Aspen Matis Quotes & Sayings

I hoped my solitude would help me reclaim my innocence, remember who I'd been, to find who I wanted to be. To become her. To love her, Deborah, Debby, Doll Girl, Wild Child, me, despite the irreversible truth that I'd been raped. I was learning again that I could trust myself and, also, I was seeing, other people. I was brave enough now to go out alone towards what I wanted, to trust that I was strong enough for it, to know that help would come when I needed it. It always came. — Aspen Matis

I'd entered the bliss of Washington, physically and emotionally: eating huckleberries, feeling beautiful and finally in control of my self. Feeling the changing season, my self changed. — Aspen Matis

The harsh dimness that follows loss isn't static, but charged with the energy of immanent change. Hurt, I was left with a choice: wallow and stay in the dark, or seek light and fight to reach it. These two paths emerged. I had this choice to make. Loss is the shocking catalyst of transformation. I saw that this mountain valley, haunted by senseless murders, darker, had absorbed unthinkable violence and turned it into mesmerizing light. — Aspen Matis

On this walk I'd had so much time and space to actually figure out who I was without my mother's influence. I understood now: the things that my mother had found made her happy were not the same as the things that made me happy. And I understood: that was okay. — Aspen Matis

I felt the seed of something strong sprout something real in me and felt a surge. I'd be in the woods, homeless, walking north with my fellow self-exiled desert pilgrims. I'd be a dropout.
I had nothing left to lose. — Aspen Matis

Vividly seeing that love had always been my mother's guide, I could finally release my anger - let go of it there in the woods - and move past it. — Aspen Matis

I realized that no, no one would actually come to save or even stop me, I had absolutely no choice. The scale tipped: the moment not doing it became more difficult and unbearable than just doing it. — Aspen Matis

I was passive by nature. I had always been. Arguing felt unnatural and uncomfortable. I was always agreeing even when I didn't really, instinctively looking for ways to forfeit power, to become more dependent, to be taken care of. I realized how intensely Icecap reminded me of Jacob. They were similar, both diligent and harsh in their judgments - and my big brother's sureness had always comforted me.

But as I ran on sore legs to keep up with Icecap, my tendency toward silence stressed me. — Aspen Matis

I was no longer following a trail.

I was learning to follow myself. — Aspen Matis

The freedom of the woods lingered in me here; I felt lighter. I hoped to be changed by it, allow this seeding independence to root in my childhood Eden's soil and grow until at last it was undeniable. — Aspen Matis

I had stripped naked in front of men. Drunk. In morning's somber brightness I tried to remember why I had done it. Total exposure had seemed like the only way to be seen more clearly, heard, but now it seemed the opposite: a wild act that would define me. — Aspen Matis

Chinese proverb says that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. This journey had begun with the coercion of my body, with my own wild hope. — Aspen Matis

I'd have to be impolite, an inconvenience, and sometimes awkward. But if I could commit, all that discomfort would add up to zap predatory threads like a Taser gun. I'd stun them. They'd bow to me. I'd let my no echo against the mountains.

And better to feel bad for a moment saying no - and stop it - than to get harmed.

I would take better care.

That small word, no. I'd see its deity. — Aspen Matis

I walked home holding Tom's hand, not letting it go even as he tottered across a soccer field where there was nothing that could hurt him. — Aspen Matis

Loss is the shocking catalyst of transformation. — Aspen Matis

This is the story of how my recklessness became my salvation. — Aspen Matis

These tools were my parents' way of saying: What you're doing is important. We support it. We want to help you find your way. — Aspen Matis

The implication: I had hallucinated a rape. — Aspen Matis

After twelve years of trying, I just decided to stop missing. — Aspen Matis

With Icecap the desert no longer felt like a severe and lonely world. It felt pristine and grand, like an ocean we could walk on, bright open water. This was our world, population: two. Whatever we did here would be the culture. The language was English, though words like "rape" and "racing" would fade out of use. — Aspen Matis

death is not a pretty flower that had almost pricked me. It was not a small annoyance I could simply bypass and quickly disregard. It was really The End. — Aspen Matis

I was the director of my life, it was already true, and I would soon lead myself to my dreamed-of destinations.

It was the task of my one thousand miles of solitude. — Aspen Matis

The bravest thing I ever did was leave there. The next bravest thing I did was come back, to make myself heard. — Aspen Matis

Second - I'd take much better care of myself.

There were simple things I could do. I could start with my poor feet. These little two feet carried me each day for miles and miles, steady and flexed, tired and aching from constant daily pounding, bruised scratched and sometimes rubbed red-raw, my weight pressing and pressing them. I decided now that each night in my tent I'd massage them. I would knead them with lotion because they always ached, and at the end of thirty-mile days they burned - and it would be luxurious - something I could have done the entire way because I had been carrying sun lotion but had never taken the ten sacred minutes to do for myself. — Aspen Matis

Happy people have everything to give. — Aspen Matis

Walking in solitude fixes nothing, but it leads you to the place where you can identify the malady - see the wound's true form and nature - and then discern the proper medicine.

My malady was submission.

The symptom: my compliance.

The antidote was loud clear boundaries. — Aspen Matis

I was beginning to feel compassion for myself. — Aspen Matis

She was my mirror image, slightly distorted, flipped, older, larger, more able to coexist with a pack of men. I'd be their pawn. She was their queen. — Aspen Matis

She wrote something down. She held her eyes firm on the pad. "Marijuana is a hallucinogen," she said softly. — Aspen Matis

Her assessment was that I had poor judgment, and my rape had immediately confirmed it. I believed that the rape had erased all of the progress I'd made in my time hiking and proved my mother right. Immediately. I was hurting with not only the shame of the rape, but also the shame of feeling I'd wanted to prove myself a valid, independent person - but I couldn't. — Aspen Matis

From that unremarkable gap in dense northern forest, I could finally see clearly that if I hadn't walked away from school, through devastating beauty alone on the Pacific Crest Trail, met rattlesnakes and bears, fording frigid and remote rivers as deep as I am tall - feeling terror and the gratitude that followed the realization that I'd survived rape - I'd have remained lost, maybe for my whole life. The trail had shown me how to change.

This is the story of how my recklessness became my salvation.

I wrote it. — Aspen Matis

My beauty and independence were new for me. They brought me pride and satisfaction; they changed my sense of possibility. I felt awake in my body. Living in the woods, building my little shelter each night, a silent shadow, drifting in and out of mountain towns, a ghost, I was entirely self-reliant. On the trail I had persisted despite fear, and walking the Pacific Crest had led me deeply into happiness. I felt amazing now. In this body that brought me twelve hundred miles, I felt I could do anything. — Aspen Matis

I sensed he was the one who might be able to see me clearly, the way I most wished to be seen. — Aspen Matis

I wrote through darkness, vividly seeing: my passivity was not a crime; my desire to trust was not a flaw. — Aspen Matis

I knew with certainty now - I could say no, and he would stop. Above all, I felt the fierce beauty of the choice. I knew now what it was that had held me from falling into my desire to be with him fully: I first needed to make sure he was a man who would respect my 'No. — Aspen Matis

I was so much more powerful than anyone knew. I was an animal learning to fight back, instinctively, fiercely. I was a brave girl. I was a fit fox.

I realized that the most empowering important thing was actually simply taking care of myself. — Aspen Matis

He was sprightly and uncommonly good looking, with a quiet, magnanimous confidence that attracted people. He was my hero, too, and I listened to him. He gave me lots of wise advice. He told me to put myself in win-win situations, and that, "You have to know what you want, and you have to get it, — Aspen Matis

In the power of my newfound strength, I saw clearly - even though I'd been empowered to have my old college finally address my "horrific trauma," make me finally feel heard, this event would never have happened had I not first given myself my own voice, the permission to call my rape rape and not shame. In telling, I forced the school that silenced me, that minimized my trauma, that blamed me for the rape, to finally respect my voice and give me the platform they should have given me in the first place. I did not need the school to call it by its name; I did it myself, and they listened. I was the powerful party that brought the closure and empowerment I'd hoped, in first finding their invitation, that Colorado College would bring. — Aspen Matis

I saw now that bad men existed who would take advantage of any weakness and insecurity they found when violating a victim. I saw it was not my fault; I did not choose to be raped or kidnapped. But now I was learning how to protect myself from the predators, to trust my No and my instinct and my strength. I was learning I was not to blame, I couldn't prevent men from trying to hurt me, but I could definitely fight back. And sometimes fighting back worked. — Aspen Matis

I'd begun at the soundless place where California touches Mexico with five Gatorade bottles full of water and eleven pounds of gear and lots of candy. My backpack was tiny, no bigger than a schoolgirl's knapsack. Everything I carried was everything I had. — Aspen Matis

I had once again proven that again alone, I was again enough. — Aspen Matis

I made a conscious effort to name my needs and desires. To carefully listen to and accurately identify what I felt. Hunger, exhaustion, cold, lower-back ache, thirst. The ephemeral pangs: wistfulness and loneliness. Rest fixed most things. Sleep was my sweet reward. I treated bedtime as both incentive and sacrament. — Aspen Matis

I no longer needed to peel myself of my skin, or to hide. To Dash the colorless ephemeral things that existed just beneath my surface were as vivid as the beauty marks he traced on my cheek. — Aspen Matis

I needed only to allow myself to know what I already knew. — Aspen Matis

I was desperate not to confront the fact that this really could be it - that "nineteen" didn't matter, that there really was a point at which even young bodies fail. I was not immortal. — Aspen Matis

For all my life, I had been passive when faced with dangers. I was stunned as I swam to find that I had, for the first time in my history, asserted myself and been truly heard - respected. It felt monumental, I was buzzing with adrenaline. It was as if I'd become someone else entirely.

I had escaped a kidnapper. It finally felt real. My body unclenched tension in the balmy pool.

I was proud of the strength I'd found. I was the one who asserted he take me back; I caused him to listen. I was no longer a passive Doll Girl, trapped. This was me learning I could trust my voice - I'd used it, and it finally worked! I was triumphant. This escape showed me: I had grown, and grown vividly. — Aspen Matis

I flushed - this time not in shame - but in rage. — Aspen Matis

Children believe they are immortal, death is an empty word like the name of a country they've never been to on a time-faded map. I wasn't a child anymore. — Aspen Matis

She taught me only how to need to be taken care of.

I was here because I needed to learn to take responsibility for making my own decisions - to earn my own trust. — Aspen Matis

I'd crossed a border -

Speaking openly, exposing the weak girl I'd been, I was no longer her. — Aspen Matis

I don't remember having one conversation with my dad in the three days I was home, but looking back at my journal, I see I wrote about him. I scrawled about how I heard him telling my mom that I needed to go back. I was unhappy; he thought the hiking was better for me.
I wonder why he told these things to my mother, nothing to me.

I wonder if overhearing his approval encouraged me to finally fly back to the trail. Maybe. Maybe my father's faith in my walk - in me - made me feel strong enough to leave. His actual words, as I wrote them in my notebook, were, "She's an adult now, she can do what she wants. It doesn't mean she's not selfish." He almost understood. — Aspen Matis

But I couldn't say any of this yet. No one answer felt it could contain anything close to the truth about her. My thoughts of my mother were wild chaos, I didn't know how to tell him we'd been enmeshed for as long as I could remember. — Aspen Matis

The first time I walked alone, thirteen, I was terrified. A twig snapped under my shoe; my heart revved wildly. I'd walked these sidewalks a thousand times with my mom, yet I was scared by all her fears. Don't talk to strangers, walk quickly past parked cars, look both ways, all ways, always. Be alert. There was so damn much to remember to stay safe. — Aspen Matis

He hadn't treated me with the love and compassion I wanted, but I was worthy of that love, and someday some boy would have it for me. I hadn't found it yet, but I would find it soon. — Aspen Matis

I felt the urge to sprint, my body felt freer striding faster. I was terribly shaken, though nothing bad had happened. Intellectually it seemed that I should want to stay with Icecap and Edison. We had all smoked, I had decided to make myself vulnerable to new men, to trust them, and these boys had proven themselves to be worthy of my trust. They hadn't touched me, nothing bad had happened; I had proven my mother wrong. I had weighed the situation, I'd felt safe, and this had been my chance to remind myself that rape wasn't normal. — Aspen Matis

Already, this little-walked gigantic trail through my country's Western wilderness held in my mind the promise of escape from myself, the liberation only a huge transformation could grant me. This walk would be my salvation. It had to be. — Aspen Matis

For this entire walk, my desire had ashamed me, as if my wanting to be kissed that night mitigated the fault of Junior's sudden deafness. I'd been given stacks of reasons to blame myself for an act of violence committed by another. I had blamed my flirting for his subsequent felony. My college taught me: my rape was my shame. Everyone I'd trusted asked only what I might have done to let it happen.

In my gut, I'd always believed I'd caused it.

I finally questioned it. — Aspen Matis

It felt amazing to make visible my boundaries.

The rumors dissipated, then changed. Eventually I turned down enough men that I became the girl who turned down men. — Aspen Matis

I didn't know if I was brave or reckless. — Aspen Matis

The entire time, he'd only ever looked at my body, never at my face, his empty eyes hungry, never seeing me at all. I wasn't the presence of a person, but a body. I could have said anything, he wouldn't have heard me. He'd never responded, not by stopping, not with his words. — Aspen Matis

Though I was starved for contact, I didn't stop to talk to any of these strangers. I had forgotten how to convincingly speak the polite things strangers say to each other. — Aspen Matis

I reached into my pack and held something small in the fist I made. "It's a pocketknife," I said, enunciating each letter. I was asserting myself, I'd snapped out of something; he visibly snapped out of something too. I saw it acutely in his dropping posture: doubt in his movement. I said, "The truck works."

And so it did. — Aspen Matis

I told myself that my separation from Dash was necessary. I couldn't wreck my hike for anyone, not Dash, no one. I knew this now. — Aspen Matis

Absolutely devout in her complete care of my body, she had only taught me to be weak and voiceless.

But I had unlearned that lesson. Our enmeshment no longer felt to me like proof of love. I was no longer willing to permit this silencing. Helplessness didn't have to be my identity, I wasn't condemned to it. I was willing - able - to change. Our enmeshment had been enabled by my belief that I needed her to help me, to take care of things for me - and to save me - but, back in the home where I'd learned this helplessness, I found I no longer felt that I was trapped in it. — Aspen Matis

A red leaf danced from a branch like a dropping flame, down into the calm blue lake. A gust had broken it free. There was a cold bite in the wind.
It was now deep autumn in the mountains. — Aspen Matis

As if violence could make light. Maybe violence could make light. — Aspen Matis

But the truth was stranger than an aimless road, it always was. — Aspen Matis

I felt like I belonged to an ancient tradition of all young people given this same task of finding their own ways through to the futures they wanted for themselves. — Aspen Matis

I was placeless. I carried everything on my back, exactly what I needed to survive. I didn't know how I'd survive without this structure, silent bears and vista highs, the infinite beauty. — Aspen Matis

Living as Wild Child, I could no longer be Debby Parker comfortably - this name that I'd been given at birth that defined me before I'd had the chance to define myself. — Aspen Matis

When I felt strongly I would say it strongly. — Aspen Matis

I needed to begin respecting my own body's boundaries. I had to draw clear lines. Ones that were sound in my mind and therefore impermeable, and would always, no matter where I walked, protect me.

Moving forward, I wanted rules. — Aspen Matis

It took me almost two thousand miles in the woods to see I had to do some hard work that wasn't simply walking - that I needed to begin respecting my own body's boundaries. I had to draw clear lines. Ones that were sound in my mind and therefore impermeable, and would always, no matter where I walked, protect me.

Moving forward, I wanted rules.

First - when I felt unsafe I'd leave, immediately. The first time, not the tenth time. Not after a hundred red flags smacked in wind violently, clear as trail signs pointing the way to SNAKES. Not after I'd been bitten - the violation. If I wasn't interested, I would reject the man blatantly. — Aspen Matis

I'd believed I needed to be steady in myself before I could function with others - but surviving alone no longer felt like a good way either. — Aspen Matis

I needed to stop hiding: I was raped. It was time to honestly be exactly who I was. I saw - the shame wasn't mine, it was his, and I could stop misrepresenting myself, and I could accept myself. — Aspen Matis

There was so little I wanted to carry. Packing my backpack took me all of four minutes — Aspen Matis

And if I'd be left alone in the woods again, I smiled to think how I'd find new gifts and thrive. At the end of a long trail and the beginning of the rest of my life, I was committed to always loving myself. I would put myself in that win-win situation. — Aspen Matis

I realized she was finding Junior innocent of rape. That meant that I was guilty of lying. — Aspen Matis

I was safe in this world. This was a place for creatures - I felt I had become more of a creature than a girl. I could handle myself in the wild. — Aspen Matis

If I was going to put myself into a situation wherein I had no one to depend on, I needed to step up and be the one to actually take good care of myself.The universe wouldn't simply do it for me. — Aspen Matis

I wanted to come close to fierce wild things. They seemed prehistoric, rare and sacred. — Aspen Matis

In lovesickness we had found a common language. — Aspen Matis

I had no evidence. No physical signs of my rape existed anymore. My body had already purged them. That was the irreversible reality. — Aspen Matis

I was able to pitch a tent and carry a backpack twenty-five miles a day through mountains - I'd mastered a thousand amazing physical feats - physically I'd become undeniably confident and capable - but physical weakness had never been the problem that I had. My true problem had been passivity, the lifelong-conditioned submission that became my nature. — Aspen Matis

I wanted him to look at me like maybe I was magic. — Aspen Matis

We aren't afraid of what we can explain. — Aspen Matis

I was promising myself strength.

I had to write it, say it, make the effort and fake it before I actually believed I could do it. — Aspen Matis

She had wanted me to hold rape inside me like a dark pearl, keep it in there, as it grew, as I grew cramped, as it overtook me as hidden things do. Secrets become lies. I'd carried in every step I took this lie, the shame of it. — Aspen Matis

I had feared this end, wondered where I would go from it, from the moment I first stepped on this footpath in the desert. But I found I was not afraid of reaching it now. I was happy. I hadn't found every answer for where I was going, but I now had all I needed to take these next steps. I knew I would do what I needed to become a writer now. — Aspen Matis

And I thought: What am I doing here? What am I doing here? What am I? I wanted to feel like a pretty girl, even out in Colorado with no one who knew me. To be beautiful. To live beautifully. I drew on maroon Make Me Blush lipstick. — Aspen Matis

Each year, Gracie Henderson moons a thousand strangers, collects their shocked faces in an annual photo album. — Aspen Matis

I'm so drunk," I said through the bathroom door, though it wasn't true. I'd declared it to him in my anxiety to take pressure and responsibility off of myself for what I wanted to do next. I had already decided I at least wanted to kiss him, be held. Yet my desire surprised me. I felt the weight of shame not only on rape now, but on sex too. I was confused by it. I felt unready to hold myself responsible for the decision if I slept with him. — Aspen Matis

The PCT would lead me to an otherworld, through the sadness I felt here, out of it. — Aspen Matis

I doubted I could survive in the woods without these very basic things to help me. It seemed like a tremendous leap of faith to forsake the tools I'd always been told I needed. And yet leaving college to walk was such a massive leap of faith already, and nothing I'd ever trusted and believed in seemed true any longer. — Aspen Matis

If I wanted to go to bed at ten o'clock I did. If I wanted to go to bed at six p.m., I did. I woke at sunrise because the new sun lit my eyes. The sun was my clock; my body my pace-keeper. I started walking when I wanted, kept going until precisely when I wanted to stop.

When I was tired, feeling like stopping but wanting to persist, I'd listen to Blood On The Tracks. — Aspen Matis

Fire is not essential. Fire is warm comfort. From fire, cultures are born. — Aspen Matis

I hated my inability to explain my life on the trail to her and my mother's inability to comprehend. I hated her consistent need to know the list of different foods I'd eaten that day. I remembered how she'd asked me if I'd had a good dinner in the same phone call when I'd told her I'd been raped.

I considered, tomorrow night, not calling her. — Aspen Matis

All I could think as he was speaking was that, if he touched me at all, all the miles I'd walked, the pain I'd felt, the beauty I'd drunken like milk, like good wine making me happy, the four million steps I'd taken, would all add up to nothing. They'd be stolen. — Aspen Matis

Childhood is a wilderness. — Aspen Matis

When we apply the lessons we've struggled for our whole lives to learn to the lives of people we love, our love becomes judgment - which is toxic. Our fear our daughters will fail leads us to fail them. — Aspen Matis