Nature Profile: Women and the Woods

  • (L to R) Lorin Waxman, Cindy Waxman, Pamela Waxman, Bonnie Waxman, on their back deck. (Photo courtesy of Pamela Waxman)

Fairy tales and slasher films suggest that
the woods can be a scary place. It’s a place where
someone or some thing could hurt us. In our
occasional series about people’s connections to
the environment, Kyle Norris talks to one woman
who has every reason to fear the woods, but has
come to reject that notion:

Transcript

Fairy tales and slasher films suggest that
the woods can be a scary place. It’s a place where
someone or some thing could hurt us. In our
occasional series about people’s connections to
the environment, Kyle Norris talks to one woman
who has every reason to fear the woods, but has
come to reject that notion:


Pamela Waxman spends every minute of her free time hiking,
camping, and backpacking through the woods. And when she’s
in the woods she smiles a lot. And talks slower and a little
easier than when she’s in her day-to-day life. She likes
exploring nature with other people. But she also enjoys going out
by herself, and she does a lot. And that really stresses-out her
parents.


“They’re worried that something’s going to happen to me,
something bad. That either I will be attacked or that I’ll break a
leg or something and there won’t be someone else to help me or to go for
help. They don’t want to lose me and they don’t want me to
suffer.”


For some people, there’s a great fear involved when women go
into the woods. Especially when women go into the woods alone. For Pamela’s
family, this concern is based in reality.


“Well, my sister was murdered out in nature attending to
something she loved. She was alone in a wooded area and
somebody attacked and killed her. So it’s easy to see a parallel
with me going out in woods and being alone in a wooded area.”


Pamela’s older sister, Cindy, was sexually assaulted and killed
in the woods near her home. She had just turned eleven. Pamela
was eight. It makes sense that Pamela may not enjoy being out in the woods, but that’s not what happened. Instead of avoiding the
woods, she embraced the woods:


“I do turn to nature as a place to be and it’s definitely linked to
fact that Cindy was murdered in sort of a wooded area in the
suburbs but still. I reject that. I’m not going to live that way.
I’m not willing to stay indoors and not go out because
someone might murder me in the woods. I don’t think that’s
rational. I don’t want to and will not live that way and I don’t
want to set the example for other people to do that.


“Like the first thing my parents did, like really soon after my sister
was killed was send me away to camp. Which seems totally ridiculous now, but… backpacking which I don’t think I’d ever done, backpacking, rock
climbing and repelling. Under the supervision of basically
a bunch of teenagers, 19-year-olds. For a week, in the High Sierras. Sounds insane. Was totally great. I’m so grateful they sent me because it would have been so easy to clamp down.
And be like no you’re staying with us so we can watch you.
But they didn’t so that. They sent me out into the woods.”


(Norris:) “Did nature help you heal from her death?”


“Oh, I don’t know. Have I healed from her death? Not really…”


But she keeps going back to nature. Today Pamela works at a teen
center. And she recently took a group of teenage girls on a
week-long camping trip. She said the girls would say things like
“I’m afraid of the dark,” or “the woods are creepy”:


“There’s a lot of fear. I think it’s an internalized fear about
violence, rape. I never hear, then they feel it and repress it, but I
never hear boys and men say that they’re afraid to be out in
nature.”


So helping young women feel safer and more comfortable in
nature has become one of Pamela’s personal goals. Pamela says
that nature has taught her about survival. It’s taught her about being normal. And
being fine.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.