WHEN THE FOREST IS AN ESCAPE

The Outdoors Is Powerful Medicine And The Refugee Women's Network Is Helping Displaced Hikers Get Back To It

- JAMES STOUT

ON A MUGGY GEORGIA MORNING

in July, a small group of hikers huddle around a log by the side of a trail. Underneath sprouts a solitary mushroom. It looks a lot like ones I’ve eaten before in fancy restaurants, with a thin top and a fanned underside. But this particular fungus is slightly grayer than anything I’ve seen in a risotto, with a mottling that seems foreboding.

“It looks like a chantarelle,” says Rama, who remembers collecting mushrooms as a child in Nepal. Another one of the hikers is worried it might be poisonous; a third is trying to use an app on her phone to identify it. After a minute or so contemplating the cost-benefit analysis, we decide to leave the mushroom for some more mycologically-aware hikers and dash off to catch up to the group.

The mushroom may not be particularly remarkable, but the company is. This morning, I’ve joined Rama and about 20 other women for a 2-mile morning hike to a waterfall in the Cascade Springs Nature Preserve in southwest Atlanta. Like all the other women here, Rama is a refugee. But, like the other women here, she’s also not defined by the worst moments of her life or the things that she left behind when she fled Nepal. Now she’s an American, a hiker, and a trail guide for some of the women joining the group for the first time. (I’ve agreed not to use her or the other hikers’ last names to protect their privacy.) She’s ready to advise on everything from fitting a pack around an abaya to negotiating the rooty trails down to the waterfall, but she doesn’t feel confident in identifying the aforementioned mushroom.