Running with the Wolves, Walking the mother of the Aberdares, Mt.Kinangop
Two months ago, I picked up a book whose very cover felt like a secret invitation — Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. Not the kind of book you read curled up neatly with a cup of tea, but the kind you carry into the wind, the kind that stains your fingers with soil and your heart with truth.
It’s a wild book. Humbling, arousing, reclaiming. It shakes you until the dust of everyone else’s expectations falls away, until you can see the shape of yourself again — woman, wife, sister, daughter, friend, dreamer, doer.
I didn’t just read it; I trekked through it.
And fittingly, I ended its final chapters on a trail — Mt.Kinangop, North Mutarakwa Trail.
The Trail Begins
The morning air was sharp, like it had been poured straight from a glacier. Clouds hung low, brushing the tops of the ridges. My boots sank slightly into the wet earth, releasing the smell of moss and memory.
Twenty-eight kilometres stretched ahead — a long brown ribbon winding between hills. This was no crowded weekend hike; it was mostly me, the whisper of grass against my legs, the crunch of gravel, and the occasional bird call slicing the silence.
No headphones. No phone signal. No one to distract me from myself.
I thought of Estés’ words: “For us the issue is simple. Without us, Wild Woman dies. Without Wild Woman, we die.” (Intro, p. 20)
Remembering Who You Are
Kinangop, like the book, demanded I remember. That kind of remembering calls for solitude, for the stillness where your own voice is the loudest sound in your ears.
And yet — remembering also calls for courage. “To be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves.” (Ch. 3, p. 81)
Up there, with wind snapping at my jacket, the exile didn’t matter. I was walking in my own rhythm.
Awakening the Wild
Wildness is not unruly — it’s knowing.
It’s what Estés calls “meeting one’s own numinosity without fleeing, actively living with the wild nature in one’s own way.”
The clouds shifted and a shaft of sunlight spilled onto the path ahead, like a hand pointing forward.
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“Intuition is the treasure of a woman’s psyche… like a crystal through which one can see with uncanny interior vision.” (Ch. 3, p. 70)
That day, intuition wasn’t a whisper — it was the wind in my face saying: keep going.
Cycles on the Mountain
The trail moved in its own cycles — steep climbs that burned my thighs, sudden flats that let me breathe, descents that tested my knees. blue-sky moments, July-shadow moments.
I thought of the she-wolf who retreats into the trees, restrategizes, and emerges at exactly the right moment. I thought of creation, of chaos and clarity, of Estés’ strange but perfect line: “Be wild; that is how to clear the river… to create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one’s mouth.”
Endurance & The Leap
By kilometre twenty-two, my legs screamed mutiny.
The mist thickened, the oxygen levels dipped, My breath came in short clouds. I could have turned back — no one would have known.
But then:
“All the ‘not readies’… there is never a ‘completely ready.’ There is never a really ‘right time’… If this were not so, we would not have needed to create the words heroine, hero, or courage.”
The words struck like a drumbeat. I tightened my straps and pushed forward, past the temptation, past the ache.
And somewhere between one bend and the next, I felt it — that wolf-strength Estés names: “A healthy woman is much like a wolf: robust, chock-full, strong life force… inventive, loyal, roving.”
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Out of the Woods
The final stretch was a winding descent through whispering trees. My jacket was damp from sweat, my socks heavy, my heart light.
I remembered Chapter 16: “If you never go out of the woods, nothing will happen. If you never go out of the woods, your life will never begin.”
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This — this was stepping out of the woods. Not just in geography, but in spirit. Risking the journey. Risking the blisters, the loneliness, the confrontation with my own shadow.
The Return
When I reached the end, the mountain behind me, the clouds breaking into a shy sunset, I knew this was only a single lap.
Like Estés advises — read, think, return.
So I will. To the trail. To the book. To the women who have run with their own wolves.
Until then, I will walk my wild.
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If you’ve read Women Who Run with the Wolves, I want to hear your story. If not, take this as your nudge. Find your version — print, audio, podcast — and start your own trail.
The mountain will teach you. The book will change you.
And the wild will remember you.
Adios, from a reader, trekker, and she-wolf in Kenya.
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