Feral

A bracing memoir about self-discovery, liberating escape, and moving forward across an adventurous and volatile American landscape. One year. One national park at a time.This is it. No more California. I’m sifting into the underbelly of where the nomads go.After a decade as an assistant to high-powered LA executives, Emily Pennington left behind her structured life and surrendered to the pull of the great outdoors. With a tight budget, meticulous routing, and a temperamental minivan she named Gizmo, Emily embarked on a yearlong road trip to sixty-two national parks, hell-bent on a single goal: getting through the adventure in one piece. She was instantly thrust into more chaos than she’d bargained for and found herself on an unpredictable journey rocked by a gutting romantic breakup, a burgeoning pandemic, wildfires, and other seismic challenges that threatened her safety, her sanity, and the trip itself.What began as an intrepid obsession soon evolved into a life-changing experience. Navigating the tangle of life’s unexpected sucker punches, Feral invites readers along on Emily’s grand, blissful, and sometimes perilous journey, where solitude, resilience, self-reliance, and personal transformation run wild.

Emily Pennington is an adventurer, world traveler, and freelance writer. Apart from being a regular columnist at Outside magazine, she’s had work published in the New York Times, The Guardian, Condé Nast Traveler, and Backpacker magazine, among others, as well on dozens of websites, including Lonely Planet, mindbodygreen, Adventure Journal, and REI Journal. Emily has also appeared on NPR and the podcasts Women Who Travel, Anxiously, The Outdoor Renaissance, Of Mountains and Men, and Tough Girl Podcast. Los Angeles is Emily’s home base, but you can often find her sleeping in the dirt all over Sequoia, Yosemite, and the Eastern Sierra.