing and it felt like someone was ripping up my foot. After telling the people I was with that I needed to sit down, we thought it was a pack weight issue. I used my poles as canes to get to the camp and made the tough decision to end the hike at that point. Alongside the other two people I was with, we split the hike back into two days. When I got back, the doctor said I ripped the tendons in both feet.

I wore boots on my feet for eight weeks and then did physical therapy for another eight weeks. After I recovered, I realized that I was trying to do this thing, this hike, in a way that did not work with my body. After the injury, I got connected with more hikers of color and healed through them and the act of community.

Despite the outcome of this hike, I'm not done hiking. I don't think I'll try the Pacific Northwest Trail as a thru-hike, but I definitely have plans to camp at Glacier again. I feel like myself in nature, even when my body doesn't feel like my own. And to get to that place of peace makes it all worth it to me.

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Keah Brown is an award-winning journalist, author, and screenwriter. In addition to PS, her work on disability, identity, and pop culture has appeared in Town & Country, Teen Vogue, Elle, the LA Times, Marie Claire UK, and The New York Times, among other publications.