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We'll talk to blogger Aaron Outdoors about why she loves packing in on her hikes.

Learn more at www dot Orru Kayak.com. I'm Gail Strav and you're listening to She Explorers.

My friend Alex who hiked the PCT last year while I was hiking the AT.

I was looking at his Instagram and it would just be breathtaking the oh my goodness this mountain

these rivers that they had to for the other siera's incredible stuff I would look at my

Instagram pictures and it was like this rock is in the shape of a heart

It was small beauty. You know it was check out this rattlesnake. It was look at the way that the the snow has draped these branches

I love this phrase small beauty because it so perfectly describes the East Coast. Rahawa Hale has a knack for noticing small beauty.

She hiked the Appalachian Trail last year and as much as she

wishes it weren't noticeable, she was one of the few black women to through hike in 2016.

Along the way, she carried the metaphorical weight of that knowledge as

well as the physical weight of paperback books for a project she'll tell us about later

in the episode. I chose to call this episode Small beauty on the Appalachian Trail because I think that kind of beauty goes beyond aesthetic for how I sees beauty in everyday life in words in, especially in people.

And based on our conversation, that beauty was clarified on the trail,

even if we as a society have a long way to go. Rahawa Hale is a writer living in Oakland, California.

I discovered her through an essay she wrote for buzzfeed about her experience on the trail,

and I was subsequently drawn into her Twitter account. Yes, it was political and

intelligent and poetic, but it also contained a lot of photos of clouds. I asked her about

...