Jenny Bruso was hungover.
She applied her makeup and laced up a pair of metallic gold sneakers and, at 27 years old, felt ready for her first hike. Although she’d grown up spending weekends on some of San Diego’s best beaches, “nature” wasn’t really a concept in her lexicon or experience. But when her friend, who recently returned from a successful jaunt across the 2,659-mile-long Pacific Crest Trail, suggested a six-mile hike on Oregon’s Tom Dick and Harry Mountain, it didn’t sound so bad. It turns out she was quite mistaken.
Rather than soaking up the picturesque views of Mt. Hood and enjoying the lull of nearby creeks, “I was psyched out the entire time,” Bruso says. “I cried and was so embarrassed. It was a really hot summer day and I didn’t know how to prepare. No one told me how.”
Bruso was convinced she’d never hike again, until three years later when her current partner, Brie, gently suggested an outdoor date. While her first experience was definitely awful, Bruso decided to give hiking another shot on her 30th birthday.
“[That experience] really did plant some kind of seed,” she says. “Being under those trees, seeing that lake—you can’t just drive up to that. You have to actually walk to them. There was something about it that amazed me.”
Nine years after her first fateful walk in the woods, Bruso now leads several group hikes and helms a wildly popular Instagram page under the name Unlikely Hikers. It’s for folks who, like her, are deconstructing what it looks like and means to be an “outdoorsy” person.
