March 24, 2020 • 30 mins
A few years ago, Brooklyn-based writer Glynnis MacNicol crossed the United States in a tiny yellow car with a very large dog. On a random pit stop at the oldest dude ranch in the United States, something unexpected happened: She fell in love with Wyoming — with its wide open spaces, with the horses trotting past her cabin at daybreak, with the intensity of being around so few people. In this episode, Glynnis explains to Jeralyn and Pavia how Wyoming gives her the freedom to live by her own rules — happily, and without children or a husband — as she defines the terms of her own odyssey.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
In the intensity that you experience in New York in
terms of human nature of being surrounded by people and
their behavior, and is similar to me anyway to the
intensity you experience in Wyoming with the complete absence of people,
Like it's just two extreme versions of this country, and
I I am attracted to extremes, so it really was
satisfying in similar ways. Welcome to A Way to Go
(00:26):
a production of My Heart Radio and Fathom I'm jeral
and Gerba and I'm Pavio Rosatti. One of the beautiful
things about travel is using it to find ourselves, escape ourselves,
immerse ourselves, showcase our best selves, and expose ourselves to
challenges and uncomfortable realities of the world we live in.
Traveling can be a way to connect or disconnect, a
(00:46):
way to open ourselves to new relationships or be completely alone.
Sometimes it's uncomfortable and sometimes it's not pretty. While the
know it all may say don't go there, the traveler
will go, be a witness and turn that experience into
recognition and understanding. In her memoir, No One Tells You This,
writer Glennis McNichols six readers From Canada to New York
(01:07):
to Wyoming, while chronicling her forty year, experiencing thrills, loneliness, independence, grief,
and exhilaration. Well, we're thrilled to have you here. Thank
you so much for joining us. Thank you said that
when you turned forty, you quote promptly discovered it was
nothing like what had been led to believe. Your book
explores what makes a woman's life worth living, particularly when
(01:29):
that woman chooses to participate outside of the framework society
is set up for her, namely marriage and procreation. What
were the expectations you had for your milestone year. Um,
I'm now forty five, so sometimes I have to really
think back, and I'm glad I wrote the book when
I did, because now I think, oh, was it really
such a big deal? But it was such a big deal.
And I think I approached forty with a sense of
(01:51):
dread and panic. And I was single, I didn't have children.
There's very little narrative evidence that when you have neither
of these things and you turn forty, that life is
going to be enjoyable. I think we really condition women
to think of aging as a process of shame and dread,
and we don't. I'm rolling my eyes. I'm just I'm
(02:15):
just rolling my eyes because you don't y yes, But
I'm also like, really, I know it's exhausting, but sometimes
I walk now, I feel like I've disengaged from that
thinking so significantly. But I hear from so many women
who have read the book and men, to be honest, um,
who are experiencing that anxiety and dread and panic, and
(02:35):
I just and then I walk into you know, Barnes
and Noble and look at the magazine rack, and of
course there's no visual evidence that you can be uh
enjoying yourself in life as a woman past a certain age,
because we don't really talk about that. So while I
was feeling all these things, I don't think it was
a surprise. I was feeling all of these things. And
then I turned forty, and of course I was like, wow,
(02:59):
actually I'm having sort of a great time. And at
the same time, I was having very difficult um experiences
with regards primarily to my mother and a few other things.
And none of that I've been prepared for. Neither of
those things, like not no one had ever suggested to
me that I could enjoy myself, and no one had
prepared me for the things that would actually be difficult.
(03:20):
So I spent an entire year complaining about that I'm
a writer. No matter what assignment I was given, it
could be about nothing to do with women or h
I would somehow like worm in some reference to the
lack of narratives around female lives. And by the end
of the year, I in Wyoming, I had this joke.
It was an oprah aha moment where I thought, well,
you're a writer. Enough has happened this year. All you
(03:43):
do is complain about the lack of stories. Why don't
you put this down and write the story. Well, as
you know, I've read the book, and I love the book.
You go all over on this book, but there's the
descriptions of being in Canada, New York City. You hit
the road and you went out west to Wyoming. Yes,
(04:04):
did you know Wyoming? But why Wyoming? It started out
as a road trip a friend of mine, Joe Piazza,
who we've had on the podcast before, She came on
to talk about how she thought it would be a
good idea to test her marriage and its first year
by climbing Kilman Jara with her husband. Curious listeners can
find that it's it's one of the first episodes, and
(04:27):
I think she has a podcast with heart admitted she
has so many podcasts. Prior to both of those things,
she was a deputy editor for a large travel website
and got engaged to her now husband, Nick, who's lovely,
and he lived in San Francisco, And so she was
moving from New York to San Francisco and needed to
drive and had a tiny yellow car and a very
(04:47):
large dog. And I said I would drive with her,
and we joked it was the grown up version of
your walking down the aisle, Like I was, like, this
was the sort of procession across the country. And because
she she scheduled stories for us to do along the way,
and one of them was she had booked us into
(05:08):
the oldest dude ranch in Wyoming to do a story.
I literally, I didn't plan any of this. My only
requirement was that we stopped in South Dakota at Laura
Engles house, which is what I always I've driven in
around the country many times. Oh and we also stopped
and will Not Grove in Minnesota, which is a real place.
Uh why because that's where Laura Ingles lived prior and
I want to talk about La Angles. I could definitely
(05:30):
literally have an entire podcast about Laura England. So we
crossed out of South Dakota. We went through the bad Lands,
we went to wild drug Black Hills. We get into
Wyoming and I was like, what is this place? It
is empty And we were in the emptiest corner of Wyoming.
And Wyoming is the least populated state in the country,
and we were in the least populated part of it.
And where were you? The northeast corner by shared in Wyoming,
(05:54):
which I'm Canadian, which is why part of this book
was set in Toronto. But the Battle of Little Big
Horn took place in that area of the state, is
why some people might know it. And I was mesmerized
by the emptiness. It was literally like being on the moon.
There was no other cars, there was no evidence of
people for like two hours. And as we arrived in Buffalo,
(06:14):
Wyoming to go up to the Dude Ranch, like a
huge storm coming the horizon and we're in this tiny
car and Lady the Dog started getting eight more and
more anxious, and we're driving up into the mountains and
we lose the signal and there's lightning flashing everywhere in
these rock overhangs, and it was literally the beginning of
so many terrible horror movies that we like to, you know,
(06:38):
apply to women on the road. And we pulled into
this ranch, but it was pitch black and there was
a saloon, and a girl came out and said, well,
here's your cabin, which looked like a Laura Angles cabin.
So we go to sleep. I'm like, who knows what
we're gonna wake up to? And we wake up to
this beautiful, clear morning in the most beautiful place I've
ever been. It's in a valley in the Big Horn Mountains,
and it's picturesque and it's been there for a hundred
(07:00):
twenty five years. There was literally it's called the morning
Jingle where they bring in the horses from the hills
for people to ride for the day. So I wake
up and there's like a herd of a hundred horses
galloping across the valley. He couldn't. That's not a bad
way to wake up, my god. It was literally it
was a morning that changed my life. And I remember
I went and woke Joe up and I said, where
are we? Like what I like? Where are we? And
(07:20):
we were supposed to just stay all that evening and
then drive to the Titans and we it was a
Tuesday when we got there, and we stayed all the
way to Friday because we couldn't leave. It was so amazing,
and the whole all the guests and the staff were
like mapping out how we had to be back in
San Francisco from Monday morning for me to catch my flight,
(07:41):
and they were calculating how long we could stay before
we actually had to get on the road to make
it back to San Francisco. So we say it as
long as possible. Drove straight to San Francisco and I
got back to New York and I was so I've
never had such a strong reaction to a place other
than New York City. I was back for two days
and I had a just signed to book contract for
(08:01):
a separate book, My Guide to Puberty, The Opposite of
the Complete Opposite of Exactly, And I emailed the owner
of the ranch because they had spoken to me about
their lack of social media and how they wanted to
get into it, and I just emailed them and I said,
I'm happy to come out and start all of your
social media for you in exchange for room and board
I don't have to be in New York for the
month of August. And I just did it because I thought,
(08:22):
what the hell, Like, it can't hurt to ask I
have I don't have to be anywhere in particular for
the next month. And they were lovely and he emiled
me back almost immediately and he said, let us know
your flight details. Someone will come and get you, which
is not a small thing because the closest airport is
two to three hours away. Yeah. So I went back
for the month, and I know, I was just like, okay,
(08:44):
and that, I think too is parts of that you
had been quite difficult up so then, and I just
had this moment of being like, this is the power
and the freedom of being able to make my own
not just make my own schedule, but not have to
check in with people about staying or going. Like I
was like, I don't have to be here for a month,
which can be I think overwhelming and scary for people
at the same time. And I was like, I'm going
(09:05):
to go to Wyoming for the month, and it was
it changed my life. That month has changed my life.
And I've been back to Wyoming to that place twice
a year since what was it like going back and
having a month? It was yourself. I woke up every
(09:27):
day like I can't believe this is real. The only
comparison I have is the coming to New York at
twenty three and coming up from the sub. I've never
been to New York before. I've never been to the
United States before, which is kind of crazy in hindsight.
It's an interesting first impression to have. Yeah, well, I
it is. Well. I got on the train from Queens.
I landed very late at JFK on a Friday night,
and I took the our train into Manhattan and got
(09:49):
out at Sixtie Street and Fifth Avenue, and it was
like a Saturday in the fall and a perfect September day.
And I remember looking up Fifth Avenue and I literally
and I traveled quite a bit up until that point,
and I live release that I'm never leaving. I was like,
I'm never leaving. I've never had that reaction to any
place but wyoming. So well, you must have had some
image of New York in your mind before you got here,
(10:10):
from movies and all of that. And by the way,
the our train to sixtieth and Fifth Avenue, you stepped
into the picture of Manhattan. It's the Plaza Hotel on
one side, Berg Dorriff on the other side, the Central
behind you, the Fifth Avenue, the whole thing. Did you
have any preconceived notions of what you would find when
you went to Wyoming. I didn't even think about the
(10:31):
fact I was going to Wyoming because I was very
focused on going to South Dakota, which is my favorite
state to drive across. It's such a wonderful state that
starts out as like farmland on the east side, and
then you go across ninety I think it is, and
it gets increasingly empty. The Buffalo Grasslands. You see signs
for wall drug the whole way, so that you're incapable
of not stopping it, while through the hand painted signs
(10:51):
five cents for coffee for the whole the entire stretch.
And then you get the bad Lands and you get
to wal Drigg and then you're in the Black Kills,
and so I was really focused on that as like
my I've been there many times and I loved it
so much. Something across the state line, I was like, Okay,
now we're just going to San Francisco. So I was
completely unprepared for how overwhelmed I would be by it,
(11:14):
by the emptiness I often think. I would tell people
in Wyoming who were from Wyoming and never been to
New York that I thought it was just like New
York except the complete opposite, and they thought I was crazy.
But in the intensity that you experienced in New York
in terms of human nature of being surrounded by people
and their behavior and like all around you, is similar
(11:37):
to me anyway to the intensity you experienced in Wyoming
with the complete absence of people. Like it's just two
extreme versions of this country, and I I am attracted
to extremes, so it really was satisfying in similar ways. Oh,
that's awesome. Can you describe your day to day at
the ranch? At the ranch? Back at the ranch, I
(11:57):
would get up at it's August, so the sun you're
really aware of the sunrise and sunset because there's no
artificial light. So I would get up at about five
five and go watch the jingle. That's called the jingle
because the lead mayor of the horses it traditionally wears
the bell. Because horses are pack animals, so they all
(12:17):
congregate together no matter where they are, So the wranglers
would go out and round up the hundred horses where
they've been allowed out into the hills overnight, and then
run them back into the paddock to be fed. So
I'd watch the jingle go by. Then i'd hike up,
because it was in a valley, I'd hike up to
the Mesa for my morning hike and come back down
for at seven am breakfast. And then I know it's
(12:39):
really it's it's truly, it was civilized, heavenly, Yeah, it really.
And then I would you, also, by the way, don't
need to remind yourself to do meditation every morning, because
that is essentially it's an ultimate morning meditation. And sometimes
when I would get up to the Mesa, I would
sometimes go up to watch the sunrise, and you would
hear the coyotes how owling with the sunrise, which, not
(13:02):
being a person from Los Angeles, was deeply fascinating to me.
It was really, I was so magical, and it's so quiet,
it's such an absence of human noise that everyone's in
a blue moon. A flight path would cross way up high,
and I would be so resentful of the plane having
the audacity to like which it was. And also I
would hike every day in the afternoon for a couple
(13:22):
of hours, which was lovely. And I didn't bring a
radio with me, which was they were okay with it,
but I would you always have to tell someone when
you're leaving to go hiking, so that they know if
they know that you're gone, so that if you don't
return in a certain amount of time, they send out
a search party because there's no signal there. It is
it's the it's the big Horns, so there's no grizzlies
(13:44):
on that side of the state there and on the
other side of the state in the Rockies, but still
an awareness of like you are out in the wilderness.
And it took two weeks for me to go hiking,
and not automatically from being a New Yorker who walks
quite a lot, turned my head to see if there
was anyone behind me, And after two weeks I was
I've suddenly realized, oh, you're not You're so comfortable in
(14:06):
this environment. You're like losing your city habits of checking
your one three sixty surroundings at all times, which was
a nice feeling. And also you become more like, to
be clear, I'm not going to save anyone in the
apocalypse by like reading the stars, but you become more
aware of like what direction the sun is rising and
setting to to orient yourself when you are out there.
(14:26):
And a couple of times I did get lost, but
not I wasn't off the horse trails, so I had
a moment of thinking, maybe this is the time the
wranglers come and find me, But you fellow the hoop
prints back and they eventually take you back to the rant. Yeah,
really lovely. It is really lovely. So I would go
and watch the I would come back for breakfast, and
then I would write. I would go back to my
cabin and light a fire. And when I described this,
(14:50):
it sounds so ridiculous, but it was really love I
would light a fire and right in the morning, and
then I would lunch. Everyone eats all the meals together.
I would go down for lunch and then spend the
afternoon out taking photos for them and setting up there
Instagram and stuff, and uh. Then I would go hiking
at four o'clock and come back for dinner at seven.
(15:10):
And then there'd be some activity in the saloon that night,
whether it was dancing or a talent show or music
or sometimes I would drive down with some of the
other staff to the Occidental Hotel, which is in Buffalo
and has been there for a hundred and fifty years.
Maybe maybe a little bit less teddy. Roosevelt used to
go out there. Ernest Hemingway stopped there. It's got a
very storied history, very Western history, and so much taxidermy. Yeah,
(15:34):
that's what my day looked like. It sounds so nice.
It's so nice because you have the time to yourself,
there's built in community, there's a little bit of something
I love. A rowing fire in the middle of the summertime.
It's amazing and you I mean even in August overnight
it would wouldn't quite drop down to freezing, but that's
it gets chili. Yeah, what a dream. What's interesting in
your description about having had no expectations of Wyoming is
(15:56):
that I think that's an increasingly rare thing. We usually
know so much about the places we're going to before
we get there. We've mapped out our trip, we've seen
it on Instagram. We're really super prepared. I'm so just
delighted in the idea that this was discovery for you.
I think in the national conscious, Wyoming often takes second
(16:21):
place where is confused with Montana, which has a much
broader brand in this country. Because even when I wrote
part of the book is about going to Wyoming, I
talked about Wyoming all the time, and even my friends
who know this are always like, how is your time
in Montana? Are you going back to Montana? So it's
a little nobody in Wyoming like Wyoming, except for Yellowstone,
(16:41):
which is obviously in Jackson, which is such a heavy
tourist area but also unbelievably beautiful. Unbelievably Jackson's an incredible
place to go. It is, but it's a little bit
I think, no, I mean wealthy, of just a little bit.
It's a little bit like someone's idea of New York
(17:02):
being the Hampton's if that makes sense, or of New
York not Time Square because it's that's tacky. But when
you're in the rest of Wyoming, there is a divide
of the way people talk about, Oh, you've been to
Jackson or have you been to Wyoming. Oh that's interesting,
it's because that's not They don't think about it in
quite the same way. I was in Wyoming. When you
(17:24):
were having dinner at the ranch, was it usually the
same crew of people who were working on the ranch.
I mean, was it a working ranch or were they
mostly visitors and travelers and tourists. So it's a dude ranch,
so it's it takes every week, it has a new
round of guests, and then their staff comes in May
and works through till October. So I segued into sort
(17:47):
of the staff group pretty immediately and eight with them.
I'm still quite close to many staff members, and got
one of them to move to New York City not
that long ago. For thun Er for love, she's twenty
years younger and I helped her get a job in publishing.
But I still talk to it. I still talk to
UM people quite often. I think I was a bit
(18:12):
not think I was an anomaly when I arrived there.
But one of the things I've come to really value
about being in very rural Western places is even though
the politics Woming is the red est state in the country,
on every level it's state local, they've um statewide, federal.
There's this sense of taking people as they come, and
(18:34):
I think that comes from seeing so few people that
you you get in the habit of being open to
whoever you meet because you encounter them with some infrequency
at They're like, people drive two hours for dinner is
not a strange thing at all. So I people really
took me as I was, and I never felt and
(18:54):
have never felt, um like the wacky liberal from Brooklyn.
They just they It was. It was like I was
accepted as that. I would never feel like I needed
to say or not express my say in ti deep
desire to see Hillary Clinton as president of the United States.
And my experience with those conversations was yeah, or I'd say,
(19:15):
you know, I live in New York City. I don't
like guns at all, and people would say, ah, that's fine,
I've got twenty three in my trunk, and I feel like, yeah,
I know, I know where I am. But there was
never I think some of the different sort of pushback
you can get in more populated conservative areas. It's it's
a much different sensibility in my experience. And this is
why you've been going back so much. That the openness,
(19:37):
it's impossible to find that that emptiness almost any The
only place I came closes and I went to Iceland.
But truly Wyoming is truly empty. I mean this is
I have done a two hour drive from Buffalo to
Casper and seeing at certain times today just like a
handful of cars, it does feel like being on the moon.
It's it's really an extraordinary experience. And since you've been
(20:09):
back several times, are you exploring other parts of Wyoming
or do you always go back to this stud d
I know most of Wyoming at this point. I'm driven
around it. But it's that's not people will say, IM
going to yellow Stone for an overnight camping trip and
it's a seven hour drive away, like you really getting.
You're getting the sort of sensibility of like driving far
distances because you have to really So, yes, I know
(20:34):
Wyoming quite well. Right, Yeah, we've been around. Can you
give us a description of the the sense of community,
the guests that are there, kind of what everything looks like.
The guests that come to the ranch are frequently from
the middle of the country, which was an interesting experience too.
As a New Yorker, I think we don't consider all
(21:01):
the time the experiences of living with due respect, the
experience of living in with consin Ohio, Michigan, these were
often the guests. Hunting is quite a regular thing, and
it's much different from New York lifestyles, but they guests,
which I'm much closer to the staff. I know some
of the regular guests. There's people have been coming back
there for forty years. Is it a lot of families, Yes,
(21:23):
it's family. They have families up until the second week
of August and then it turns into adults only, and
during when they're they're very kid friendly. It's a very
kid friendly dude ranch. Lots of activities for kids. But
I know the staff a little bit better. So what
is a dude ranch? Yeah, it's funny because when I
first landed there, I had no idea what a dude
ranch was. I'd never heard of it, and over the
(21:44):
course of the last few years, I realized it's a
fairly common vacation destination for much of the country and
also goes back more than a century as as a
common experience. It's called dude because that used to be,
and many of them now are called guest ranches now
because you can be considered an insult because it was
the word used to describe an East Coast man who
didn't know what he was doing. It was like a
(22:06):
mocking term of like, uh, an East Coaster who would
show up in their fancy clothes but have no practical skills.
A city slicker is it's the old term for city slicker,
and so they would call it a dude ranch because
wealthy people from the East Coast primarily would come out
there to experience Western life and sort of play at
it and pretend they were cowboys, which is not. The
(22:27):
difference now is that there's Western life has so significantly
shifted that this is this running dude ranches is now
much of Western life. I mean, I can't speak with
great authority to that, but that's certainly my impression. But
a dude ranches where you go and you ride horses
into the mountains, or the dude ranches all over the
country in Arizona. There's many famous ones in Montana. In Wyoming, uh,
(22:50):
fly fishing, yeah, and you have like square dancing at
night and talent shows. I only know this one. It's
called Paradise Guest Ranch outside of Buffalo, and it is
the oldest dude ranch and the country or in the
state of Wyoming, and it's been in the family since
the seventies. So there was a reference in one of
your articles to a concept David Brooks of the New
York Times wrote about called the odyssey years, which is
(23:11):
a period of improvisation that is a sensible response to
modern conditions. And I wanted to know, do you feel
like you're still in your odyssey years? Listen? I hadn't
actually hadn't heard that phrase before. But that's interesting because
I always love referencing Odysseus and the odyssey, which is
the template for travel, travel and adventure and everything. But
(23:34):
Joseph Campbell, who I love here with a Thousand Faces
or the Power of Myths, he used to talk about
how women's odyssey was motherhood, childbirth and motherhood, but men's
odyssey was going out and exploring and finding themselves. Yeah,
trying me freaking crazy. I was like, no, wonder, I'm
obsessed with lower angles and Princess Lai like the only
two women we get to see they literally go out
(23:56):
on the road. I think we're all in odyssey years,
like life is the odyssey. And the difference for me
and women who are not married or don't have kids
is that the odyssey we're on is not documented. And
what feels overwhelming about that experience is never having um
(24:18):
a reference or blueprint or an experience to look to,
to um consult with to guide your to guide your way.
This idea that a woman cannot be married and not
have kids and have financial independence without being born into
a wealthy family and on top of that be able
to travel where she wants is so new. It's so
(24:42):
I say this in almost every interview, but women in
this country couldn't have credit cards in their own name
till which is also the year I was born. Like,
this idea of me being able to dictate how my
life looks within reason is so new that I think
the adventure, the scariness of my experiences in the thrill
(25:03):
of it is not knowing, not having examples of what
that has looked like over time, Whereas I think for
better for worse with marriage and motherhood, we definitely have
lots of examples, whether or not you like all of them.
So yeah, we're all in an honesty though I mean
countries on an honesty's Glennys, how do you make yourself
(25:24):
feel at home when you're in all these different places
around the world. I walk everywhere, I walk wherever I am.
I walk the city. I don't tend to take public
transportation until I know the city well enough to walk
around it, and because I'm a writer and I can
often work from different places. Instead of going to Paris
for a weekend, the last few years, I've gone for
(25:46):
a month at a time, and when I visit it
was in Berlin this summer for maybe five days, and
I walked something like fifty or seventy five miles when
I was there. I like to know the city on foot.
I think it gives you a much better understanding of
why it is the way it is in, much more
exposure to the people who live there, and makes me
(26:07):
feel like I'm actually getting to know one as opposed
to just passing through, Which is not to say I'm
opposed to a very nice hotel room, but that's often.
I think Airbnb has opened this up to and also
dropped hotel prices. But like I just walk everywhere. That's
my or I've in Berlin and in Amsterdam. I rented
bikes because I bike New York quite a bit, and
I bike Paris when i'm there, so both those things.
(26:29):
You know, We're seeing a lot more articles and attention
being given to the experience of women traveling either traveling
by themselves all over the world and how to do
it and how to do it safely, or going on
group trips that are created by women, that are attended
by women, where the activities center around women chefs, designers, artists.
(26:52):
What do you think about this? And I love it?
I at this point, I don't remember the last time
I traveled with someone like it would really at this point,
you really there's such a short list of people I
would say, yes, you can come with me, because I'm
so accustomed to doing what I want when i want
it now I say that when I also joke I
have an international club of sort of single women in
(27:14):
every city I spend time in that I meet up
with when I'm there, Like I have a whole group
of women in Paris, like definitely, Wyoming, Los Angeles, like um.
And part of that is you can travel by yourself.
I think that iPhone significantly change things in terms of
communication and knowledge about where you were in this lack
you know, less isolation if you feel I mean, I
(27:35):
remember driving across the country with just a map and
it was wonderful, but there's much greater sense of risk
with that. I think. I think that we are in
a moment of women really just enjoying the fact that
they are not obligated to spend time with men because
they are paying their own way. And what this is
looking like across the board, the ability of women to
(27:58):
pay their own way. We're seeing shifts in every sort
of experience of what that looks like when women can
determine what they want their lives to look like because
they're not financially dependent on a man, which has traditionally
been right, we could be the masters of our own destinies. Yeah,
maybe that's right. Although I often see it's funny. When
(28:18):
I was a teenager and in my twenties traveling backpacking
or whatever, you would see sometimes use groups of what
I considered older women. They are probably in their fifties
traveling together, and they were always like loud and laughing,
and they always look like they were having just the
best time and just gleefully going around. And I remember
not really understanding that and it not really appealing to
me in my twenties. And now I'm like, oh, I
(28:40):
get it, Like you are having so much fun, you're
simply not considering all of the things about men. It's
just it's really enjoy I think it's I don't think
about it that much anymore. Actually, I just go but yeah,
it doesn't surprise me at all. Glenn's. If we wanted
to continue following you, where can we find you? I
have an Instagram called No One Tells You This, which
(29:00):
is obviously the title of the book. Glenny's. It is
always a pleasure to hear your stories. Thank you so
much for coming in tonight to us today is for
having me. This is so fun and that's our show.
Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, please subscribe,
and you know, leave us a five star review. Oh
Way Ago is a production of I Heart Radio and Fathom.
You can find the details we talked about in the
(29:22):
show notes and on our website fathom away dot com.
Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter when you're there.
You can get in touch with us anytime at podcast
at fathom away dot com and follow us on all
social media at at fathom Way to Go. Please tag
your best travel photos hashtag travel with Fathom. If you
want to really go deep on the travel inspirations, pick
up a copy of our book, Travel Anywhere and avoid
(29:44):
being a tourist. I'm Jarlyne Gerba and I'm Pavio Rosatti,
and we'd like to thank our producer, editor and mixer
Marcy to Pena and our executive producer Christopher Hassiotis. For
more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. H
In the intensity that you experience in New York in
terms of human nature of being surrounded by people and
their behavior, and is similar to me anyway to the
intensity you experience in Wyoming with the complete absence of people,
Like it's just two extreme versions of this country, and
I I am attracted to extremes, so it really was
satisfying in similar ways. Welcome to A Way to Go
(00:26):
a production of My Heart Radio and Fathom I'm jeral
and Gerba and I'm Pavio Rosatti. One of the beautiful
things about travel is using it to find ourselves, escape ourselves,
immerse ourselves, showcase our best selves, and expose ourselves to
challenges and uncomfortable realities of the world we live in.
Traveling can be a way to connect or disconnect, a
(00:46):
way to open ourselves to new relationships or be completely alone.
Sometimes it's uncomfortable and sometimes it's not pretty. While the
know it all may say don't go there, the traveler
will go, be a witness and turn that experience into
recognition and understanding. In her memoir, No One Tells You This,
writer Glennis McNichols six readers From Canada to New York
(01:07):
to Wyoming, while chronicling her forty year, experiencing thrills, loneliness, independence, grief,
and exhilaration. Well, we're thrilled to have you here. Thank
you so much for joining us. Thank you said that
when you turned forty, you quote promptly discovered it was
nothing like what had been led to believe. Your book
explores what makes a woman's life worth living, particularly when
(01:29):
that woman chooses to participate outside of the framework society
is set up for her, namely marriage and procreation. What
were the expectations you had for your milestone year. Um,
I'm now forty five, so sometimes I have to really
think back, and I'm glad I wrote the book when
I did, because now I think, oh, was it really
such a big deal? But it was such a big deal.
And I think I approached forty with a sense of
(01:51):
dread and panic. And I was single, I didn't have children.
There's very little narrative evidence that when you have neither
of these things and you turn forty, that life is
going to be enjoyable. I think we really condition women
to think of aging as a process of shame and dread,
and we don't. I'm rolling my eyes. I'm just I'm
(02:15):
just rolling my eyes because you don't y yes, But
I'm also like, really, I know it's exhausting, but sometimes
I walk now, I feel like I've disengaged from that
thinking so significantly. But I hear from so many women
who have read the book and men, to be honest, um,
who are experiencing that anxiety and dread and panic, and
(02:35):
I just and then I walk into you know, Barnes
and Noble and look at the magazine rack, and of
course there's no visual evidence that you can be uh
enjoying yourself in life as a woman past a certain age,
because we don't really talk about that. So while I
was feeling all these things, I don't think it was
a surprise. I was feeling all of these things. And
then I turned forty, and of course I was like, wow,
(02:59):
actually I'm having sort of a great time. And at
the same time, I was having very difficult um experiences
with regards primarily to my mother and a few other things.
And none of that I've been prepared for. Neither of
those things, like not no one had ever suggested to
me that I could enjoy myself, and no one had
prepared me for the things that would actually be difficult.
(03:20):
So I spent an entire year complaining about that I'm
a writer. No matter what assignment I was given, it
could be about nothing to do with women or h
I would somehow like worm in some reference to the
lack of narratives around female lives. And by the end
of the year, I in Wyoming, I had this joke.
It was an oprah aha moment where I thought, well,
you're a writer. Enough has happened this year. All you
(03:43):
do is complain about the lack of stories. Why don't
you put this down and write the story. Well, as
you know, I've read the book, and I love the book.
You go all over on this book, but there's the
descriptions of being in Canada, New York City. You hit
the road and you went out west to Wyoming. Yes,
(04:04):
did you know Wyoming? But why Wyoming? It started out
as a road trip a friend of mine, Joe Piazza,
who we've had on the podcast before, She came on
to talk about how she thought it would be a
good idea to test her marriage and its first year
by climbing Kilman Jara with her husband. Curious listeners can
find that it's it's one of the first episodes, and
(04:27):
I think she has a podcast with heart admitted she
has so many podcasts. Prior to both of those things,
she was a deputy editor for a large travel website
and got engaged to her now husband, Nick, who's lovely,
and he lived in San Francisco, And so she was
moving from New York to San Francisco and needed to
drive and had a tiny yellow car and a very
(04:47):
large dog. And I said I would drive with her,
and we joked it was the grown up version of
your walking down the aisle, Like I was, like, this
was the sort of procession across the country. And because
she she scheduled stories for us to do along the way,
and one of them was she had booked us into
(05:08):
the oldest dude ranch in Wyoming to do a story.
I literally, I didn't plan any of this. My only
requirement was that we stopped in South Dakota at Laura
Engles house, which is what I always I've driven in
around the country many times. Oh and we also stopped
and will Not Grove in Minnesota, which is a real place.
Uh why because that's where Laura Ingles lived prior and
I want to talk about La Angles. I could definitely
(05:30):
literally have an entire podcast about Laura England. So we
crossed out of South Dakota. We went through the bad Lands,
we went to wild drug Black Hills. We get into
Wyoming and I was like, what is this place? It
is empty And we were in the emptiest corner of Wyoming.
And Wyoming is the least populated state in the country,
and we were in the least populated part of it.
And where were you? The northeast corner by shared in Wyoming,
(05:54):
which I'm Canadian, which is why part of this book
was set in Toronto. But the Battle of Little Big
Horn took place in that area of the state, is
why some people might know it. And I was mesmerized
by the emptiness. It was literally like being on the moon.
There was no other cars, there was no evidence of
people for like two hours. And as we arrived in Buffalo,
(06:14):
Wyoming to go up to the Dude Ranch, like a
huge storm coming the horizon and we're in this tiny
car and Lady the Dog started getting eight more and
more anxious, and we're driving up into the mountains and
we lose the signal and there's lightning flashing everywhere in
these rock overhangs, and it was literally the beginning of
so many terrible horror movies that we like to, you know,
(06:38):
apply to women on the road. And we pulled into
this ranch, but it was pitch black and there was
a saloon, and a girl came out and said, well,
here's your cabin, which looked like a Laura Angles cabin.
So we go to sleep. I'm like, who knows what
we're gonna wake up to? And we wake up to
this beautiful, clear morning in the most beautiful place I've
ever been. It's in a valley in the Big Horn Mountains,
and it's picturesque and it's been there for a hundred
(07:00):
twenty five years. There was literally it's called the morning
Jingle where they bring in the horses from the hills
for people to ride for the day. So I wake
up and there's like a herd of a hundred horses
galloping across the valley. He couldn't. That's not a bad
way to wake up, my god. It was literally it
was a morning that changed my life. And I remember
I went and woke Joe up and I said, where
are we? Like what I like? Where are we? And
(07:20):
we were supposed to just stay all that evening and
then drive to the Titans and we it was a
Tuesday when we got there, and we stayed all the
way to Friday because we couldn't leave. It was so amazing,
and the whole all the guests and the staff were
like mapping out how we had to be back in
San Francisco from Monday morning for me to catch my flight,
(07:41):
and they were calculating how long we could stay before
we actually had to get on the road to make
it back to San Francisco. So we say it as
long as possible. Drove straight to San Francisco and I
got back to New York and I was so I've
never had such a strong reaction to a place other
than New York City. I was back for two days
and I had a just signed to book contract for
(08:01):
a separate book, My Guide to Puberty, The Opposite of
the Complete Opposite of Exactly, And I emailed the owner
of the ranch because they had spoken to me about
their lack of social media and how they wanted to
get into it, and I just emailed them and I said,
I'm happy to come out and start all of your
social media for you in exchange for room and board
I don't have to be in New York for the
month of August. And I just did it because I thought,
(08:22):
what the hell, Like, it can't hurt to ask I
have I don't have to be anywhere in particular for
the next month. And they were lovely and he emiled
me back almost immediately and he said, let us know
your flight details. Someone will come and get you, which
is not a small thing because the closest airport is
two to three hours away. Yeah. So I went back
for the month, and I know, I was just like, okay,
(08:44):
and that, I think too is parts of that you
had been quite difficult up so then, and I just
had this moment of being like, this is the power
and the freedom of being able to make my own
not just make my own schedule, but not have to
check in with people about staying or going. Like I
was like, I don't have to be here for a month,
which can be I think overwhelming and scary for people
at the same time. And I was like, I'm going
(09:05):
to go to Wyoming for the month, and it was
it changed my life. That month has changed my life.
And I've been back to Wyoming to that place twice
a year since what was it like going back and
having a month? It was yourself. I woke up every
(09:27):
day like I can't believe this is real. The only
comparison I have is the coming to New York at
twenty three and coming up from the sub. I've never
been to New York before. I've never been to the
United States before, which is kind of crazy in hindsight.
It's an interesting first impression to have. Yeah, well, I
it is. Well. I got on the train from Queens.
I landed very late at JFK on a Friday night,
and I took the our train into Manhattan and got
(09:49):
out at Sixtie Street and Fifth Avenue, and it was
like a Saturday in the fall and a perfect September day.
And I remember looking up Fifth Avenue and I literally
and I traveled quite a bit up until that point,
and I live release that I'm never leaving. I was like,
I'm never leaving. I've never had that reaction to any
place but wyoming. So well, you must have had some
image of New York in your mind before you got here,
(10:10):
from movies and all of that. And by the way,
the our train to sixtieth and Fifth Avenue, you stepped
into the picture of Manhattan. It's the Plaza Hotel on
one side, Berg Dorriff on the other side, the Central
behind you, the Fifth Avenue, the whole thing. Did you
have any preconceived notions of what you would find when
you went to Wyoming. I didn't even think about the
(10:31):
fact I was going to Wyoming because I was very
focused on going to South Dakota, which is my favorite
state to drive across. It's such a wonderful state that
starts out as like farmland on the east side, and
then you go across ninety I think it is, and
it gets increasingly empty. The Buffalo Grasslands. You see signs
for wall drug the whole way, so that you're incapable
of not stopping it, while through the hand painted signs
(10:51):
five cents for coffee for the whole the entire stretch.
And then you get the bad Lands and you get
to wal Drigg and then you're in the Black Kills,
and so I was really focused on that as like
my I've been there many times and I loved it
so much. Something across the state line, I was like, Okay,
now we're just going to San Francisco. So I was
completely unprepared for how overwhelmed I would be by it,
(11:14):
by the emptiness I often think. I would tell people
in Wyoming who were from Wyoming and never been to
New York that I thought it was just like New
York except the complete opposite, and they thought I was crazy.
But in the intensity that you experienced in New York
in terms of human nature of being surrounded by people
and their behavior and like all around you, is similar
(11:37):
to me anyway to the intensity you experienced in Wyoming
with the complete absence of people. Like it's just two
extreme versions of this country, and I I am attracted
to extremes, so it really was satisfying in similar ways. Oh,
that's awesome. Can you describe your day to day at
the ranch? At the ranch? Back at the ranch, I
(11:57):
would get up at it's August, so the sun you're
really aware of the sunrise and sunset because there's no
artificial light. So I would get up at about five
five and go watch the jingle. That's called the jingle
because the lead mayor of the horses it traditionally wears
the bell. Because horses are pack animals, so they all
(12:17):
congregate together no matter where they are, So the wranglers
would go out and round up the hundred horses where
they've been allowed out into the hills overnight, and then
run them back into the paddock to be fed. So
I'd watch the jingle go by. Then i'd hike up,
because it was in a valley, I'd hike up to
the Mesa for my morning hike and come back down
for at seven am breakfast. And then I know it's
(12:39):
really it's it's truly, it was civilized, heavenly, Yeah, it really.
And then I would you, also, by the way, don't
need to remind yourself to do meditation every morning, because
that is essentially it's an ultimate morning meditation. And sometimes
when I would get up to the Mesa, I would
sometimes go up to watch the sunrise, and you would
hear the coyotes how owling with the sunrise, which, not
(13:02):
being a person from Los Angeles, was deeply fascinating to me.
It was really, I was so magical, and it's so quiet,
it's such an absence of human noise that everyone's in
a blue moon. A flight path would cross way up high,
and I would be so resentful of the plane having
the audacity to like which it was. And also I
would hike every day in the afternoon for a couple
(13:22):
of hours, which was lovely. And I didn't bring a
radio with me, which was they were okay with it,
but I would you always have to tell someone when
you're leaving to go hiking, so that they know if
they know that you're gone, so that if you don't
return in a certain amount of time, they send out
a search party because there's no signal there. It is
it's the it's the big Horns, so there's no grizzlies
(13:44):
on that side of the state there and on the
other side of the state in the Rockies, but still
an awareness of like you are out in the wilderness.
And it took two weeks for me to go hiking,
and not automatically from being a New Yorker who walks
quite a lot, turned my head to see if there
was anyone behind me, And after two weeks I was
I've suddenly realized, oh, you're not You're so comfortable in
(14:06):
this environment. You're like losing your city habits of checking
your one three sixty surroundings at all times, which was
a nice feeling. And also you become more like, to
be clear, I'm not going to save anyone in the
apocalypse by like reading the stars, but you become more
aware of like what direction the sun is rising and
setting to to orient yourself when you are out there.
(14:26):
And a couple of times I did get lost, but
not I wasn't off the horse trails, so I had
a moment of thinking, maybe this is the time the
wranglers come and find me, But you fellow the hoop
prints back and they eventually take you back to the rant. Yeah,
really lovely. It is really lovely. So I would go
and watch the I would come back for breakfast, and
then I would write. I would go back to my
cabin and light a fire. And when I described this,
(14:50):
it sounds so ridiculous, but it was really love I
would light a fire and right in the morning, and
then I would lunch. Everyone eats all the meals together.
I would go down for lunch and then spend the
afternoon out taking photos for them and setting up there
Instagram and stuff, and uh. Then I would go hiking
at four o'clock and come back for dinner at seven.
(15:10):
And then there'd be some activity in the saloon that night,
whether it was dancing or a talent show or music
or sometimes I would drive down with some of the
other staff to the Occidental Hotel, which is in Buffalo
and has been there for a hundred and fifty years.
Maybe maybe a little bit less teddy. Roosevelt used to
go out there. Ernest Hemingway stopped there. It's got a
very storied history, very Western history, and so much taxidermy. Yeah,
(15:34):
that's what my day looked like. It sounds so nice.
It's so nice because you have the time to yourself,
there's built in community, there's a little bit of something
I love. A rowing fire in the middle of the summertime.
It's amazing and you I mean even in August overnight
it would wouldn't quite drop down to freezing, but that's
it gets chili. Yeah, what a dream. What's interesting in
your description about having had no expectations of Wyoming is
(15:56):
that I think that's an increasingly rare thing. We usually
know so much about the places we're going to before
we get there. We've mapped out our trip, we've seen
it on Instagram. We're really super prepared. I'm so just
delighted in the idea that this was discovery for you.
I think in the national conscious, Wyoming often takes second
(16:21):
place where is confused with Montana, which has a much
broader brand in this country. Because even when I wrote
part of the book is about going to Wyoming, I
talked about Wyoming all the time, and even my friends
who know this are always like, how is your time
in Montana? Are you going back to Montana? So it's
a little nobody in Wyoming like Wyoming, except for Yellowstone,
(16:41):
which is obviously in Jackson, which is such a heavy
tourist area but also unbelievably beautiful. Unbelievably Jackson's an incredible
place to go. It is, but it's a little bit
I think, no, I mean wealthy, of just a little bit.
It's a little bit like someone's idea of New York
(17:02):
being the Hampton's if that makes sense, or of New
York not Time Square because it's that's tacky. But when
you're in the rest of Wyoming, there is a divide
of the way people talk about, Oh, you've been to
Jackson or have you been to Wyoming. Oh that's interesting,
it's because that's not They don't think about it in
quite the same way. I was in Wyoming. When you
(17:24):
were having dinner at the ranch, was it usually the
same crew of people who were working on the ranch.
I mean, was it a working ranch or were they
mostly visitors and travelers and tourists. So it's a dude ranch,
so it's it takes every week, it has a new
round of guests, and then their staff comes in May
and works through till October. So I segued into sort
(17:47):
of the staff group pretty immediately and eight with them.
I'm still quite close to many staff members, and got
one of them to move to New York City not
that long ago. For thun Er for love, she's twenty
years younger and I helped her get a job in publishing.
But I still talk to it. I still talk to
UM people quite often. I think I was a bit
(18:12):
not think I was an anomaly when I arrived there.
But one of the things I've come to really value
about being in very rural Western places is even though
the politics Woming is the red est state in the country,
on every level it's state local, they've um statewide, federal.
There's this sense of taking people as they come, and
(18:34):
I think that comes from seeing so few people that
you you get in the habit of being open to
whoever you meet because you encounter them with some infrequency
at They're like, people drive two hours for dinner is
not a strange thing at all. So I people really
took me as I was, and I never felt and
(18:54):
have never felt, um like the wacky liberal from Brooklyn.
They just they It was. It was like I was
accepted as that. I would never feel like I needed
to say or not express my say in ti deep
desire to see Hillary Clinton as president of the United States.
And my experience with those conversations was yeah, or I'd say,
(19:15):
you know, I live in New York City. I don't
like guns at all, and people would say, ah, that's fine,
I've got twenty three in my trunk, and I feel like, yeah,
I know, I know where I am. But there was
never I think some of the different sort of pushback
you can get in more populated conservative areas. It's it's
a much different sensibility in my experience. And this is
why you've been going back so much. That the openness,
(19:37):
it's impossible to find that that emptiness almost any The
only place I came closes and I went to Iceland.
But truly Wyoming is truly empty. I mean this is
I have done a two hour drive from Buffalo to
Casper and seeing at certain times today just like a
handful of cars, it does feel like being on the moon.
It's it's really an extraordinary experience. And since you've been
(20:09):
back several times, are you exploring other parts of Wyoming
or do you always go back to this stud d
I know most of Wyoming at this point. I'm driven
around it. But it's that's not people will say, IM
going to yellow Stone for an overnight camping trip and
it's a seven hour drive away, like you really getting.
You're getting the sort of sensibility of like driving far
distances because you have to really So, yes, I know
(20:34):
Wyoming quite well. Right, Yeah, we've been around. Can you
give us a description of the the sense of community,
the guests that are there, kind of what everything looks like.
The guests that come to the ranch are frequently from
the middle of the country, which was an interesting experience too.
As a New Yorker, I think we don't consider all
(21:01):
the time the experiences of living with due respect, the
experience of living in with consin Ohio, Michigan, these were
often the guests. Hunting is quite a regular thing, and
it's much different from New York lifestyles, but they guests,
which I'm much closer to the staff. I know some
of the regular guests. There's people have been coming back
there for forty years. Is it a lot of families, Yes,
(21:23):
it's family. They have families up until the second week
of August and then it turns into adults only, and
during when they're they're very kid friendly. It's a very
kid friendly dude ranch. Lots of activities for kids. But
I know the staff a little bit better. So what
is a dude ranch? Yeah, it's funny because when I
first landed there, I had no idea what a dude
ranch was. I'd never heard of it, and over the
(21:44):
course of the last few years, I realized it's a
fairly common vacation destination for much of the country and
also goes back more than a century as as a
common experience. It's called dude because that used to be,
and many of them now are called guest ranches now
because you can be considered an insult because it was
the word used to describe an East Coast man who
didn't know what he was doing. It was like a
(22:06):
mocking term of like, uh, an East Coaster who would
show up in their fancy clothes but have no practical skills.
A city slicker is it's the old term for city slicker,
and so they would call it a dude ranch because
wealthy people from the East Coast primarily would come out
there to experience Western life and sort of play at
it and pretend they were cowboys, which is not. The
(22:27):
difference now is that there's Western life has so significantly
shifted that this is this running dude ranches is now
much of Western life. I mean, I can't speak with
great authority to that, but that's certainly my impression. But
a dude ranches where you go and you ride horses
into the mountains, or the dude ranches all over the
country in Arizona. There's many famous ones in Montana. In Wyoming, uh,
(22:50):
fly fishing, yeah, and you have like square dancing at
night and talent shows. I only know this one. It's
called Paradise Guest Ranch outside of Buffalo, and it is
the oldest dude ranch and the country or in the
state of Wyoming, and it's been in the family since
the seventies. So there was a reference in one of
your articles to a concept David Brooks of the New
York Times wrote about called the odyssey years, which is
(23:11):
a period of improvisation that is a sensible response to
modern conditions. And I wanted to know, do you feel
like you're still in your odyssey years? Listen? I hadn't
actually hadn't heard that phrase before. But that's interesting because
I always love referencing Odysseus and the odyssey, which is
the template for travel, travel and adventure and everything. But
(23:34):
Joseph Campbell, who I love here with a Thousand Faces
or the Power of Myths, he used to talk about
how women's odyssey was motherhood, childbirth and motherhood, but men's
odyssey was going out and exploring and finding themselves. Yeah,
trying me freaking crazy. I was like, no, wonder, I'm
obsessed with lower angles and Princess Lai like the only
two women we get to see they literally go out
(23:56):
on the road. I think we're all in odyssey years,
like life is the odyssey. And the difference for me
and women who are not married or don't have kids
is that the odyssey we're on is not documented. And
what feels overwhelming about that experience is never having um
(24:18):
a reference or blueprint or an experience to look to,
to um consult with to guide your to guide your way.
This idea that a woman cannot be married and not
have kids and have financial independence without being born into
a wealthy family and on top of that be able
to travel where she wants is so new. It's so
(24:42):
I say this in almost every interview, but women in
this country couldn't have credit cards in their own name
till which is also the year I was born. Like,
this idea of me being able to dictate how my
life looks within reason is so new that I think
the adventure, the scariness of my experiences in the thrill
(25:03):
of it is not knowing, not having examples of what
that has looked like over time, Whereas I think for
better for worse with marriage and motherhood, we definitely have
lots of examples, whether or not you like all of them.
So yeah, we're all in an honesty though I mean
countries on an honesty's Glennys, how do you make yourself
(25:24):
feel at home when you're in all these different places
around the world. I walk everywhere, I walk wherever I am.
I walk the city. I don't tend to take public
transportation until I know the city well enough to walk
around it, and because I'm a writer and I can
often work from different places. Instead of going to Paris
for a weekend, the last few years, I've gone for
(25:46):
a month at a time, and when I visit it
was in Berlin this summer for maybe five days, and
I walked something like fifty or seventy five miles when
I was there. I like to know the city on foot.
I think it gives you a much better understanding of
why it is the way it is in, much more
exposure to the people who live there, and makes me
(26:07):
feel like I'm actually getting to know one as opposed
to just passing through, Which is not to say I'm
opposed to a very nice hotel room, but that's often.
I think Airbnb has opened this up to and also
dropped hotel prices. But like I just walk everywhere. That's
my or I've in Berlin and in Amsterdam. I rented
bikes because I bike New York quite a bit, and
I bike Paris when i'm there, so both those things.
(26:29):
You know, We're seeing a lot more articles and attention
being given to the experience of women traveling either traveling
by themselves all over the world and how to do
it and how to do it safely, or going on
group trips that are created by women, that are attended
by women, where the activities center around women chefs, designers, artists.
(26:52):
What do you think about this? And I love it?
I at this point, I don't remember the last time
I traveled with someone like it would really at this point,
you really there's such a short list of people I
would say, yes, you can come with me, because I'm
so accustomed to doing what I want when i want
it now I say that when I also joke I
have an international club of sort of single women in
(27:14):
every city I spend time in that I meet up
with when I'm there, Like I have a whole group
of women in Paris, like definitely, Wyoming, Los Angeles, like um.
And part of that is you can travel by yourself.
I think that iPhone significantly change things in terms of
communication and knowledge about where you were in this lack
you know, less isolation if you feel I mean, I
(27:35):
remember driving across the country with just a map and
it was wonderful, but there's much greater sense of risk
with that. I think. I think that we are in
a moment of women really just enjoying the fact that
they are not obligated to spend time with men because
they are paying their own way. And what this is
looking like across the board, the ability of women to
(27:58):
pay their own way. We're seeing shifts in every sort
of experience of what that looks like when women can
determine what they want their lives to look like because
they're not financially dependent on a man, which has traditionally
been right, we could be the masters of our own destinies. Yeah,
maybe that's right. Although I often see it's funny. When
(28:18):
I was a teenager and in my twenties traveling backpacking
or whatever, you would see sometimes use groups of what
I considered older women. They are probably in their fifties
traveling together, and they were always like loud and laughing,
and they always look like they were having just the
best time and just gleefully going around. And I remember
not really understanding that and it not really appealing to
me in my twenties. And now I'm like, oh, I
(28:40):
get it, Like you are having so much fun, you're
simply not considering all of the things about men. It's
just it's really enjoy I think it's I don't think
about it that much anymore. Actually, I just go but yeah,
it doesn't surprise me at all. Glenn's. If we wanted
to continue following you, where can we find you? I
have an Instagram called No One Tells You This, which
(29:00):
is obviously the title of the book. Glenny's. It is
always a pleasure to hear your stories. Thank you so
much for coming in tonight to us today is for
having me. This is so fun and that's our show.
Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, please subscribe,
and you know, leave us a five star review. Oh
Way Ago is a production of I Heart Radio and Fathom.
You can find the details we talked about in the
(29:22):
show notes and on our website fathom away dot com.
Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter when you're there.
You can get in touch with us anytime at podcast
at fathom away dot com and follow us on all
social media at at fathom Way to Go. Please tag
your best travel photos hashtag travel with Fathom. If you
want to really go deep on the travel inspirations, pick
up a copy of our book, Travel Anywhere and avoid
(29:44):
being a tourist. I'm Jarlyne Gerba and I'm Pavio Rosatti,
and we'd like to thank our producer, editor and mixer
Marcy to Pena and our executive producer Christopher Hassiotis. For
more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. H
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