EPISODE · Aug 15, 2026 · 22 MIN
Trail Stories - The Full Range with Carolyn Highland
from Hiker Trash Radio · host Bleav + Doc
About the Guest Carolyn Highland is a writer, outdoor educator, and endurance athlete based in Anchorage, Alaska. Her second essay collection, The Full Range: Essays from a Life Outside, is published by Rocky Mountain Books. Her first collection, Out Here, was published during COVID. She writes primarily about skiing and the outdoors for magazines including Backcountry Magazine, and has been keeping a journal since age seven. She taught fourth and seventh grade at an outdoor school in Truckee, California before moving to Anchorage, where she and her husband recently honeymooned by fastpacking the Alta Via 1 in the Dolomites. Links & Resources Carolyn Highland — Website: https://www.carolynhighland.com Instagram: Verify handle before publishing (transcript shows C_Hyland — confirm correct spelling) Substack: Verify handle before publishing (transcript shows Carolyn Hyland — confirm correct spelling) The Full Range — Rocky Mountain Books: https://www.rmbooks.com Fierce Country — Heather Hansman: https://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com Jeff Pelletier — Ultra-runner and fastpacker with a YouTube channel featuring trail running and fastpacking content. Inspired Carolyn and her husband's Dolomites honeymoon run. Protect Our Winters: https://www.protectourwinters.org Connect with Hiker Trash Radio Email: mailto:[email protected] Social: Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok — search Hiker Trash Radio. The full interview with Carolyn drops Wednesday in two parts. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts — it takes 60 seconds and makes a real difference. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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What this episode covers
Carolyn Highland has been writing since she was seven years old, which means she has been trying to put into language the experience of being alive for a while, and she has gotten very good at it. Her second essay collection, The Full Range: Essays from a Life Outside, is organized around a single insight: that every experience contains a full range of emotions simultaneously, and that closing yourself off to the complexity is really missing a lot of the human experience. This episode traces the shape that insight took in her life: a summer of solo trail running around Lake Tahoe during COVID, a 40-mile loop in the Kings Canyon backcountry that ended with seized legs in a creek at golden hour with a bag of chips and no one to help her stand up, and the slow realization that what she had trained herself to do in a 50K (keep going when it was cold and wet and she was exhausted) was exactly the same skill she needed when a relationship ended and she had to get up and go to work anyway. The trail teaches you things. Carolyn has been paying attention. The full interview with Carolyn drops Wednesday in two parts on the Hiker Trash Radio feed.
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Trail Stories - The Full Range with Carolyn Highland
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