Brave Spaces

- My name's Lyla Harrod, I use she/her pronouns, and my trail name is Sugar, so all my hiking friends call me Sugar, and I am a sober Queer transgender woman.

And I love to hike.

- Lyla's a thru-hiker, braving some of the longest and most challenging trails across the country.

Hiking has played a key role in Lyla's transition and in her sobriety, helping her to heal and embrace her most authentic self, and now she's passing that on.

- Right now, I'm hiking the Continental Divide Trail.

Continental Divide Trail runs over 3,000 miles, and it starts at the US-Mexico border and runs all the way up to the US-Canada border.

The trail goes through five separate states, including New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, and usually takes people anywhere from, say, four to six months to complete.

(mellow music) - What can we learn from her wild adventures about confronting the unique challenges Queer people face?

I'm Devin-Norelle, and this is "Brave Spaces."

(uplifting music) - Substance use was always an escape for me.

I started young as a young teenager, and it sort of helped smooth over a lot of the problems in my life.

I had a stressful home life and I found it difficult socializing with my peers as a result of my gender identity, which I wasn't fully aware of at the time.

Substance use sort of fills in all those gaps.

So once you are using more and more, it ends up being that substance use is really your only coping strategy, and that's when things start to go really wrong because it's not a healthy one.

I'm glad that I'm not in that now because now I have a whole host of really healthy positive coping strategies, including hiking, and that allows me to deal with feelings and hard things in my life head-on, and to approach them with honesty both with myself and with others.

- Substance abuse disorder is an epidemic across the US, affecting all communities, but it impacts the LGBTQ+ community disproportionately.

Why is this?

Some of it has to do with discrimination and social stigma associated with being queer.

For example, there's a growing effort allowing healthcare workers to refuse someone care if it violates their religious beliefs.

As a result, more than one in eight LGBTQ+ people now live in states where they can be legally refused care.

Of course, discrimination isn't isolated to healthcare, as 90% of all trans people have experienced discrimination in the workplace as well.

Then, consider for decades, bars are one of the few safe places for Queer folks to gather.

Do you see the connection?

Lyla's working to change this.

- Once I got sober, I had to learn a new way of living.

So much of my time had been spent surrounded by drugs and alcohol.

I, all of a sudden, had all these hours in my day that I now had to fill.

And without a lot of healthy coping strategies, I was desperate for new ones, and that's what brought me to hiking.

Even though I would be feeling so much physical, and emotional, and spiritual discomfort in early sobriety, I always found that I could go into the outdoors and find just a little bit of peace and calm that was really tough to find in that time.

- The healing that the trail offers Lyla is backed by science.

Wildness therapy is an effective tool in treating addiction.

And research shows that 90 minutes of walking in nature reduces brain activity that leads to depression compared to an equal amount of time spent walking in a high-traffic urban setting.

Living in a city makes it a little harder to find nature, but there are beautiful parks and trails all across the country.

I took Lyla's advice and geared up for a hike.

(ambient music) (birds chirping) I love hearing the birds.

It's just, like, nature's beautiful and I don't really get to see this every day.

I think being out in nature definitely forces people to find themselves.

It really forces you to think, and to get in tune with yourself, and in touch with your thoughts and your feelings.

- I went from being always cloudy-headed as a result of the drugs and alcohol or the side effects of all of that to having time to sit, and be introspective, and to get into therapy, and to start to work on myself.

The outdoors became my first really, truly healthy coping strategy.

And yeah.

And I learned to lean on that in times where I would've reached for a drink or a drug in the past.

(ambient music) - In ways, I realize that a lot of my drinking is connected to finding... siblinghood, and I notice how it's difficult for some of my friends just to take a day out of their weekend just to do sober activities like hiking or, "Hey, let's play some board games."

I think there's so many people running away from their queerness and from their transness, and I hope that they can be encouraged to be brave enough to take a step towards their sexuality or gender identity.

- My sobriety and my gender transition couldn't have happened without one another intrinsically tied.

For some people, it may be a choice, but for me it was never a choice.

I had to go through my gender transition and I had to get physically sober.

If those two things didn't happen, I wouldn't be alive today.

- Embracing the outdoors may seem like an obvious choice to better our mental and physical health, but the wilderness community hasn't always been the friendliest to LGBTQ+ folks.

And I, like many, feel vulnerable passing through small rural towns to get to some of our amazing national parks.

By bringing visibility to her treks online, Lyla believes she can encourage others in the LGBTQ+ community to feel safe embracing the trail.

- When I was first getting into thru-hiking and I tried to Google transgender thru-hikers, I really didn't find any results at all.

So I made it a point to find a way to start writing about my experiences in the outdoors.

Trail has all the same problems that we do in the rest of society 'cause people are out there, so there is all the same prejudices, transphobia and homophobia still exist, of course.

But in the outdoors, I feel empowered to step into myself a little bit more.

This year, I started a Queer and trans thru-hiker mentoring program.

I basically just sort of sent a message out to some followers on Instagram and ask them to spread the word.

And I ended up getting a whole bunch of responses because there are a lot of Queer and trans people who are really interested in getting into thru-hiking.

- My name is Tay, AKA Corgi, and I'm hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 2023.

I've always been a bit nervous to take up space in the outdoors because outdoor spaces are primarily dominated by men.

Having Lyla as a mentor has made a profound impact on me.

She provides so much solidarity to me as a Queer woman.

Aside from general advice on gear, crossing cold, fast-moving water, she's also become a dear friend.

- Trail is a brave space for me because I'm encouraged to be exactly who I am.

There's so much variety in the outdoors, and in plants, and animals.

Nothing about nature is rigid or within a box.

Everything is flexible.

I think trans people are no different and it's a beautiful way to connect with that fact in the outdoors.

- Lyla is a total boss, hiking the longest and most challenging trails of the world for months at a time.

But you don't need to go that hard to reap the benefits of nature.

With more than tens of thousands of miles of trails in the US, the outdoors should be accessible to all, so we can all find our brave space in nature no matter who we love or how we identify.

See you all on the trail!

(bright music) Lyla's story is really awesome as she is right now.

How she exists is just proof that you are happier once you get to know yourself better.

I'm glad that she's encouraging folks to get more in tune with nature 'cause I think essentially what she's saying is getting more in tune with yourself.

(uplifting music)