Best For:
LGBT+ individuals and allies, transgender and non–binary nature lovers, seekers of self-discovery, wild souls with wanderlust, advocates who hike, and those who find their spirituality in the wilderness, readers and writers of creative works.
I didn’t go into the woods to change; I went into the woods to finally stop pretending the mountain wasn’t already inside me.
This Story is Different-
Welcome to the fourth short story I’ve release since the first one in January 2026. If you’ve been following my work lately, you know my shorts have been dwelling in the shadows of psychological thrillers. We’ve explored the unsettling “getaway spa” of Anonymous Arron, the chilling future–tense human rights violations of Moist. Crunchy. Purple. Then we looked inside the eerie, “perfected” versions of ourselves promised in Something is Amiss in the Clinic.
But today, we’re stepping out of the clinics and the underground bunkers. We’re stepping into the open air.
While my previous stories focused on external systems and authoritarian pressures, this piece is about the internal landscape. We are going to unpack identity differently. Not through poetry for advocacy, self growth, or expression. Not creative writing and definitely not through forced procedure. Here comes your identity via a thru-hike with me visually. Backpacking in the open-air with deliberate creative visual descriptions.
What are you waiting for?
Let’s find a good spot to setup tent.
While you watch the embodiment of transition unfold through these words in nature…
His Granite Skin
The air at the trailhead had a few distinct scents that excited my subconscious instantly. I noticed fresh pine first happily mixing with the smell of damp earthy soil as I took a few steps into the tree-line.
I spun around a few times before I figured out which way was which on this hiking app I use. I decided to take to the right after noticing a stream. I could plan to set up camp not too far off it. Before I knew anything else nostalgia grabbed me by the nose entering memory. A flower smell I know too well. My favorite scent to smell in the wilderness: honeysuckle.
Like the air from a pre-heated oven behind a fan, a gust of wind hits me in the face.
The wind wants me to go in my way but I’m still hesitant to claim a space. Waiting for when I know. At barely twenty- something, still trying to find my way.
The trail doesn’t care about the name on my birth certificate; it only cares about the strength of your stride and the honesty of your breath.”
I swore that I’d pack lightly, I really thought I did. Somehow my pack is heavier than before. The evergreen weight of “she” and “her” cinched tight against my chest. Great. I’m sorry, my binder is tighter than before. Ribs, triple layered nylon, and skin that share a borrowed motel room.
The first few miles through the summer sun, fluffy clouds, and blue skies were a negotiation inside my mind with identity.
I walked silently over dirt, root, stone, and path that did not seem to pay any mind or give a care that I was there. The creek beds were dammed up as if to prove the stones had the strength. Holding back the leftover spring showers, April and May had brought.
Moving one stone at a time carefully I allow the water to flow. Not in a frantic manner, not to cause swell, but a controlled stream with the clarity to do it carefully.
The wilderness and myself are becoming something else. Hiking out of the shadow of the woman I was expected to turn into. The world saw the hiker for whom he was. A man navigating identity and survival; to the trees, he was just another heartbeat moving toward the sun with them.
As the path spiraled into the end of summer and the mid-ascent to autumn, the canopy thickened. The canopy thickened into a cathedral of oranges, reds, and yellows. A few spots of green leaves left behind are scattered about. I hear them saying something is left worth holding onto. The last few unchanged summer leaves make me promise them I will see it through.
The humidity finally dropped low enough I didn’t feel like a reptile who started shedding and is now stuck in his wet layer of skin. The other layer provides something new and a means to an authenticity life. As fragments of my skin begin to itch, peel, and change so get ready!
Excited to see the new changes as they come. Each night, before I start the fire fueled by dried oak, cherry, and maple branches. I wash my face and study my reflection in the stream shifting a small amount daily. I draw out the changes like my topographical map.
The seasons transition and so do I, mine is just a geologic change. The softness of the jawline seemed to weather away like debris after a heavy rain, revealing the reliable bedrock beneath.
There were nights of doubt when the storm changed the trail into a river and my knees burned a fire that no amount of river-chilled water could douse. I camped in the hollows of ancient oaks, listening to the trees breathe, feeling the “she/her” of my past dissolve into the smoke of the campfire.
The black flies were relentless, a stinging reminder of the skin I was still learning to live in my skin, after shed, but with every mile the distance grew, so did my determination.
As we gained elevation and the air grew thinner while my spirit grew more dense. The labels I once felt were necessary like a raft, keeping me afloat, staying afloat. When I used to want more turbulence to explore, currents, and higher mountain peaks all I really was looking for was you. By the time the map reached the autumn ridges, I had found a new rhythm: The Hiker.
The wind up here was fierce, stripping the air from my lungs and what is left of autumn leaves from almost bare trees. The birches and the high-pitched timber squeaked out from his voice an octave so high he has never heard it before.
Transitioning is less like a construction project and more like an ancient river… eventually, the water wears away everything that isn’t the truth.
It happened in the quiet moments between the switchbacks; the way my shoulders squared to meet the my gait, or the way my shadow on the sun-bleached rock actually matches the architecture of my mind. I was no longer “presenting” or performing a role for an audience of strangers in the valley; I was simply existing.
The first frost arrived one morning, slivering on my face. Upon which a fine, dark dusting of hair appeared like lichen on a stone, the natural growth of the wild. I felt the shift in my chest, a resonance that matched the low thrum of the wind through the canyons. I wasn’t a woman anymore, I never was; I’d clung to it for safety. I am a man, carved out of the distance I have traveled.
I arrived at the summit and saw a crown of winter white, silent and absolute. Standing at the peak, finally the man I see inside is projected outward. I look back at the valley where we would have been 200-something years ago.
We all know winter has started. The transformation wasn’t a surgery of the flesh, but a shedding of dead things where new will regrow. I walked until the person the world saw finally caught up to the man who had been walking all along, leaving the old names behind in shallow graves in the topsoil of the lower trails.
Journey Summary
This expanded narrative explores the intersections of gender identity and the unyielding nature of the wilderness. It avoids clinical terminology in favor of environmental metaphors: changing leaves, weathered stone, and spring showers to illustrate a deeply personal transition.
Key Highlights:
- The Weight of the Pack: Symbolizing the societal expectations of my assigned gender at the start of the journey.
- The Stream Reflection: A motif showing the subtle, natural sharpening of my features as i climb.
- The Raft Metaphor: Acknowledging the utility of his past identity, while explaining why it was eventually outgrown for a more authentic self.
- Geological Permanence: Concluding with the image of “bedrock,” suggesting that his manhood was always the foundation, merely waiting to be uncovered by the hike.
There is a specific kind of magic found dangling your feet even a few hundred feet in the air.
When the man you were born to be finally takes the lead.
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