140: Sam Returns! Post JMT Experience

Twenty days alone in the Sierra Nevada changes the math on what you think you need. Sam Pruitt returns fresh off a solo John Muir Trail thru-hike: 250+ miles, roughly 70,000 feet of elevation gain, two off-trail resupplies, and a 35 lb pack she carried without sharing a single piece of gear. We talk through the real logistics of wilderness backpacking: permits, water sources, navigation with FarOut and a paper map, high altitude from day one, and the river crossings that can turn from “just water” into a serious safety decision when you’re by yourself.

But the most compelling part is what happens inside the silence. Sam went out there to honor her brother Mark, carrying and spreading some of his ashes, and she lets us into the grief process that rose up, moved through, and eventually loosened its grip. With no podcasts, no constant inputs, and very little social interaction, she describes a kind of detox from modern identity: fewer roles, fewer labels, fewer decisions, and more access to an internal compass that feels steady and true.

We also get practical about gear and morale, because comfort matters when your “job” is hiking, setting up camp, filtering water, eating, and recovering every day. From camp routines to nutrition, sleep challenges, and the tiny luxuries that kept her grounded, this conversation is equal parts adventure story and mindset training. If solitude scares you, we share a way in: micro-dose silence now, then build toward your own version of a pilgrimage.

Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a review if the message lands. What would your RX nature look like?

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Transcript

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Welcome Back And Big Picture

Polly Mertens 0:27

Hey superstars, welcome back. Polly here. And Sam Pruitt. What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? Sam's back. Sam's back. So excited to have you back. And this episode is all about you, my dear. So you nature.

Samantha Pruitt 0:45

And the wilderness.

Polly Mertens 0:46

Yeah. Just so if you're tuning into this, you know that this is about your truck that you just came back from. So tell us to start with, like people who didn't listen, we did an episode before you left, but tell us like where you've been, what you've been up to, what what what are the logistics that we're covering here?

Samantha Pruitt 1:04

Totally, totally. I went on a nature expedition. Yeah. Um, I specifically chose the John Muir Trail and then some additional segments that added to that. But what that is, it's a through hike. So it's a point-to-point hike. You do have to backpack because you are in the wilds in the middle of nowhere. So there are no services or available anything. Yeah, it's you in the wilderness, and you carry everything you need on your back and you hike or crawl if you need to. Slide. You did a little sliding, I remember. Exactly. You move yourself through space for a great period of time. Mine took about 20 days. So, like I was moving for about 18 and a half days, so 20 days between some additional stuff. And I did leave the trail twice to resupply food. Because again, there's nothing out there. So I'm relying on the wilderness nature experience to keep me alive in my own body and brain, obviously, as I'm moving through the space. And so that's what I did. And I just got back. Wow. Check me out.

Polly Mertens 2:09

So 20 days, 250 plus miles. I forget what the elevation gain was. Did you have the elevation gain?

Samantha Pruitt 2:16

I haven't calculated it because initially my findings were it was going to be around 50 to 55,000. Oh, hell to the no, it's way more than that. It's probably at least 70,000, which is totally insane, has blown my mind. I need to go back and like recalculate some things. And I did do some additional mileage, so that's part of what's going on there. Um, I had to, as per my permit, you a permit is required. I had to hike 21 miles on the PCT Pacific Crest Trail first, including going over two passes, just to get to the trail where the John Muir trail starts. And it does start in the middle of nowhere. It doesn't start like at a trailhead, you know. Which is crazy. Which is also kind of interesting. Yeah, at the base of Mount Winnie. And then twice I needed to leave the John Muir Trail specifically, the trail I was following, in order to get food and resupply and then come back in. So in both of those instances, I had to go up and over mountain passes to get out. My husband picked me up. I resupplied for a day, then came back, and I did that twice, adding all of that additional mileage and all of that additional elevation gain.

Polly Mertens 3:22

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. And so John Rirror Trail, just for those who have no idea where this is in the world, it's in the Sierra Mountains of California. So the eastern Sierras. It kind of goes from, like you said, Mount Whitney, which is near near Mammoth, you might say, if you know where that is lone pine, and then goes and ends in Yosemite. Your direction ended in Yosemite, right?

Samantha Pruitt 3:42

Yeah, I went north to south. A lot of people go south to north, and there's different experiences to be had there, even though we're on the same trail. But yeah, you and you do have to have a permit for this.

Polly Mertens 3:50

Did you just say you went north to south?

Samantha Pruitt 3:53

I went, sorry, south to north. People go the reverse, yeah.

Polly Mertens 3:56

Yeah, yeah, ending up in Yosemite. Fantastic. Wow, wow, wow. And part of what I wasn't planning to, but now that we're talking, I was like, oh my God, we got to talk about the gear because you've talked to me like since you've been back and stuff, some of the gear things. But a lot of what I want to talk about, because if you haven't listened to the prior episode, please do. We talked about your preparation and how you've been training. And you know, you had surgery last year, like not even like nine months ago, eight months ago, or something, that back surgery. And then you're like out there humping up

JMT Logistics Miles Altitude Resupply

Polly Mertens 4:24

70,000 feet with a backpack on with 35 pounds on my back. I know, godness. So tell us what you thought this was about. So, you know, one of the words that we've talked about, or you mentioned, I think in our previous episode was initiation. You want to tell a little bit about that story and like what the JMT, like, why did you do this again?

Samantha Pruitt 4:45

Like I've been interested in doing something like this, like full immersion in nature for a prolonged period of time. I've been interested in doing that for a long time. And I am a trail and ultra runner, so that kind of makes sense, right? I already was playing in that world. Backpack hanging is relatively new to me, and it's been a fun learning of a new sport, if you will, a new skill set that includes all the gear and all of the nuances around like survival skills, if you will. But this particular doing the John Muir Trail as an expedition wasn't necessarily my idea. It was actually my brother's idea. So my brother Mark, who passed last December, he had been many times onto sections of the trail and had particular affection for a set of lakes and a pass, Crousage Pass, and all that stuff, where he has been frequent, frequently been there. I'm at all different times of year with different friends and whatever. And funny, his wife, not funny, but beautiful, his wife just sent me some pictures of him actually literally on the same peak that I'm just on. It's just so fun like that. So when he was diagnosed with cancer, and we realized at some point that he was not going to get to do these activities that he loved anymore, you know, we would have conversations about it and I would share my experiences because it was really fun for us to have that in common, that sense of adventure, that share of love for the outdoors. And then kind of in the planning phase, I was sort of hoping that he and I would get to do some of these things together. But once it was realized that wasn't going to be the case, I just committed to doing the whole damn thing. So A, he knew I would be doing it and we could talk about it and sort of, you know, conspire together, a good distraction from, you know, chemotherapy and all that stuff. And then sort of put a challenge to myself at that moment to this is the time, this is the right place to be, this is what it's going to look like for you, this kind of initiation into the deep wilderness, um, solo, completely solo, which was also very important to me. So I could have this experience and have it really be personal in that way.

Polly Mertens 6:57

Wow. And yeah, solo. Like I like hearing this, I didn't know you guys were planning it so before. Like I remember, you know, you did it as, you know, an homage or an honoring for him, and you actually, you know, spread his ashes out on the lake, which was beautiful. I didn't know you guys were in cahoots so much beforehand, like, you know, like like a promise to him and stuff. That's really sweet. Beautiful.

Samantha Pruitt 7:18

Yeah, and even to the point of he was in the hospital at the end and that's where he passed, I was with him, but we were talking about the Jean Murtrelle because you know, we needed things to talk about so I could keep his brain engaged and keep him a little distracted from the process that was happening, not totally distracted, but enough to, you know, and it was so hilarious because I can remember the last thing he said to me, he goes, You know, uh it's wild out there and dangerous. You need to be prepared. These were like his sort of like last words of wisdom. You know, he was on pain med, so he would kind of phase in and out. But it was like, oh yeah, it's wild out there and it's dangerous, and you need to be prepared. And he's like, I know you can do it, but you need to be prepared. I'm like, yeah, got it.

Polly Mertens 8:03

Well, I think that's a beautiful segue because one of the things I remember you saying, either when you got back or something, was like, like, like you're out in the wild, right? So tell us a little bit about, you know, maybe walk us through the beginning or, you know, because I I know that those first five days when I checked in with you after that, you were already pivoting. You were already, you know, like stuff was shedding and you were, you know, like you were in it, right? Like, A, the shit was hard to begin with. Like you did not start on the easy way up, like it had some toughness, you know, kick, you know, some butt kicking in the beginning. So tell us maybe that first week. Like, what were you experiencing?

Samantha Pruitt 8:44

Okay. And I want to share one more thing because it just came through my brain. Yes, I did take his some of his ashes with me and spread them both in the lake and on the pass where I was. But then additionally, at his celebration of life, I informed his friends and family, all of these hundreds of people that showed up, that I was going to be doing this thing in his honor and just kind of tried to motivate and inspire people to do their own version of it. And it was just a really fun conversation. And everyone came up to me afterwards, like, you're doing that. Oh my God. And then they were like following and whatever. So it was kind of cool for also after he passed, for his wife and friends and family and all that to sort of know that like he continues on, right? Like he's still up in these mountains, he's in these lakes and whatever. I think that's important for all of us, you know, to sort of think about these opportunities that are given to us by moments called life and living, if we accept them, by the way.

Polly Mertens 9:39

And get out in it. Yes. That's what you that's like that's the post the bumper sticker for all of our our whole show is do it, like get out there. Yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 9:47

But exactly. And sometimes that you need like a cattle prong like that, or some sort of catalyst like that. And sometimes you don't, but we'll get into sort of the why or what other people could be doing. So, yeah, so off I went on July 8th with my backpack. So again, everything had to fit in the backpack. It's on my back, okay. And my backpack weighed about 35 pounds, which is really funny because I weigh about 130 pounds. Yeah. So that's not quite the white right ratio. I mean, my pack should have been in the 20s, up to 25. But here's the thing: you cannot survive 20 days in the wilderness with any level of comfort and security. So, to be clear, I'm by myself. I can't share gear. There's no saving of anything except for me saving me. So that's part of why there was maybe some redundancy and whatever. So I it was fine. And I was able to carry it, is the whole damn point. I was able to freaking do it. And I told you I actually didn't weigh my pack, so I didn't know. So I got all the way through the trail until the very, very end before I actually weighed my pack because I thought it would be a kind of a mind screw to be like, oh my god, can I carry it? Should I get rid of stuff? Like, I, you know, I didn't need to have additional crazy making opportunities psychologically. Right. So I started on the trail, my husband dropped me off, and off I went. Yeah, because of the direction I went initially out of the gate, my version going north versus south, you are immediately at high altitude. So that was kind of a thing. But I'm very grateful that I didn't have any altitude sickness. I had a small headache for a couple of days, but staying on top of my hydration and electrolytes, I mean a little bit of caffeine actually helps with that too. That was negated very quickly and I sort of moved through it. I know, I just initially I started quite slowly at a slow pace to be gradual about it and be mindful, not at a slow mileage. The first day I had planned to do about half the mileage that I actually did. But then once I got to the trail, and I was sort of thinking about this the night before, so there's complexities to the route in logistics. You know, you don't kind of just do whatever you want. There's places you have to get to because of water sources, for example, or altitude or weather patterns or whatever. There's like a whole thing skill set to this. So it's not like let me just hike until I want to hike and then plop on the ground and you know. So water sources obviously a big part of it. And I wasn't sure how I was gonna feel. So I wanted to give myself, as I do, by the way, in all of these kinds of circumstances, a lot of grace to see what happens and then the nimbleness, the skill set, the nimbleness of mind to adapt appropriately, right? So if I didn't feel that great or I was having issues, I would have stopped earlier. And if I felt good, I would have kept going. So that was kind of an interesting and surprising experience for me, is that very quickly I went quite a bit faster than I had anticipated, which yes, I went in fit and prepared, so that's good. And was trying to sort of establish kind of a daily rhythm

Why She Went For Mark

Samantha Pruitt 12:59

and schedule to what I was doing, which I my nature is also to do that. Psychologically, that's very comforting, but also physiologically for my body to get into a routine and a rhythm is also highly productive if you're trying to perform at a certain level. Hello, people, right? So those two things did sync up really quickly, which I was pleasantly surprised about. So I got into a rhythm, got a little bit ahead of the game, and then just started kind of chipping away at extra miles every day. But I wasn't really having any problems, except it was shocking to climb these mountains because where I live, sure, I've climbed some mountains and I've been in circumstances where I'm hiking up mountains, but not this kind of shit. It you know, nine, 10, 11, 12,000 feet over. I don't live in that. Yeah, I live down here in the desert.

Polly Mertens 13:49

Totally. And you're just like pass after pass after pass, you know, day and yeah, it was wild.

Samantha Pruitt 13:58

And maybe because I'm thinking it this is a big factor, actually, not just the physical fitness and the preparedness, right? But like the psychological openness to how it might go. I didn't have a lot of stress and worry or anxiety or angst really. I was kind of open to see what was going to happen. I had a curiosity to me. And, you know, I'm trying to think if there was anything I was really that worried about. Oh, yeah, there was one thing because I discovered it the second day and I was like, oh shit, that's what I'm freaked out about. Oh, yeah, there is a thing. Crossing the waters in the rivers, especially being by myself because you're very vulnerable and drownings happen and it could be quite dangerous. So the first day I got to camp, but then the second morning I got up early and I like charged the hell out of there and started to, you know, move ahead. And I very quickly came to a giant river crossing, and I was like, Oh yeah. Ah. So that kind of shook my nerves. And it really did for a couple days until I figured out, hey, I know pretty well how to navigate this, I'm decent at it. And then additionally, if I get wet, it's no big deal. It's only freaking water. And you know, safety is paramount. So just take your time. If you need to change your shoes, whatever, all of the graces of like just allowing it to have to be what it's gonna be, you know, fell into place pretty quick.

Polly Mertens 15:23

Wow. And you, I I don't know if we want to go. You tell me, do you want to tell a little bit? Like I loved your daily kind of rhythm and the things, you know, like I was, you know, I'm picturing, right? Like, so if you head out on like a two-hour track and you don't know where you're going, you kind of look at the map a little bit and you navigate and you're like, okay, we're going here, whatever. And then you're just like checking out the scenery a lot, right? You're like, da-da-da-da, right? And then you get back in two hours, you eat a snack or whatever. But doing this backpacking is like a job all day, right? Like the getting up, well, you're you you're woken up, you know, like you have a natural sort of wake up with the sun kind of a thing, and then you have this whole packing up your business, and you know, so can you tell us like tell us your little rhythm? Because it was, I thought it was pretty cool what you how you Yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 16:09

I very quickly, I mean, even where I live now, I'm uh you know, sleep with my window open and the blinds open, whatever. So I'm attuned to like the birds in my own backyard and the sun rising and whatever, right? So I already sort of lived that way, but in nature, it's next level because you are fully immersed. There is zero protective entity except for a very thin-walled tent, right? Yeah. So the minute the sun would start coming up and there'd be any sort of animal or natural noises, bing, I just awake. Nature's alone. And I would look and see what time it is, and it'd be like five o'clock, five a.m., five ten, five fifteen. So what very quickly happened is every day I would wake within the same 15-minute window. Yeah, that tripped me out for 20 days. So it didn't matter if I did 12 miles a day before, or in some instances 18 or 20. My natural bio rhythm was get up. The sun is coming up, the animals are moving, so are you. And actually, I absolutely love that, and I love being within that rhythm.

Polly Mertens 17:15

Yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 17:16

I mean, just side note, since I've been home, it's been hard to actually get back on that, which is kind of a trip because I'm surrounded by Western things going on in the world. Anyway, so then I would take my time to, you know, have coffee, try and ingest some nutrients, and then create some sort of rhythm around my eating pattern and whatever, which did evolve over time. That was also really interesting. And then it was time to like break down camp. Like it's a lot of work. Again, no one, I don't have a housekeeper, I don't have a partner who's doing the thing, so I'm doing all the things, right?

Polly Mertens 17:47

No sherpas, no sherpas to take.

Samantha Pruitt 17:49

I'm filtering the water, I'm boiling the water, I'm making the instant coffee. I'm right. And then as I'm drinking it, I'm like putting away my stuff, cleaning whatever needs to be cleaned, and then slowly breaking down the tent and all these kind of things, and then repacking your pack every day. Like these sound like really minor things. Oh, hell no. By the way, if you just get your pack not quite right, it will not close. Like this is a real thing, or it won't sit on your body properly, right? So there's all these nuances to that that were because of who I am, really fun for me to work with, play with, and learn from because I felt like, again, full immersion, like I'm in this experience, nobody's coming to do it for me. And as annoyed as I might get about some things or whatever, like I need to do it. I will be doing it, and I will be taking care of myself to the best of my ability this whole time in order to get to the finish line to accomplish the goal, you know.

Polly Mertens 18:51

And you had this incredible spreadsheet that was like this is where I'm gonna be, and there's how many miles a day, and so you know, and hearing you say like the first day you doubled it. I was like, You doubled it? Like, what the hell? Like, that's just anyway.

Samantha Pruitt 19:04

So, but tell us like after you so you told me you had what was it 90 minutes to set up or take down and yeah, so it would take me about 90 minutes in the morning from waking to get on the trail, and then I would hike, hike, hike, hike, hike. So I didn't like stop and eat and like do the views and whatever. Some people do, and that's completely fine. It's not that I didn't look at them while I was moving, but I think as a trail and ultra runner, I have in me that I would rather keep moving because every time you stop, by the way, getting started again is no small feat, especially if you take that pack off.

Polly Mertens 19:39

Right.

Samantha Pruitt 19:40

Wells, Bills. Anytime you have to like start and stop with the pack is like a major thing. And then my knowing of my own body and how it works and uh humans in general, by the way, is that you need to have ample recovery. If you are going to every day deliver the fucking goods, okay. So if I do not get ample recovery at the end of the day, I won't recover to the next day. And then you start building and digging a hole for yourself around recovery. So I know that that's a critical element. So at first I was like, I'm gonna move for six hours a day. So let me see how

The First Week Hits Hard

Samantha Pruitt 20:14

that feels, right? And then I would move up and down mountains for six hours a day. And then the next day I'd be like, I think I can do seven. Let me see what seven feels like. So I would start to play with that number and I basically set sort of a guidepost for myself as like to get on the trail by 7 a.m., 7.15 at the latest, and then to finish every day around three. Now, sometimes it would be 2:45 or 3, and then eventually later, as I got more fit and confident, it would be 3:30 and then it would be four, right? But I had my routines down, I had my recovery regiment down. And when I would finish, I had very specific, you know, I again I need to filter water, I need to set up camp and a tent. So I'd have a little like kitchen area, and I'd have a little bathroom area, and I'd have my, you know, so all of these things would take time. And then I'd need to get food into this body, and then I would need to somehow bathe this body if there was a water source, you know, all of those things. And then I would rest, legs up, whatever, and I would actually take my map out. I had two forms of map. I was utilizing the far out app, which is on my phone, which is a downloaded map that works off of satellite. It doesn't work off of service because you don't have service. And then additionally, beyond that, I had a paper map. So I would utilize those two things for planning the next day and maybe to review where I was or what all happened or something while I was resting, legs up, recovering, digesting food. And then I would get back up, maybe just explore the area lightly if I was at a place that was beautiful or something like that. Spend a little time just sitting out observing nature and then get ready for bed, which is like blow up the mattress, but you're done, brush your teeth. Okay, you still gotta brush your teeth. There's all these things, you still have to clean your body. I know. Like you're not a full on barbarian. Okay. Well, I'm not. Like I like some comfort.

Polly Mertens 22:06

Go to go to bed, you know. Yeah, yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 22:08

What I mean, I was literally, and this was a little probably the funniest part about it is going to bed sort of around eight, and then it was like 7 30. And then I got to a Point where it's like I can't fall asleep because it's still light out, but I'm freaking exhausted, especially if I did 15, 16, 70, 18 miles. Like in some days I did two passes and 18 miles, like a crazy shit physically, right? So at the end of the day, I'd be like, uh, as long as I'd taken care of all my things, I was like, I need lights out. And then the other ridiculous thing is I did have a hole in my ear mattress. So very quickly, out of the gate, I would wake a couple times a night on the freezing ground because my mattress had deflated and I'd have to wake up and blah blah blah, whatever. So the sleep, the quality of my sleep wasn't great. So going to bed earlier became really important. And I think I mentioned to you, I went to like a through hiker trading uh post, which was in the middle of nowhere, literally, this side trail at this dude ranch that we couldn't access the dude ranch. It was a private thing. But they had set up a through hiker like little trading post where you could camp and they had running water, so that was lovely. You could wash your hands, not shower anything, charge your batteries, which was a huge thing. So all of us hiked off trail six miles, three miles and three miles, just to charge our batteries and things of that nature. And then she'd set up a little store with like basics, so maybe fuel cans, because we run out of fuel or first aid or things like that. So I did that and I traded for a beanie so I could cover my eyes. So I have this fluffy little pink beanie, which is completely out of character for me. And I fell in love with it because every night I'd have this little pink beanie covering my eyes, and I can't go asleep. It felt so luxurious. Oh, yeah. Like something that simple felt like pure luxury, like pure self-care in some of the most hardest physical and psychological circumstances, you know. And I've learned that over the years in many instances, that that's a critical element, you know, that little bit of TLC goes a long way.

Polly Mertens 24:16

I'll talk more about that because I think you, you know, you had a couple things that you were like selective about that was like, you know what, you don't, you know, so you said there were some people that you saw that were literally sleeping without a tent to minimize weight and you know, like zero creature comforts or whatever. But there was like a couple that you had that was like non-negotiable because it's like this is tough stuff, you know. Eight, you know, from dawn till dusk, you know, going, going, going, and setting up and moving. I mean, like, this is your job, like all day long. There's navigating, there's crossing and hiking and setting up and taking, you know, like yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 24:52

So yeah, navigating. I mean, navigating obviously you can get really lost in the wild. It's no joke to be paying attention to where the hell you are. Like, that's a big deal. And I did get lost a couple times, not any great distances, but a couple miles here, a couple miles here, you know, that kind of shit adds up and is very talk about crazy making and frustrating, you know. But anyway, um it didn't happen a lot, thank goodness. My gut is pretty good at this by now, but you know, shit can happen. My creature comforts, so my super comforts were well, originally I had taken my brother's sleeping bag, so I'd taken some of his things too, and that ended up not working out, so I had to switch that out. It was just too cold, it was just an older sleeping bag. But creature comforts for me were this morning latte, so instant. You basically all I can do is boil water. So, and some people don't do that by the way, they cold soak their food. Oh, jeez.

Polly Mertens 25:45

Wow.

Samantha Pruitt 25:46

To me, I knew nutritionally whatever I was going to be able to provide was a paramount of the highest priority. Uh a, I value my body and its functionality and health, but also like to perform like that day after day without sound nutrition. Now, I couldn't consume a lot of calories, but I did consume high-quality calories. So I got a very specific dehydrated food brand. It's called Wild Zora, and it's basically super high quality stuff, mostly vegetable-based, but you know, it has grains in it and it has um legumes in it and stuff like that. And you can buy, and I did buy a few with like that had dehydrated meat in it. So that is available to you. They're small and they're low calorie, but they a lot of bang for your buck. And then my morning latte was this Korean instant coffee I found that was actually a latte. So it was like coconut powder and espresso decadent. Okay, I'm telling you, literally. So I only had a few of them to begin with because I didn't I had all these different coffees, I didn't know what was gonna be. And then very quickly, when I went to resupply, I told my husband, you go order me two boxes of that. I need to have that every day. I might need to have two of them. All of a sudden, chuck it out. It was just absolute rubber. I was like, nope, there's some things that are gonna be so important for my psychological welfare, in addition to a pooping, morning rituals, blah, blah, blah, all the things, right? So that was a big deal. Um, again, this pink beanie. It was free. Like there's just things that are just fascinating to me that made such an incredible difference. And then I had these water sandal shoes. You know, everybody has all these expensive things that they do. I had $8 cheap ass velcro like water crossing sandals, which were like the bomb for me. They allowed me to cross big waterways and not have my feet wet all day long safely. Um, and then they became my camp shoes. So at the end of the day, getting out of my shoes and wearing those around camp and then putting on, I know it sounds ridiculous, but my rain pants. So getting out of my stinky shorts and stinky shirt and stinky bra, being able to clean them. In some instances, I just air dried them. Um, and I would spray a little bit of my hand sanitizer on it because it had a little verbena, like verbena smell. Or I would actually wash them and then let them dry if I had enough time at camp. So it's these really small things that seem minor that allowed me to feel like this is normal now. I live in the wilderness. What is also normal is I eat like this, and I have a certain amount of things to use. You know, you have one sports bra and one shirt, like you, you know, your whole life shrinks into this. So when you get into a place where you can emotionally and psychologically normalize that very quickly, you you adapt quickly. It becomes comfortable, you know what to do. It doesn't feel like there's no angst around it. Yeah, no, I had this, got it, you know. There, I had none of that, like pining over creature comforts or anything, which is really fascinating to me.

Polly Mertens 28:57

Yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 28:58

Yeah. And even when I'd leave the trail and have to go back on, it was a little bit difficult to go back on, but not because of like, oh, now I miss the creature comfort of you know, being in Mammoth Lakes and being able to go and get a hamburger. It was more like, oh, my routine was disrupted. I need to get back into my routine very quickly because my body and mind will respond to that.

Polly Mertens 29:21

Nice. Nice. So tell me, you were, I want to hear this will lead into stories because I want to hear more stories, but those

Daily Rhythm Recovery And Planning

Polly Mertens 29:29

shoes that you talked about, they did not make it to the last day of the trail. Tell us a little bit about that story, and then I want to hear some more stories from the road. So stories from the trail.

Samantha Pruitt 29:39

Yeah, and I'm sure that there's thousands of them, but the first half of the trip, no, even more. So I had a five-day block and then I resupplied, left and resupplied. I had an 11-day block, which is kind of mind-blowing to carry enough food and function 11 days with everything on your back. The food and you barely did, which was I barely did, yeah. Calorically, it was a problem.

Polly Mertens 30:05

Yeah, well, you've lost weight, we both know that, but yeah, yeah. Okay.

Samantha Pruitt 30:09

But to be able to like function, right? I I I did a post about having a massive bonk. So one day, luckily, not every day, I did have an epic bonk that was slightly dangerous, and I had to corral that in relatively quickly. But yeah, it was it went on for hours. And then I had another five-day block. So that's kind of how the trip sort of chunked out, if you will. And so in the first half, I really didn't have any intention to talk to anybody, nothing personal. I'm sure they're all very lovely people, but I didn't give a shit. Okay. It was an internal, personal journey that I was signing up for with great intention. And so, sure, I would say hi to people or whatever, and but I wouldn't like engage in conversations. That was very intentional, so I could very quickly get internal and get quiet and get deep. And then again, exited, came back, and then that middle section, I was sort of in that place too. But I became a little more open to having some conversation with people in certain circumstances. Not often, uh, because about 70% of the time I camped by myself, but about 30% of the time, there would be a small cluster of people that might camp in the same place or whatever. So I would engage with them a little bit and oh, where are you from or what are you doing? Mostly like, what are you doing? Because why in the hell are you out here? Are you as crazy as me? What are you doing? And most people were crazier, not most, but a lot of them, because they were doing the Pacific Crest Trail and we would overlap many times. And so they were having a whole other experience. So it was a little interesting to talk to a few of them. And then the last third or five, I was much more open to exchange and talking to people and all that stuff because I had sort of come full circle with my own experience, right? That was a little bit was going on. And so when it comes to stories, like some of them are about the other people, and I did meet some beautiful people in those experiences. But my intention was definitely to go in and see who the hell was I and what was going to be my own personal conversation with myself. What was I gonna think about? What was I gonna be feeling, and all of that kind of stuff, you know? Initially, the trip, and I'm sure partially this is, you know, because of the intention that I had set regarding my brother and so forth. There was a lot of like processing of emotion and grief, which it felt quite heavy and burdensome because of the last year. So he passed, my mother-in-law passed, our dear friend Lori passed. Like I have a whole little cluster of people that either have passed or are fighting for their life right now. So there was an intensity to that emotional, you know, baggage that I was sort of toting around with me. And I wanted to allow that to move through and those thoughts to come up and those emotions to come up, and then to be able to be released. Because when you carry that kind of load, it it takes a lot of space, a lot of mental space, a lot of thoughts swirl around around all of that kind of stuff, right? Not just memories, but thoughts and stuff. And then that type of heaviness, whether it's anger, grief, or what sadness, right? It just is so expansive, so saturating, so saturating. And I really kind of wanted to squeeze it out. And I feel like, you know, whether it came out through my sweat or my pores, or just through the movement and me opening up these energy channels, you know, my G and everything just being coming becoming open that it could flow. So that did happen a lot for the first half for sure, you know. And I was grateful for that because I I wanted that process. And then after that, it just started being more uh almost not mystical, but like I really didn't have a lot of expectations. So it's kind of whatever came up that day. Um, I didn't listen to podcasts at all, zero. I listened to no music with the exception of the day I did my brother's ashes. I did play his life soundtrack. And then at the very end, so the last couple days as I was coming near closure of my trip and getting back closer into civilization. I don't know why, but I gravitated towards some music. And it was actually, it's my own life soundtrack, which I also have. So it's music in those spaces that are like honoring of me. It was an honoring of him, and then an honoring of me and my life, because I'm doing a life inventory through this course that we're sharing together called A Year to Live. So that's a little bit of part of that process that I wanted to sort of reignite for myself.

Polly Mertens 34:55

Was there anything that you want to share more about that grieving? Like, did you feel like you left something out there, like you released something or anything cracked open or a new insight or a ha or anything that yeah, or maybe multiple, you know, like you got them every day. I don't know.

Samantha Pruitt 35:14

I mean, it come when you are uh able to, well, first of all, I think as a society, we would do a really poor job at this, allowing people to be in grief, to understand grief, it's different for everybody, and to work through that. A, I think we need more conversation, dialogue, and an openness to the experience of that. And it that doesn't have to be around just losing somebody you love, right? There's so many different forms of grief that we're all entitled to experience. But if we're not like consciously just expressing it and allowing it to be real, we can't move through it. So I do want to sort of double-click on that. And then for me, no, I just found tremendous peace. Like it was specific to my brother and then these other people, I'll talk about these other loved ones. For him, it was ceremonial because I had his ashes, right? So I could actually do something with it, which was incredible and beautiful and I loved it. But then with the other people, I was like, oh, like Lori, for example, dude, every time I was climbing these big mountain passes, there was a particular type of butterfly that would show up. I made 11,000 feet, 12,000. Well, how'd the butterfly get up here? And then there'd be like a couple of them, and they'd sort of come along the trail with me. And I found that actually all the animals did this, and this to me is energy. But like, because there's not a lot of humans. So to be clear, many times I was on these passes completely alone, or climbing and descending completely by myself, or at these legs by myself. So that is slightly mind-blowing to me. Yeah, and so then I'm an energy in the space and I'm moving through it. You know, here comes the human. And animals would sort of pop up, pop up, right? And then next thing you know, they're like walking along the trail with you. They're on the side. I'm over here. Do you see me over here? And so with Lori, it was like these butterflies. I was like, Oh, that's Lori, that's Lori. Like I just felt it instantly. Like, she wants to go up the mountain with me. She's coming with me. Or he's coming with me. Like, so I would have these experiences, and it was that's remarkable and beautiful, by the way. And everybody deserves to uh experience that for themselves in whatever way, but I feel like nature is where it is at, people. Okay, it is just there to serve as a safe space for us all to heal and process and grow, and like the energy out there is tremendous. And that's actually, if I think about how I was able to mobilize my ass up and down these mountains for 20 days and move for six hours and then seven hours and eight hours, like what the on very little calories. Yeah, I fully went into ketosis at one point. That was a total trip. I believe because I had tapped into this universal nature energy that was feeding me because it sure in the hell was not that I was eating enough calories. And it was so funny because any hiker I would talk to, they're like, I'm eating three or four hundred thousand calories a day, or whatever they'd say. And I'd go, huh? First, how are you carrying all that on your back? But also like, and it was mostly men. There was not a lot of women out there, whatever. And you know, men do need more calories. And I was like, Well, I'm surviving on like 1200. And they're like, What the hell? I couldn't even get out of bed. I'm like, Yeah, well, I got up and down a couple of mountains today, so I guess I'm fine.

Polly Mertens 38:34

Wow. 1200 calories at home is is light, you know, let alone eight hours a day. Well, you know, one of the things that I've heard from different teachers is about like when we don't have resistance, we have natural energy, you know. And you had talked about when you first got back, we you said, you know, it was like a lot of detox, let's say, right? So if we're not toxified, if we're not creating resistance in the body, like energy's flowing, like pure tapped-in, unadulterated energy. You know, you're not having stress and you know, all these things keeping the body from its optimal performance. Because yeah, how you could do that on 1200 calories, that's just freaking amazing. Wow.

Samantha Pruitt 39:14

And and that energy exchange element that we're getting into combo about, right? It's a multiple directional thing. A, because I wasn't putting like sound in my ears. One time there was a storm and it was a little scary. I had two days of rain, lightning, thunder, and there were helicopters flying overhead. I was up on this high ridge and it was sketching me out a little bit, and I had to get in my tent at like two o'clock because it's just pouring with rain and the thunder or the lightning, it's right there. And so I was a little like had a little anxiety. So I did listen to a meditation, a couple of meditation things, because I had saved intentionally for if like the wheels fall off the bus. But taking in sound or visuals or the energy of other people, it can be really draining. We all do this on a regular basis in our home environments, right? So I didn't have that demands on the system. If you look at it energetically or however you want to think about me being the systems of

Gear Comforts Food And Sleep

Samantha Pruitt 40:14

my body working in unison to carry my ass up and down mountains for 253 miles, right? So I had available to me additional energy sources for inputs. That's how I perceive it and how I experienced it, you know. And yeah, the thing with the lack of calories and ketos, it did totally fascinate me as a curiosity. I never once like felt panicked about it. It was like, okay, well, this is the amount of calories I can carry on my back in this bear canister. And so this is what I'm going to be eating, and I need to manage that. And I didn't have any like drama around it. It was like, well, this is what you're having for breakfast. Maybe you're not having breakfast today or whatever. I did have protein powder stuff, and then when you're moving, you're gonna eat this bar and you're gonna drink these liquid calories and these electrolytes, and then at night you're gonna have like it was just it is just what it is. So, like there's no, again, like emotional attachment to like now I'm at home and this home environment, and the groceries right down the street, and the the store for everything, and 50,000 things are available to me, and how very quickly you fall back into like I don't want to call it confusion, but it's like energy drain just around making basic decisions. I didn't have any of that shit, dude.

Polly Mertens 41:32

I didn't well that's what I was wondering is you know, did you find that you were making fewer decisions? You know, like the lifing that we do in modern America, you know, like whether it's you know, checking emails and you know, listening to podcasts and family dynamics and work stuff or whatever, like a lot of that I think would be gone. I mean, yes, there was the jobbing of getting up the mountains and the logistics of the rope, what where's the water and things like that. But would you say the cognitive load was higher or lower, you know?

Samantha Pruitt 42:06

Oh, well, I mean, the most beautiful thing that happens in these circumstances, whether it's a half-day hike or whatever, where whatever you do, or this many multi-day, obviously, there's a depth to the multi-days that you're not going to get in the half days or the full days, right? But when you leave your everyday existence, you leave every identity and label that comes with that. That is fucking liberating. Okay. People need to do that on the regular. I mean, you and I are pretty good about doing this on the regular, but and I've done some things like this, but this was next level, right? Because when I show up to go the first mile and then the next 253 miles on the trail, who am I? Yeah, I am nobody. Okay. Literally, I could be any person, any name. There's no you all of this shedding or detoxification, it does happen to your physical body, and that was an interesting process to be part of, and it felt fantastic, by the way. But then additionally, the emotional detoxification, psychological detoxification of like shedding roles, shedding responsibilities. You know, I talked to some people out on the trail, which they were doing like the weekend thing, or maybe they had a week and they were, you know, so I would bump into them, they'd be like, Oh my God, you're doing the whole thing. Like, that's a dream of mine is do the whole John Merrittroll. And I was like, so what's wrong with now or tomorrow or next year? Like, you should probably get busy doing it, right? So they were having a little taste of that, and of course, wanted more of it. And for all of us, I think that well, whatever, we all have a different belief system, so I'm not going to tell people how to think about it. But if you can at some point release yourself from the constraints, even if you love those constraints, it doesn't matter they're constraints of your identity, who you are in the world and what your job is to provide here and to do, if you can let that go for a high. Second or many, many days ideally, then you actually can come back into uh we call it re-entry, right? Into your traditional world in a different state. I of course I did, and I believe that everybody does, but some people resistant, resist it or are scared of it or whatever, whatever the story is they're telling themselves about it. But it's incredibly liberating to let go of all that. Which I did. Oh, yeah. I don't know what anyone was doing, and I really didn't care.

Polly Mertens 44:51

I know. Well, you know, and you know, you know, having the book ends like, okay, I'm gonna go back to life. You know, it's not like you're doing this and then you're moving across country and didn't know what was happening after that. I was like, okay, I'm just putting all the usual people that everything's taken care of, bills are paid, you know, people know where I'm at, whatever. See you guys in a in a hot minute called 20 days. One of the things I was wondering, you know, when I had in the past, when I've had more, let's say, a rigorous nine to five job, right? Or nine to eight job, whatever, you know, same thing. You get those, and you take that one-week vacation, right? Like those first two days are just trying to get you from the hyper level, whatever it takes to now you don't have that rigorous, you know, job right now, if you will, but just it, you know, there might be a little step down that happens. Were you finding the first couple of days? Was there like a sigh or an exhale that you were able to do? Or did it just feel totally normal, like you can't wait to get up to stuff? Or do were you more energized? Like, what was it like that transition in the beginning?

Samantha Pruitt 45:56

Well, I do think your nervous system needs to re-regulate, right, and your thought patterns for sure, because we all have these like circulatory systems of thought, basically, where throughout the day we think about certain things, la la la. And so obviously, I have plenty of loved ones, friends and family, right? So I would have these ideas pop up in my head about this person or this thing or this circumstance or whatever, and I'd be like, don't need to fixate on that right now. Not my highest priority, also, can't do anything about it. And by the way, that's their problem. It's not that I don't love or want them to have all of the great things, right? But like, that's not what we're doing right now, Sam, right? Talking to myself. So it's like we're so we're gonna be thinking about something else, or we can think about nothing. And I did tell you uh some weird experiences I had where like I heard music. Yeah, I'm not listening to anything. I didn't have earbuds ever ever put earbuds on. I don't believe doing that in nature is a good idea. But I'm like just humping along the trail, you know, going on hour five or six or whatever the hell I'm doing, and it would be like music in the background, and I would be like, someone's behind me, right? No, someone's in front of me, no, no, where's this music coming from? That did trip me out. I had that in several instances, and I personally now believe that that's I tapped into some kind of energy field, and that's where the music was coming from. It wasn't coming from what we think music is coming from, and just how my brain works, you know. Uh, I would a lot have some songs that would sort of resurface, though I thought that was interesting, but I do that at home. I have music that kind of flows through me on a regular basis. It's part of my how my brain works and copes with the world or whatever, whether it's a comforting mechanism or whatever, I have no idea. But yeah, I had some interesting conversations with people. You're talking about stories and met some interesting characters, and I had a few deep conversations, you know. Like on the rainy day, I spelt spent with this one guy, his name was Matt, and he was from Minnesota, and he was there, and this was kind of wild because he was also in a grief process. And he basically said we we had met at that little hiker through exchange, and we were gonna both leave the camp at the same time and go up this big ass mountain. So we're like, well, we should probably just go together. And I'm not, I kind of was a little hesitant, so I sort of like took off before him, and then he caught me. Super nice guy, but it was like, do I really want to hike up this entire mountain with the person chatting my ear off? Right. I wasn't sure how it was gonna go. He was lovely, you know, this 50-something-year-old man with the family, and he had lost his father in a hiking accident where the father had fallen off the mountain, and then he had to rescue the father. And there was all this, like he said, I have PTSD, I've got all these things, and I'm really trying to like get back into nature and like I'm I'm a person of the natural world, this is where I belong, and I want to be healed out here, you know. So we had some beautiful conversations. So sometimes it would be like that, but there was no one besides him I ever talked to for more than 10 minutes, I think, in 20 days. I mean, except for my husband when I was refueling, obviously. But um, and you know what? It didn't bother me at all. No, zero me sleeping alone, me having no one to talk to all day, zero problem for me. I mean, I guess I'm super freaking interesting, or I'm totally boring, one or the other, and either one, I don't care. Totally self-satisfied. Self-satisfied 100%.

Polly Mertens 49:36

Yeah, yeah. Was there anything or things that you discovered about yourself or learned about like who you really are, or like coming home, you really know this about yourself now? Anything different that you didn't know before, or things that just were affirmed, you know? Anything?

Samantha Pruitt 49:54

Mm-hmm. I mean, yeah, there are things that I already mostly knew but needed to reaffirm or rebring to the surface, I guess I would say, right? Because I do know quite a few things about myself, but sometimes life gets busy and hectic, and the last couple of years have been pretty intense, right? So it was me sort of coming back home in many ways, right? Like, okay, I'm a spiritual being. I need to spend more time with my own spirituality. I need to let go of some things that I have been working on, projects or ideas or concepts or habits or patterns or behaviors, even that no longer fit me, are not the right fit for me moving forward, right? So maybe I've been dragging them along just out of habit or whatever, right? So it's releasing all of that. These are great opportunities for stuff like that, no matter how big or small you make the experience. It's like a re-evaluation, you know. And so I would have some conversations with it, like, well, what do I want? You know, moving forward, what do I want my work life to look like? Moving forward, and these are questions I'd pose to myself in the middle of the corner, right? If I needed something to think about, which wasn't every day, but sometimes I'd be like, Oh, I need to think about something, especially if I'd find my mind going to old stuff. I'd go, hey, I want to think about something forward thinking. So I'd pose a question to myself. Or, you know, how do I want to be showing up in my relationships moving forward? How do I want to relate to this physical body, this one incredible physical body that I was born into for the rest of its journey? I'm

Grief Processing And Nature Energy

Samantha Pruitt 51:39

57. Don't, you know, I'm gonna live till whatever. Don't know. Like, how do I want to be in this skin moving forward? So those are sound like really big questions, but those big questions should be asked on a regular basis, all of us, by the way. And so when you have an opportunity like this, you have a lot of space. It's almost yummy to be like, well, let me marinate in that for seven hours and see what I come up with.

Polly Mertens 52:06

Yeah. And feel it too. Like you, you don't have any other distractions. I mean, you know, you're navigating and stuff like that, but otherwise, you don't have like phone ringing, things you got to do. It's like time to actually process the question and the thought and the somatic, like, how does that feel in my body when I when you open when you open up a open-ended, like, how do I want to this? And you go, well, maybe like this and maybe like that. And you can have this inner dialogue, this inner relating to yourself about the answers that pop up, you know, and without any external influence at all.

Samantha Pruitt 52:38

Yeah, there was no one to contribute to the conversation but me. And I would think through things like that, well, I could do this. I wonder, I never thought, oh, uh, maybe I could do that, right? You know what's kind of a trip. I read a lot of books, as you know this about me, and I read a lot of listen to a lot of podcasts. I like to be in learning. And this was a break from learning, again, with intention, because I wanted to open up that space to be like, well, the learning is only yeah, exactly. So if there's going to be a learning or a rediscovering or a whatever, it's gonna be an internal one. So we're not gonna put that energy to an external learning. And that was interesting because I did bring a book, it it was a Buddhist book, but still, but I very quickly was like, Oh, I don't want to read this. I don't want any external inputs coming. So I shut it down very quickly. And then I just left the book when I went for resupply.

Polly Mertens 53:35

Are there any of those answers to those three questions that you asked yourself that you want to share? Like anything anything that you're pivoting in how you're showing up in your relationships, your relationship to your body, your relationship to the workspace and projects you take on, anything that stands out that you want to share?

Samantha Pruitt 53:52

I mean, what I would say is I'm still processing it, but it's all different. I can't think of one category that is not different. And the reason that is the case for me, and I think available again for anybody, truly, is because I am allowing of that. I am open to that, I have that curiosity and I have that desire to for growth and evolution, right? But it's not gonna be like a certain way. So it isn't, it's almost like there's no judgment from me to myself, because no one else, whatever, um if there's a right way and a wrong way or a better way, or let I have no like emotional charge around it. It's like, oh, I'm just gonna be doing this differently. So uh that to me is a freedom that I knew I had that I rediscovered and that I will continue to invest in, like making sure that that amount of freedom is available to me in my life. I did come back and have some conversations and kind of enlighten some people. So I will be doing things differently, but not in a way of like, hey, judging you or this isn't working for me. No, no emotional charge to it. Just like so no to all in self, things might be looking differently.

Polly Mertens 55:14

Good, good, good, very clarifying, you know.

Samantha Pruitt 55:18

Exactly.

Polly Mertens 55:19

Yeah, it's like, oh, I'm going out into the world and I was taking these glasses off that I came in on, and oh, this is how I want, you know, this is how I expect life to go, or how I intend to show up in life as well.

Samantha Pruitt 55:30

So yeah, I mean, even before I left, but of course, more so now that I had this space that curated, you know, this deeper conversation, the preciousness of life and all of it, you know, the nature element, the human, being in the human body, you know, death and dying, relationships, all of the impermanence and constant changing world we're living in. When you're fully submerged in it and you have full realization, you know, there's no really running from it.

Polly Mertens 56:05

Yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 56:05

Like there was a moment out there where I came over a pass and then I spent the night at a lake totally by myself out in the middle of nowhere. I mean, it was freaking exquisite. I'm telling you, it's not the one that's in the picture, it's a different one. I literally is like, oh my God, is this even real? Am I still on the planet Earth? And am I actually in this body? Because you start to have some out-of-body experiences. That is kind of does happen out there, so be prepared, people. And if I died right now or this was the end of the thing, I'm totally fine. Like I would just sit there and melt into the rock. I don't know what was gonna happen. And there's an incredible sense of peace and there's no fear around any of that. And so you carry those experiences with you. They stay in you, they're in yourselves of reminders.

Polly Mertens 56:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We haven't talked much about, and you can't really show like all the pictures and stuff like that, but just share some of the the beauty or your experience of the nature. Can you try to paint a picture with words or just from your experience, like what did the John Mirror Trail offer you? Like the mountain passes or the lakes or the critters or whatever. Anything you want to share about that?

Samantha Pruitt 57:18

Well, what kind of did trip me out is how these other people were having a totally different experience than me, which of course is to be expected, but many people were coming the opposite direction. So if I ran into somebody who was also doing a through hike of the John Muir trail, we would, by the way, there's a trail communication where you sort of sh share cliff notes, right? Like, okay, there's no water source ahead. Like I would warn people in some instances, there's no water for six miles. Like you need to have awareness and be because you want people to be safe. But people would maybe ask, Oh, what was your favorite thing, or wasn't this beautiful, or whatever? There would be some little anecdote of stuff sometimes shared in passing on the trail, which was kind of hilarious because everybody's having a different experience. It was cracking me up a little bit. And I was like, that's not at all what I'm experiencing, but okay.

Polly Mertens 58:04

Like what? Like, what were they experiencing? What was different?

Samantha Pruitt 58:06

Like maybe because I was alone so much, and a lot of these people weren't. I would say that they were having a very different experience. Um, again, be intentional about what you do, people. But for me, because I was going from the south to the north, I basically went into the high mountains right away and very quickly stayed at altitude 10, 11, and 12,000 feet day after day after day after day. Excuse me, and the people going the opposite directions came at a lower altitude, and so they were in forests, whereas I was in above the tree line, and I was in lakes that were amazing. Like literally, you could just drink out of them. I did filter all my water, but like the the cleanliness of the air, the clarity of the sun, like the colors is were all super different. And so I feel like I very quickly dropped into this sort of magical portal, whereas they were coming from like traditional woods and forests and darkness and trees and you know, just a very different thing. And then they maybe hadn't even got to the sections that I consider to be the most life-changing, like the middle of the trail is mind-fucking blowing to the point I will go back. 100% there are a couple of places I must stay at for longer periods of time. I just needed to keep moving, right? So just sharing that or whatever. And a lot of people in these little combos, like they would sort of express their fears because they were, you know, some people actually said to me the actual words, like, I've packed my fears. I had two people say that. I was like, wow, okay. Well, I'm glad you have awareness of that. Throw that shit out, get it out of the fucking pack, like take it out right now, open it up, leave it out. Put it out, leave it for the bears, leave it for the bears. Totally, totally. But the nature out there is exquisite, it's pristine, it's remarkable. I continuously was blown away and will remain blown away for the rest of my life about the humans who built these trails and who went out with their hands and in some cases tools, and physically built the trail system in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of granite rock, and then whatever, right? And here I am, absolutely graced and blessed to be able to move my body through it.

Polly Mertens 1:00:26

Yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 1:00:26

You know, in some cases, I cussed at them like sailors because you know, always like, why is there 30 switchbacks? I don't understand how we couldn't have done this in 10. Totally. But at the same time, forever grateful that they did that work and this land has been saved and it will forever be saved as far as I know. I sure the hell hope so.

Polly Mertens 1:00:47

Yeah, I think there's a lot of people that would stand up if anything were to Oh, hells, yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 1:00:52

Me included.

Polly Mertens 1:00:54

Anything more about the trail, the nature, the people before we kind of shift gears.

Samantha Pruitt 1:00:59

No, I mean, I really just want to impart on people that this type of experience is available to all. So my permit cost me $10. Wow. Okay. Now, my gear didn't cost $10. Yeah. Um, my time off work didn't cost me $10. So I get that there are some constraints for people. But to be in the nature, if it's for a couple hours, if it's for a half day, if it's for an overnight, whatever you can afford to do with whatever gear you have, is available to most people. And there are many instances and, you know, places where obviously, even if you're not physically capable, you can still access nature. So, like that's something we need to work more on is access and just making people feel like it's possible. It is part of my job at REI, right? Is to have these conversations and curate these opportunities for people. But I just feel so strongly about it. And I will be doing that for the rest of my life until I literally fall off one of these mountains, is that will be part of my life's work and part of my not new endeavors. I'm already doing it, but I'll be doing it at a deeper level for sure.

Polly Mertens 1:02:10

Well, one of the things that because when I met up with you right after you got off the trail and we were going through your pack and you were just like, I love this jacket. I can't believe these pants are amazing, you know, and I was like, okay, you are like the best salesperson or all that stuff ever now. I mean, like having lived in it and experienced it, like, and you can tell these people at a whole different level what backpacking, what to expect, or no, you don't need that. No, you need something over, you know, like you were talking to somebody who had the wrong pack or the pack was just stupid for them or something, right?

Samantha Pruitt 1:02:41

Yeah, yeah. And that is a thing, you know, the gear and et cetera. But the biggest limiting factor is people's psychology, their mindset, right? Which is obviously what you and I also do for a living. It's like just having this idea. Uh, like I ran into people in one instance, I wish I had got this woman's contact information, but she was a 60-something-year-old female, and I had gone up to a peak, and then she was slowly working her way up. And I just had kind of a curiosity because I didn't see a lot of single females. So if I did see a single female, I was like, Who are you? Where are you going? Like, you know, I needed to kind of get a briefing from them. And there was less than probably five or six in 20 days. So that's saddens me, and I want to work on that. But here she was working her way up the mountain. And then when she got to the top, I was like, ah, yay, you know, congratulations or whatever.

Shedding Identity And Finding Freedom

Samantha Pruitt 1:03:29

So we had a little combo or whatever. And she's like, Oh, I just went for the first time backpacking this weekend by myself without my husband. He's ill, injured, whatever. I could never do anything like you. And I was like, hold up, sister. You just came up that same damn mountain. I just came up. You have the backpack, you got all the gear. What in the hell are you talking about? Right. So, again, it's this constraint that people put on their own capabilities and their own potential in life, which to me is the biggest can of bullshit I've ever heard. You know, and I could have put up a coaching sign out there and had been coaching people all day long. I mean, because there's these stories that are just flying around. It's like, stop it. What do you think I'm doing? Stop it. Yeah. It was really fun and to run into like some 20. There was quite a few 20 somethings and maybe early 30s or whatever, and they're like, You could be my mother. I'm like, damn straight, I could be your mother. And I'm kicking your ass right now.

Polly Mertens 1:04:28

Look at me. Totally. What's different for you now? Either about yourself or about the way you're approaching life, or how this changed you? What what what's what's different for you now?

Samantha Pruitt 1:04:41

Um, kind of like what I said at the beginning about the initial project being oriented towards grief and releasing emotions as I go through this life inventory that I'm doing also. A big part to the best of my current awareness of my ideas around the heaviness of either past or experiences. I don't want to necessarily call them traumas, but like, you know, things that have built me into who I am or whatever. I feel like the heaviness is gone, and there's either an open space or just a lightness that is new and different. And that's remarkable. I don't plan to put anything else back in in its place. You know, like I have no desire to do that. So I want to keep the vessel, which is me, open and light.

Polly Mertens 1:05:42

I want to give people a perspective here. So you haven't talked, you we talked a little bit about the logistics and saying 70,000 feet and 250 miles, like that's already mind-blowing. But like the and the eight hours and seven hours, I mean, like you were up to it out there, right? And what you just described reminds me of that word perturbation, which is one of my favorite transformation words, right? Like, so so perturbation is the process that charcoal goes through to become a diamond, right? And you can't become a diamond. And so what I'm hearing is this you know, it's the John Mirror Portal or something was this perturbation of you. You and it's like you shed some things, you transformed from charcoal, you have new facets, there's new lightness about you, new ways of looking at the world or shining into the world and stuff, and you're not going to go back. It's like, yeah, well, you went through the perturbation. It's like you can't go back, you know?

Samantha Pruitt 1:06:35

And it's and so you therefore don't relate to the external world, whether it be people, places, things, the same at all either. Same. It's not like you see them for anew. You just are like, I don't know what you're talking about.

Polly Mertens 1:06:50

All right. I don't care about that anymore. That used to be a thing. I'm not that's not a thing for me anymore, or that's not my thing anymore, right?

Samantha Pruitt 1:06:56

And at the same time, you do you, but I'm gonna be over here living like you know, this other, this other experience.

Polly Mertens 1:07:02

Yeah, for sure.

Samantha Pruitt 1:07:03

I want it for everybody, by the way. I don't want to hog it to myself.

Polly Mertens 1:07:07

Wow. Well, that's why we're sharing it. So do you know what's next? So you have your hundred miler uh next, and you have a 75.

Samantha Pruitt 1:07:14

So there's the not the usual things that you do, like they're small, but like there's these usual things you do, like run a hundred miles without stopping you, moony kick.

Polly Mertens 1:07:24

So besides those two, which are we've we've known Samantha Pruitt for doing those. This John Muir trail is a a new dimension of you. So any any ideas yet percolating about you said you want to do more backpacking. What is there one that you have your eye on? You said the Arizona Trail at some point. Anything else? What's next?

Samantha Pruitt 1:07:43

Well, Arizona Trail is the hundred miler that I'm running, so that'll be that'll be a thing. I love the one that you're doing in September. At some point, I need to get up into those trails in other countries, would be nice. But in terms of anything I don't have on the calendar yet, except starting to train back in the ultra world, by the way, I had zero issues with my back. Zero, zero. And I would actually say, except for the fact I sprained my ankle, yeah, and I told you that, which had nothing to do with me, you know, overexerting. It was me being a jackass and paying no attention to somebody who was coming up the trail. Zero injuries, zero physical breakdowns or repercussion. I mean, it honestly blows my freaking mind about what the body is capable of doing. Yes, I did get to work and I worked my ass off to get there, but like again, the physical body. Yeah. So I love the idea of exploring my physical body more. I think I told you I want to start doing boogie boarding and some things. I know that sounds totally weird, but I said boogie boarding.

Polly Mertens 1:08:49

So it's said from someone who lives in the desert, but okay.

Samantha Pruitt 1:08:52

Right, right. But like re uh bringing water back in as an element to my regular activities. I'm gonna be doing that, even if it's just once a week at the pool or whatever. But yeah, so my goals now in terms of like what am I doing next, this is with my physical body and my fitness and my wellness and all that stuff. It is gonna be definitely another level of that will be happening, but it will be my more diversified for sure. Not just, oh, I'm just gonna go back into ultra running. Yes, I do want to run another hundred miler. I don't know why I get these crazy ideas, but it is partially because it's on the Arizona Trail, and I've always wanted to do the Arizona Trail, and it's a brand new race that is gonna be happening. So that's turns me on, and then besides that, fun. So I do want to do this out in nature experience with people. Like, you know, you'll be one of my friends. We'll go do some shit. Like, I have friends that a, not only are they capable of doing this, but like when I was in that very sacred space, sort of in the middle of the trail, I was like, oh, I've got to bring Polly back here, I've got to bring Kelly back here. I could I quickly envisioned like me and a bunch of women going back into that terrain and having a week-long experience or something. So I will do stuff like that for sure.

Polly Mertens 1:10:07

Yeah, let's do it sooner than later, man. Like I'm you know, like I remember one time I was volunteering for one of your marathons, and I was at the beginning, you know, I like helped set up the starting line of your races a few times and just being around all that like frenetic, you know, runner energy. And then I went and registered for something that day. I'm like, I gotta do something. I forget what it was, you know. And so, like hearing this story, I'm like, when are we backpacking? All right, I don't even have a back, you know. I have like a third of the stop, but like, let's go. I'm just like a and you know, when you get that inspiration though, it's like pull the trigger. It's like do it, like do it that day, do it, you know, right away or put something on the calendar or commit to something.

Samantha Pruitt 1:10:46

So, oh dude, there's this area. Again, these trails were built. You can just anyone could Google this. It's called the Golden Staircase. The golden staircase. First of all, I saw it on the map and I was like, what Ev? What is this? Am I even on the golden? What? Because you see all these things on the maps, and you're like, people are just dramatic. They gotta put shit on the map. And I was like, what the hell is this? Literally, my mind left the building, and I was like, damn, okay, your ass is going up that golden staircase, and then you come up the golden staircase, so it's switchbacks, and they're all made out of granite, and they've been built by hand and to oh my god, and it goes on and on on. It's like a thousand switchbacks or whatever, and then you come up into this valley like this, um, and it's called the Palisades Lake, and it's lower palisades and upper south. It's not even real. I was like, nope, not real. Pretty sure this is I'm either high right now, I ate a mushroom on the way up. I don't know what happened. This is not real. Like it literally was out of this world on another planet, the amount of beauty and the also the energy you dropped into like a vortex there. I was like, oh, hell no, I might be moving here. Can I just put me in here? Permanent tent. Let us get dropped in here or something. Permanent tent.

Polly Mertens 1:12:08

Shoot.

Samantha Pruitt 1:12:10

So good. So anyway, we're going back there for sure.

Polly Mertens 1:12:12

We're doing that right on. So, what's what's a message that you want to share with someone who's listening right now that, you know, they need they need their own version of this. Like, what do you want them? What do you want to say to them? Like, what do they do?

Samantha Pruitt 1:12:25

They need their own version of this. You know, some people call them pilgrimages, some call them sabbaticals. I did meet someone who was having a sabbatical and he had a full-on like breakdown. One of these guys I talked to at camp is quite altitude illness, and he was getting quite ill, and he was scared. He was slightly terrified. You're out in the middle of nowhere. And I was like, You're gonna be fine. Okay. But he was on sabbatical, so some people kind of see it like that, you know, like this drop out of life, split from identity, if you will, or constraints, roles, and then you know, so however you want to slice it, y'all. But for me, it is definitely what I want to prescribe to people. I'm writing a prescription right now. Do you see me with my little pad? RX nature, our x nature, our like I can't think of anything

Awe Moments Golden Staircase Vision

Samantha Pruitt 1:13:14

a more available but more powerful because it just allows the oxygen and the space and the energy to completely reset the human, all parts of the human. You know, everything changed about me. My digestion changed, how my body was working changed, how my brain, everything was recalibrated. It wasn't just like one thing. Yeah, you know, and so to me, only nature is the only prescription.

Polly Mertens 1:13:45

And I think for people, it's you know, what level or what version of this? Because you had done a couple of preliminary, right? So, you know, the training we talked about in another episode, the gear, whatever. But you know, you can you can be in nature, like there's beautiful cabins in the woods that you can have your creature comforts, you know, there are pre-made tent, you know, tent camping or whatever. So whatever. And and some people may want to be, you know, more down by the beach or whatever. But I think it's some of it's the silence, I think that's an important thing.

Samantha Pruitt 1:14:17

Yeah, to be clear, because I stayed in one of those tents, those little glamping tent things when I came out of Yosemite. I was like, oh, hails no. Hails no. Okay. Noisy, chaotic.

Polly Mertens 1:14:26

Well, that's because it was surrounded by all the people, but you wouldn't say not for the solitude. But if that was like, you know, in the back in the bush of Montana or something.

Samantha Pruitt 1:14:35

Exactly. The solitude and the peace and the quiet are a big part of it. We're not talking about going to party bill, people.

Polly Mertens 1:14:44

What is so what what do you tell people? So I'm I got this hit when you when we talked about that of the people who are afraid of like like, whoa, like that's so isolating, or I'll be all alone, or or like fear, fear, fears. What what would you say to some of that? Like, what can they count on? What can you help them just not be so initially like, I don't know how I'd take that or whatever? Like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Samantha Pruitt 1:15:09

And I did run into one young person, he's so sweet, who said he was lonely out there. So I think that can happen for people, and that can be an aversion to doing it, right? So it's kind of comes back to some of the stuff we talk about on the show quite a bit, right? Which is getting to know yourself, getting comfortable with yourself, and being able to sit in that silence or self-reflection conversation or whatever it is. So if somebody has some challenges in that area, I would say to start micro-dosing now in your comfort zone, right? So it would be breaks throughout the day. You can start by eating lunch by yourself in silence. You can start by driving in your car without the radio on or any kind of noise in the silence. So you can micro-dose your way into this space without feeling overwhelmed or having anxiety take over, right? So that's real for people, and I want to be honest about that. You know, it's taken me years or possibly a lifetime to get to the place where I am, where I'm, hey, 20 days without Sam, fine by me, I'll be hanging out with Sam. Sam's pretty cool, right? So start small if that is you, right? But I do think getting there is imperative because not to be extreme about it, but you are all there is, okay. And at the end of the day, as you move through your life, the tighter you are with yourself, the better you know yourself, the more you respect yourself, the more that you come to terms with your own set of values and purpose and all of these things, the more you're dialed into you, the better off you're gonna be for having a quality life. But at the end of it, that's sure the hell all there is. Right. So you want to be there and you wanna be working on that in the now, not when it's you're near the end.

Polly Mertens 1:17:15

I think I want to add to that too, because I've been, you know, I grew up an only child. So one of the things is you were talking, and when I asked you that question, the first thing that came to me is I remember how much kids today, because they just get a screen put in front of them, they don't have the opportunity to be bored, right? And we grew up a lot with I can remember telling my parents I'm bored, bored, bored, you know, whatever. And kids get bored because we don't throw, you know, back then we didn't have screens thrown in front of us just to not be bored. And so I think I've just spent a lot of time as an only child solo, yeah. And so I've had this comfort with it. And I just want people to know there's something on the other side. Like there's really something you can discover about yourself, life, and the universe in silence, in boredom, in nothingness, you might say, right. And there is nothing, there's something I I wish, and you might remember it better than I will, some of the neuroscience behind when the mind is in a place of awe, meaning like you were in these, like is this real kind of space, it's it cracks us open in a different way. You know what I mean? Like it cracks open something of a neurological, like like you were talking about like the confines of the mind and who you see yourself as and an identity and what we're reminded of constantly by our life. And then when we go into these places of awe and wonder, you start to remember something other than this life that you think you have and this personality you think you are, and this, you know, confines of, you know, limits in your mind and whatnot. So I just want to invite people to, you know, dance with it, dance with the not knowing. And I just invite you because on the other side of it is a lot, a lot more beauty and more awe about yourself and who you are in the universe than I think people know that's there. So anything you would say.

Samantha Pruitt 1:19:11

And I alluded to this space of lightness I have because all emotions or things I was carrying around were allowed to be processed and released, right? And if on a regular basis there's no oxygen for that to happen, they don't.

Polly Mertens 1:19:29

Yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 1:19:29

They will continue to ruminate and they will manifest physically and psychologically and whatever. I mean, this is kind of the disease state of the world at this moment, right? So we're giving them an invitation to not feed that, but actually allow that healing to happen.

Polly Mertens 1:19:45

100%. Yeah. Any last closing words? Anything that you want to remind them or anything, any last thoughts besides our closing, but I so love the idea now that I have summited what was it, 13 peaks in a short period of time.

Samantha Pruitt 1:20:04

And they were all different and totally different experiences. Yeah, it was freaking wild.

RX Nature Microdosing Silence Closing

Samantha Pruitt 1:20:09

But I so love the idea of any and all people getting their ass up a mountain. I mean, there's this whole thing that occurs just in the process of climbing and navigating the mountain, craziness, right? And then to be the summit of any peak. I mean, you want to win the lottery? Okay. Right there. Let's get up the mountain.

Polly Mertens 1:20:38

Absolutely. Crazy. Get out there. This has been amazing. Thank you for sharing. Yeah, I'm so blessed that I got to see a lot of the pictures directly from you, and I'm sure you're sharing them on your socials. So check out Sam's, you know, Instagram and Facebook for you know the actual moments from the trail. You were recording some and then turning your phone off and then recording some. And, you know, so you can definitely follow the not the daily. I don't know if you did it daily, but you did quite a few sharings.

Samantha Pruitt 1:21:07

I did them by day, but I couldn't post them daily because I didn't have service. And what's kind of hilarious? I've been back a week. I need to, I'm going to go back and post some reels, which is a whole other slew of videos I have, and then some photography. It won't do it justice, but I will anyway, because like there's just some beauty out there. I really want to allow people to taste and hopefully entice their own appetite.

Polly Mertens 1:21:34

So it's at the Sam the Samantha Pruitt. Is that your handle?

Samantha Pruitt 1:21:38

The Samantha Pruitt.

Polly Mertens 1:21:39

The Samantha Pruitt, yeah. So that she's sharing that on her personal handle, and Everyday Awesome Project is our podcast handle. So check those out and maybe you'll be sharing some on both as well.

Samantha Pruitt 1:21:49

But can do, can do.

Polly Mertens 1:21:51

Thanks for sharing this, dear. Can't wait to be out in those beautiful mountains with you sometime soon. And yeah, let's wrap it up. So let's remind our beautiful humans what what do we always leave them with, please.

Samantha Pruitt 1:22:02

Ah well, how your life looks is not that important, but it's how it feels that is most important.

Polly Mertens 1:22:11

It is. And every day is your opportunity to find your awesome.

Samantha Pruitt 1:22:15

See you next week. Bye.