Outside Magazine: This Veteran Paddler Says Teenage Girls Need Adventure

Author Natalie Warren wants young women to disregard conventional rites of passage and get lost in the wilderness

The remarkable eighty-five-day journey of the first two women to canoe the 2,000-mile route from Minneapolis to Hudson Baytwo-week canoe trip in northern Minnesota changed the trajectory of Natalie Warren’s life when she was 15 years old. From that pivotal point onward, she bucked the norm of her urban Miami upbringing to chase a life outdoors. More than two decades later, Warren, 32, is recognized as one of the most accomplished adventure paddlers in the U.S. She’s canoed 2,000 miles from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay, paddled the entire length of the Mississippi River, carried out 30- and 50-day river expeditions in Canada, and paddled 450 miles in 53 hours to win first place in the Yukon River Quest. As a new mother, a Ph.D. student of environmental communication at the University of Minnesota, the founder of Wild River Academy, a nonprofit that teaches urban youth about rivers, and the author of the adventure memoir Hudson Bay Bound, Warren is spreading the gospel of outdoor adventure for teenage girls who feel like they don’t fit in. 

Article at Outside Magazine.

Published in: Outside Magazine
By: Julie Ellison