Published May 13, 2026 03:30AM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Kamryn Renae had<\/strong> just taken mushrooms in Brazil when she decided to hike 2,600 miles from Mexico to Canada.<\/p>\n It was late February this year, and Carnival, Brazil\u2019s countrywide party to celebrate Lent, was coming to a close. Renae was weeks away from her 22nd birthday and wondering what she should do next. She\u2019d spent much of the last year living in a Subaru Forester, chasing the sunshine between Florida and Washington. Diagnosed at age 12 with Hashimoto\u2019s Disease, an autoimmune disorder that leads to hypothyroidism and an aversion to cold, Renae was forever on the hunt for somewhere warm but not too hot, so that she could comfortably crash in the back of her car at some roadside pullout or, at worse, a Home Depot parking lot. Did she really want to repeat that?<\/p>\n In her hostel, Renae remembered watching Wild<\/i>, the 2014 Reese Witherspoon movie that had (along with Cheryl Strayed\u2019s book of the same name) already inspired thousands of\u00a0people to try the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). She looked up the trail online, gasped when she saw it took many people five months to finish, and, buoyed by the microdose of psilocybin, decided in an instant that\u2019s exactly what she would do. She searched for permits and found that one of the few that remained was for a March 26\u2014that is, her 22nd birthday.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of decisions, I just have this intuitive feeling\u2014that\u2019s what I should<\/i> be doing,\u201d she told me\u00a0in early May. \u201cI knew this is the year I should be doing that<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n Renae soon flew home to Ohio and told her mom, a former schoolteacher, that she only had one birthday wish this year: she needed a ride to Southern California, to the southern start of the PCT. No one balked. Since she split from small-town Ohio four years earlier, her life had been a series of unplanned adventures, from excursions to Thailand and Brazil to those cross-country car trips.<\/p>\n Still, this one was different\u2014a 2,600-mile hike across three states, through rattlesnake and mountain lion territory, across mountain ranges she truly did not know existed. She\u2019d been on some day hikes but never on a long trail, and had been camping in Ohio but only for a night. Renae barely researched her\u00a0<\/strong>gear but instead carefully coordinated her outfits\u2014pink and black sports bras and booty shorts, matching pants and jackets whenever possible\u2014and contemplated how best to maintain a skincare routine in the woods.<\/p>\n After a three-day drive, her mother dropped her off the morning she turned 22. She\u00a0immediately discovered she was a strong hiker, churning out 25-mile days <\/b>without knowing \u201cultralight gear\u201d was really a thing, an impressive pace for someone who is just starting. In fact, when we first spoke on a call, Renae was 566 miles into the PCT, taking several days off in Tehachapi, California, so that some snow might melt in the Sierra Nevada before she continued.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so much more than I thought it would be\u2014a whole different world, a whole culture,\u201d said Renae, whose trail name is Flamingo because of, well, pink. \u201cIt feels right, to be waking up every day and finding your water sources. Civilization has separated us from the Earth, which is weird, because we\u2019re part of Earth. This seems very natural, but it\u2019s weird because it\u2019s not how we\u2019ve been civilized.\u201d<\/p>\n Every year, the United States\u2019 long trails produce a handful of micro-celebrities, their status boosted by Instagram stories or TikTok shorts about endurance or mishaps or both. Maybe they\u2019re breaking their bodies by pursuing a Fastest Known Time, trying to complete the country\u2019s three most famous trails in a single year, or hiking alongside kids or a cute dog. This year, Renae is the star.<\/p>\n On April 5, after she\u2019d finished hiking her first 109 miles, she posted an Instagram video where she painted the nails of her bandaged and dirty toes pink, explained the beauty of trail magic, talked about her makeup routine, and pranced around like a dancer. She did so all in a coquettish voice, all in clothes more associated with shopping malls than trail towns.<\/p>\n![\"Kamryn](\"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Kamryn-photos-from-the-trail.jpg?width=3840&auto=webp&quality=75&fit=cover\"\/)