Perhaps the most important message here, which I applaud, is that for crying out loud, the wilderness is not the exclusive venue of twenty-something white guys. When I was sixty I trained for and summitted Kilimanjaro. My brother was the athlete in the fam, and I am about as balanced as a dyslexic camel. However I am determined, and unlike you I love the gym. That is not a statement of superiority, but of preferences. I find that older women who head off into the hinterlands with a modicum of humility (I just finished a month horse packing the extreme MK wilderness of Canada) end up being utterly reenergized about life.

However, and this is important- to the essential message of your piece, come prepared. We had one 65 yo woman who wasn’t; she was terrified of horses (go figure, we spent 12 hours a day with them) and after a single injury was an invalid for two weeks. That’s a liability, and it damaged the trip for the rest of us. So again, to support your point: Get in Shape. Take this seriously. Nature is no nurturer of fools. Take preparation as a life habit. For not only will it pay off in spades with those views, it will also pay off in body confidence and health. Now at 66, I do adventure travel all over the world. I am still as unbalanced as a dyslexic camel, and find that funny as hell. But my god, what I have seen, experienced, and get to write about as a fellow journalist.

Thank you for a lovely piece. I am off to Mongolia next for five weeks. I love kind, encouraging pieces like this which are a reminder that NO you do not have to be SuperWoman to see the world.