Hi, I'm Willow Belden, and you're listening to Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories in the outdoors.

If you've ever hit a rough patch in life, you've probably spent some time thinking about how to get out of it, how to make

yourself happy again. Maybe you turn to self-help books, maybe you solicit advice from friends,

maybe you do things that have cheered you up in the past in hopes that you can recreate that

sense of well-being that you know is possible. On today's episode, I'm going to share a story about something that happened a

few years ago in the mountains of Idaho, which shifted my whole perspective on how to

re-find happiness. It's a story about a bicycle trip, and about confronting your limits,

and about the surprising things that can happen when you fail to accomplish what you set out to do.

So I feel like I need to start out by saying that I am a planner. Like I'm totally type A, I can never just relax and trust that things will work out.

I have to figure out a plan for how to make them work out.

And once I have a plan, I have to stick to it, because obviously if I ever changed course, that would mean I failed.

And I do this in my social life, in my outdoor adventures, in my

career. I mean, I decided already in college that I was going to go to journalism school and then

become a public radio reporter. And by gosh, I did that, even though I realized partway through the

process that I didn't really love news reporting, at least not enough.

But that was the plan, so I kept at it for so many years.

So a couple of years ago, I made a different kind of plan.

This time, the plan was to do a 500-mile bikepacking trip.

So bikepacking is kind of like backpacking, only with your mountain bike.

And the reason I decided to do this trip was because I desperately needed something that

would make me happy again.

I was in a really dark place at the time.

...