Chris Woodside on The CJ Moneyway Show: Grit, Adventure, and Unleashing Creativity

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Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show podcast, the podcast show where we unlock potential one dream at a time. Today we have another guest whose journey is truly worth hearing. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the Moneyway experience.

What's up, my good people? Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show in association with Believe Network, the podcast where success isn't just a destination, It's the journey we uncover, one story at a time. I'm your host, CJ Moneyway Johnson, and today we're diving into a tale of grit, adventure, and untamed determination. Our guest is none other than Christine Woodside, author, writer, and editor extraordinaire. She's here to share her inspired journey and give us an inside look at her latest work, Going Over the Mountain. This conversation is one that you don't want to miss, so buckle up because it's time to plant seeds of wisdom and grow something great. Christine, let's start off by tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

Uh, well, I grew up in New Jersey. I was born in Philadelphia. My father grew up sort of poor in Trenton, New Jersey, and because he played soccer so well, he was able to go to college, and then he served in the Navy in World War II and kind of was a self-made guy. And so that was sort of the landscape of my childhood, was my father had become a banker and he had moved his large family—me, my 3 older brothers, and my younger sister—to Princeton, New Jersey, which was a town he had always dreamed of living in. And so like his whole adult life, he was sort of pinching himself that he had gotten to where he wanted to be. And so my parents had a kind of healthy sense of humor about the— when you ran into a kind of upper-class background that a lot of people in Princeton had. But then there were a lot of people just like us, and it was a really interesting childhood for me. They gave us a lot of opportunity. They let us learn how to do a lot of things. And I started running cross-country in high school. I was dancing before that. I talk about that a lot in my book, about my love-hate relationship with what they expected women to do and what, you know, dancing was supposed to be. And then in my early 20s, I had been to college, I'd become a journalist. I always wanted to be a journalist and I wanted to be a professional woman, you know, which a lot of women in my family had not been able to do. You know, they were expected to stay home. And so here I was kind of forging my life and I discovered mountain climbing. With some friends and the man who became my husband eventually and kind of fell in love and realized that mountains were a way that I could learn how to be strong. I really believe that, you know, a lot of people look at recreation and going into the woods and doing stuff, "Oh, that's fun." You want to have fun, you want to smile, you want to take pictures. I view it as a way to sort of prepare for something difficult that could come into life where suddenly I might have to evacuate my building, or I might have to deal with something catching on fire, or deal with emergencies. I was always fascinated with that. And so that is— the mountain thing grabbed hold of me, and it changed the kind of writing I was doing. I was a newspaper reporter and an editor, and then I became a freelance writer and writing articles and books, and I always became interested in self-sufficiency. So that was sort of— that's kind of a little nutshell background. But I'm from New Jersey, grew up in Princeton, went to college in Philadelphia. I've lived on the East Coast most of my life, and I come from a big family, and I married into a big family, and I have two kids who are grown up, two daughters who have grown up and who I dragged onto trails and write about in going over the mountain.

So let me ask you, Chris, being raised and going to school in Philadelphia and being raised in New Jersey, I have to ask this question. Coming from a large family, you say Eagles fan or Giants fan?

Oh, my brothers would say Eagles.

Eagles. I had to ask that question.

And so, uh, Philly's or Yankees or Mets, right? So where I live now, you know, in Connecticut, we're halfway between for baseball, halfway between Yankees and, you know, I'm not a big sports girl, but it got to be the Yankees.

I know, I know, it got to be the Yankees.

Are you a Phillies fan? No, no, I, it's actually Yankees. Okay, we cool.

So, uh, so, Chris, you was talking about your outdoor experiences, and I was reading somewhere where you said it transformed your personal and professional identity in unexpected ways. Can you elaborate on how those moments in nature reshaped your sense of self?

Yeah, yeah, I certainly can. Before I started doing long-distance hiking And we had this one really long trip that we did when I was 28, where we hiked 2,000 miles of the Appalachian Trail. Before I started doing that, I tended to conduct my life as someone who wanted to please others. You know, I wanted to sort of be the good girl. I wanted to do what the boss wanted. But I also had this kind of drive to achieve certain things in writing. And those— you can't please everybody. You know, in life. And when I got into the mountains and you're just kind of stripped raw out there, it's like every day we have to walk and get somewhere, we have to stay warm and dry, we have to eat, we have to sleep, we have to get up and do it again the next day. You can't just be the good girl, you just have to do what you need to do for yourself. And so the transformation was when I came back from that trip I switched jobs. I stopped working at a place where they wanted us to work 12 hours a day and it was never enough and it wasn't enough money. And they would say, you're lucky to have this job. I actually had a job like that. And I went and got a job at a place where it was a reasonable amount of time. We still worked hard. It was a newspaper around here in Connecticut. I worked normal hours. I was able to identify my goals. And the other amazing change in me was it sort of made me feel like— I don't know how to say this— like I'm an athlete all the time. Now, I am in many ways a very ordinary woman. You know, I'm not an extreme athlete. I didn't, you know, go to the Olympics or anything like this. But if you've done something hard physically like I did with that 2,000-mile trip, I carry that with me all the time. You know, I feel like I could at any point be asked to trudge several miles to get somewhere. And I know how to do that. I can do that. So it gave me a sense of just competence, you know. And then the other thing was I enjoy my own company so much. I like being alone. I like being with other people too. But after being on the trail for a long time, I kind of liked just being with myself. I don't have to always go and find people to be with, you know. So it's a sense of confidence.

Yeah, I truly agree with you on that one. I think I talk about that in some of my podcast episodes. Actually, that's how I actually started podcasting, is that I spent a lot of time by myself, you know. And then when COVID hit, because I had already been spending so much time, you know, just by myself in my zone and with my family, when COVID hit and people was shut down, it really didn't have an effect over the way that we lived because we was already, I'm not going to say isolated, but I like the alone time because it gives me time to think, it gives me time to be creative, it gives me time to get close to God, all these things. And so like you say, I like being around people. When I do get around people, I'm the life of the party, as they say. I do like being by myself because it opens up a lot of things, as I'm pretty sure as we get into, I'm pretty sure that being by yourself created this book, Going Over the Mountain. But before we get there, let me ask you a question, Chris. You brought this up earlier and I just want you to elaborate it a little bit. You was talking about your daughters and you say you mentioned them in the book. How did your experience as a mother influenced your approach as you explored outdoors and the adventures of it?

In the book, I talk about a day that my daughter was in about second grade, and she came home from school and announced to me that boys were telling her on the playground, you know, girls are not strong, they can't do the hard things and physical things. And, you know, I sort of stood in the kitchen and I went, what? And it surprised me. I had been sort of naive. And I think I thought that because there had been, you know, what they call the second wave of feminism movement when I was growing up in the '60s and '70s, I thought that stuff no longer happened at school, but it did. And so I realized that I wanted to teach my daughters how to be a little tougher. And it hit me that the only way to do that was to get them away from boys and maybe even not have my husband, their father, along with us. We would be forced to make our own decisions rather than turning to the boys, turning to the men, which is kind of the habit that we can fall into. Not a bad thing. I love it when my husband helps me do things. But so that being a mother, I felt it was going to be my duty to teach them that, to be a little tougher. And I actually began to think that they would be in danger if I didn't teach them how to do some hard physical things in the backcountry and make their own decisions out there. So I started cooking up these trips where they would go with me on spring break vacation, just me and the girls, out into the backcountry camping, hiking, doing all that stuff.

So let me ask you, so Did parenthood change the way you view the wilderness?

In a way it did, because when I had not had kids, when we were out there before kids, it was just, I'm me now, you know, I'm just me. But when I was taking my children into the wilderness, or even into just what you might call the backcountry, maybe not as wild, but away, I became number one, more wary of strangers. When we ran into strangers. So we ran into a father and son team who were wearing camouflage. They were obviously sort of hunters normally, and they had come out on a little backpacking trip, and I didn't know what to think of them, you know. So I became more hyper-aware of safety, of things that might frighten my children, of, you know, trying to help them understand, we're going to see wild animals, you're going to hear wild animals, it's going to rain, you're going to be cold, you know, all these things. I definitely realized I was learning less carefree as a parent in the wilderness. But that was what I wanted. I needed to teach them. And the only way to do it was I was going to take that on. And I came home from my first trip with the girls. And I said to my husband, you know, wow, haven't you— saying to my husband, Nat— haven't you, when you were out with me, didn't you sort of feel responsible for me in a way? And you were kind of looking around at things. And he said, yeah, all the time. And I said, wow, I handed that to you when I was with you. And now when I was the mother with my kids, I had to take that on. So it was a growth. I grew.

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I grew some through that.

Okay, so without further ado, let's dive into this book, Going Over the Mountain. So tell us, what inspired you to write this book, and what message did you want to convey through its pages?

I had started to do short columns and articles and essays and things about my wilderness experiences for various places, and I am editor of a journal called Appalachia Journal that's published by the Appalachian Mountain Club out of Boston. And it's this old mountaineering journal. It's the oldest one in the country. So I love it. It's wonderful. And as I started to write about my experiences over a period of years for that journal, I started to think, you know, this stuff has really changed me. Maybe there's a book in this. But that was the germ of it. You can't just say, 'Hey, wow, I've done cool things. I'm going to write a book.' You know, writing a book is so much more than that. It has to grow out of one big idea. So I began to realize that I had evolved through this wilderness exploration, and I also knew that I had brought all that home with me. That occasionally you hear about people who will say— a lot of people in the outdoor space world will say, I need to get back out there to feel like myself. And for me, I always feel like being out there made me more myself. I brought that home with me. And I wanted to write about that. I wanted to write about it for everyone, because I think everyone can look at life that way and say, wow, these hard things I've done have made me who I am. Why is that? Let's look at that. But I especially thought it would help other women. Over the years that I would keep going back out, you know, I would go out by myself, I would go out with the two girls, I'd go out with my husband, with friends, and all these things. I learned over and over again and deeper and deeper how uncomfortable I could really be and still be okay. I learned you could be afraid, you can be anxious, you can feel desolate, and you're still going to be okay. I think that's so important to learn that. I had evolved, you know, through grubby outdoor experiences. Other people evolve by doing other things, but this was how I did it. I saw that my path to being mature and growing up a little bit had happened by going outside. Mm.

So, well, you got me on that one, Christine, because when you talk about mountains and things of that nature, Your boy CJ, I'm not doing that. So yeah, I might find a little more excitement doing something else, you know, because for one, I'm afraid of heights. I mean, I get on the airplane and things of that nature, but when you talking about— and I give you a lot of credit, you, your daughters, and your husband— but when you talking about climbing up some mountains, and like, I work in the steel mill here where I work at And so in certain areas, you have to put on a harness because it's a danger to fall. So you got to put on a harness in order to be secured until somebody come and get you down. Thank God I've never had to do that, and I don't want to work in a department doing it. But I just can't imagine being on a mountain where I've seen it on TV, and you got to use the things to hit them on. I don't know what they call, but the little hooks and get there. But I know It's got to be a great adrenaline rush to get to the point. You started off on a journey and to get to where you had the goal, like we made it to the top and then coming back down and then you make it home in one piece. I know that's exciting and it's fun, but I tell you what, Christine, it's not for me. Now maybe if I read the book going over the mountain Maybe I might be a little inspired by it. But as of today, as we're doing this podcast, I don't think that's for me.

So. Well, of course, there's technical climbing with ropes and carabiners and gear and harnesses, which I do not do. Okay. And then there's boots on the rock climbing, which is what I do. But a lot of my trips, we do go above tree line. You know, you go high enough that you're above places where plants and trees can grow. Because it has to do with wind and wind speed and direction and temperature and stuff. And when you get up there, you're in a different world. And if a storm rolls in, you suddenly can't see where you are. And it can be very scary, but it's also thrilling. I don't know why that spoke to me, you know. Now you say that's not for you. I mean, I can't throw a ball to save my life. My brothers tried to teach me. They did. They told me, Chrissy, you throw like a girl. I did understand intellectually what I was supposed to be doing with my arm to really get that thing to go, but I could never really do it. So, you know, we have our strengths.

Yeah, yeah, I get it. And so, Christine, one theme in your book is finding a sense of self and purpose. Can you talk about your own journey towards purpose and how that has influenced your writing?

Yes. So, I had a pretty strongly developed sense of purpose about wanting to be a writer from age 12, believe it or not. You know, we had this amazing traveling creative writing teacher who showed up at our local public school when I was in 7th grade, and he had lost his hand in World War II, and we were kind of fascinated with how he was dealing with that, and he just inspired me so much. So, I knew I wanted to be a writer. But it wasn't enough to just know you want to do something. You know, I needed to learn how to push through what is actually a very difficult career that I chose. With writing, about 9 out of 10 things don't work. You know, there are rejections way more often than there are things that they want you to do. And I also had to learn that I had to develop my craft. I didn't know how to do it until I did it. Right? And I had these strong fears of not being able to say what I wanted to say. So boy, all through my 20s, I was like, you know, I'm gonna be— and I was competent. I was working at newspapers mostly, and I was competent, but I hadn't figured out what I really wanted to do. So when I started long-distance backpacking, especially that thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, which goes from Georgia Maine, 2,000+ miles. I learned that if you want to take your sense of purpose and really turn it into something, you have to just do it step by step, bit by bit, day by day. You show up every day, you walk through your doubts, you trudge along, you do it. I learned how to be a better hiker that way. I learned that I was going to have bad days and still move forward. And that was the lesson that I was able to carry home with me into everything else that I do. And so when I have bad days as a writer, I can say to myself, "You still wrote today, you know, it sucked. You're gonna have to redo it. But you did it. You showed up for yourself." You know, that was the big thing that this outdoor exploration gave me. Helped me develop a sense of purpose.

Mm. So let me ask you, Chris, what do you hope your audience— well, our audience today— will take away from Going Over the Mountain? And what impact do you aspire for this book to have on its readers?

Well, I certainly hope that it will inspire people to try going out on their own to natural places or doing something a little difficult, a little uncomfortable that they've dreamed of doing and were afraid to try. I hope that all people who read my book will realize that pushing, you know, beyond what they thought they could do physically will bring huge benefits to all of life. As I think I've said already, I'm a fairly ordinary woman. I grew up in New Jersey. You know, I've lived in Connecticut since I was 28 years old. But I have transformed by exploring wild lands that were accessible to me. I could drive to them in several hours. And that lesson of transformation, I think, can translate to any passion or any challenge. You've got to be uncomfortable in order to grow as a human being, I believe.

Yeah, I believe it too. I was just talking to somebody yesterday I do a lot of the biblical stuff and I was talking about how Joseph was in the dungeon and how he said he didn't want to be there and he didn't deserve to be there. Sometimes you have to be in some uncomfortable places that you don't want to be. I truly believe just from reading that and going through it is that a lot of times when you're in places, you find out a lot of things or more things about yourself that's developing in you that's going to help you get to the next level or wherever you supposed to be. That experience that you went through there was for your next level, you know what I'm saying, living. So I agree with you on that. Sometimes you just have to be uncomfortable and just endure and go through the things that you just meant to go through because it's actually developing you into where you actually trying to go, and that's to the top of that mountain that Totally. Yeah. So, Christine, let me ask you, you touched on this a little bit earlier. You said that you, you know, you've done things on your own. You took your daughters out hiking, which you went with friends and you went with your husband. So solo, I mean, hiking solo comes with its own set of challenges. So what were some of the biggest obstacles you encountered as a solo hiker and how did you navigate them both? Physically and mentally.

Yes, there were some big obstacles. In 2009, I believe it was, I took a solo— my first big solo trip where I was out for 4 nights, 5 days in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where you do go above tree line pretty much every day on the route that I was doing. And every day at one point you're above the tree line and then you're going back down, and, and so the weather can roll in. And the first day I had to hike 11 miles over a little range called the Bonds. There's a, there's a Bond Cliff and then Bond Mountain, and they are very remote and they are above tree line. And I was completely alone. I saw no one that day. And I had— it got cold. It rained at one point. I got soaked. I tried to add some layers. My stuff hadn't dried out properly. And then I got above tree line and the wind is blowing. And this is summer. It was like, you know, early July, but it was cold. You know, it can get in the 40s up there, even to freezing in the summer. And I had hypothermia. I didn't realize it at first. I was moving. I knew everything about how to keep moving when you're cold like that. Add those layers. At one point, my pack cover blew away. And so the challenge was dealing with hypothermia that was coming on slowly. I was getting very cold. Alone. I had no one to bounce this off of. I had nobody to look at me and see how I looked. And I knew I had to get where I was going. When I got to the top of the second of the Bonds, which was Mount Bond, I'm on this open area and I'm like, okay, good. One more mile to my campsite. And I got turned around up there because above treeline sometimes you do. And I started going the wrong direction down the mountain. I didn't realize it until I ran into this weird green rock that I had seen on the way up. And I thought, that rock is really green. That is the weirdest green rock I've ever seen. And going down, the green rock shows up and I'm like, holy crap, I've gone the wrong way. And I turned around. So that was a big challenge. The other big challenge when you hike solo is just loneliness. I've learned to like my own company, as we've talked about today, you know, how important that is to learn, but I have hours and hours and hours on my own with nobody to bounce things off of. And it's exhilarating to make my own decisions. But it's also lonely. And, you know, it feels kind of, it's like it kind of gets here in your little chest, and you just have to go, I have not gone crazy. I know I'm not crazy right now. I'm all right. And then the morning after all that, I got to the campsite. Okay, I was all right. I was very cold. It took me until halfway through the night to really warm up. I just put my tent right up. I just like shoved some nuts in my mouth and these guys camping in the shelter helped me hang my food. My hands were so cold. I was like having trouble hanging my food and they helped me and then I just dove into my tent. In the middle of the night, I woke up and I said, you know, I think I had hypothermia. So the next day at lunchtime, I ran into a whole bunch of people at the Galehead Hut, it's called. There's a hut that I passed through at lunchtime and I went in there and we sat down and ate and I talked to some people and it made me feel kind of sane again for a while. And that was how I dealt with the loneliness. And then I'm like, bye, I'm off on my own now, you know, again.

Yeah. Boy, boy, boy. See, that what you just talked about, being lonely and just the anxiety, you know, like you say, uh, have to think of things on your own. So now it's like, I don't have nobody but my husband to bounce this off of. Like, do you think this may be the right direction to go in? See, like you say, you came back around and you saw that green rocket that you knew that you probably was going the wrong way. That there would have been me, as we talked about earlier. I probably would have walked around that green rock over and over and over again and then start getting anxiety and I'm lost and I'm panicky and I'm cold. Oh, I don't know. I get real cold.

It can happen. I mean, that's the thing. If you get too cold, you know, I realized in that moment how thin that line is. Not really thin. What's the right word? You know, how close You're kind of treading very close to it going badly, you know, and trying to keep it from going badly. It's humbling. I bet it is.

I bet it is. And I take your word for it, Christine. I don't want to find out myself. I take your word for it. So Christine, I only have a couple more questions for you, and I really appreciate you coming on, giving your insights, and, you know, being transparent about your experiences. About hiking and things of that nature with your family. Uh, before I go on to the next question, where can we find your books at? I mean, I know it's on Amazon. Is it any other sites that we can go on and find your books? And what's your social media handles?

Well, I have a website called chriswoodsides.com, C-H-R-I-S-W-O-O-D-S-I-D-E dot com. You can go there and learn about my background, see some of my other works that I've done, and there are links there to buy my book. Yes, you can buy my books, this book and other books I've written, anywhere books are sold, including Amazon. Going Over the Mountain is published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books, and they have their own site at outdoors.org. They have their little bookstore there. They were wonderful to work with on this book. Isn't that a fun cover? Yeah, it looks great. Based on a picture that was actually of me. So going to my website's a great way, and I'm on Instagram at @seawoodside59. Where I have a little nature journal that I publish. Every day I take pictures of things I've explored. @seawoodside59. Got you.

So, Chris, when we get off the call or sometime whenever you remember, please be sure to send me your link so I can put them in the show notes so that everybody can go check out Over the Mountains, Going Over the Mountains, and get your devotional on Instagram every day. Okay, so, so, Chris, besides Going Over the Mountain, you've written and edited numerous works, including No Limits But the Sky. Can you tell us about that book and how it fits into the larger scope of your career?

Sure, sure. No Limits But the Sky was an anthology of adventure stories from Appalachia Journal, the country's oldest mountaineering journal, which I'm the editor of, and I've been editor of that for almost 20 years now. We put that book together several years ago because we realized there were just some great stories about interesting first ascents and scary things that had happened to people and rescues. And we wanted to introduce the public to the journal with that book. And so, no, we brought it out, No Limits But the Sky, and that, that book's still available, um, you know, anywhere books are sold. And that's also published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books. I'm also really proud of my book called Libertarians on the Prairie, and that title is a takeoff on the book Little House on the Prairie and the Little House books for children, which were a series for children about the frontier in the late 1800s by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Those books were super popular for a really long time, and they gave Americans an idea of what the frontier was all about. But it was actually kind of a weird take on what the frontier was. And so my book Libertarians on the Prairie delves deep into how those books were written. Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, who— and their political ideas in those children's books, because they wrote them during the early days of the libertarian political movement in the 1930s and '40s. So I felt like that writing that book opened up a kind of denial that society had about what the frontier had really been like. So I'm very proud of that book too. Yeah.

Now, I'm old enough to know about the Little House on the Prairie, the TV show back in the day. Used to have to watch that with my mother. Oh, yeah. Okay? Along with the Dukes of Hazzard and Knight Rider and Charlie's Angels, all those good TV shows back in the day.

Charlie's Angels.

Yeah. So I'm not too young where I don't know these things, but I definitely know about Little House on the Prairie because he used to have that little house that had all these acres out there and everything. So I remember that vividly now.

And they were always happy, weren't they? They were just happy all the time.

Oh man. So my final question for you, Christine, I really enjoyed you coming on again. Like I say, share your experience and your expertise in what you do. But for those who are listening that may be considering solo hiking, what advice would you offer and what lessons can they take from your experiences?

Well, my main bit of advice is get out and try it. But the best way to try solo hiking is to get your skills kind of up to a certain level. So first, try going out in the backcountry with some others who may have done it before. There are actually some little courses now you can take where people will teach you camping skills. Learn how to use your gear. You need, you know, flashlights, you need tents or tarps, you need to stay warm, you need a quilt or a sleeping bag. Most people carry some kind of stove to make— you need to learn how to use all that stuff so that you can use it even if you are in a hailstorm. You know, it has to be instinctive. So, you know, learn how to use your gear and then go out and try it. Try a night out. Try one night out on your own somewhere near home where you can walk a couple miles in from the road. Try it out with other people first and then try it by yourself. And you can always bail out if it goes badly.

Mm. I heard you just say something, Christine, about carrying a stove, like a little stove. So you have to carry all these things in the bag as you— You do.

You have to, and you have to figure out what everything's going to weigh. So you want to be able to carry it all and still walk up the mountains. So there's a big movement now called ultralight backpacking. There's a lot of wonderful gear out there that's very lightweight. And some of the people who are super hardcore, they'll say, well, I don't even carry a stove. Some of the stoves, they don't weigh much at all. They're just these little things. And you have a little canister with some sort of fuel. That'll heat up your little— But there are some people who will not even take a stove. They just carry food that they can eat cold. I'm not willing to do that. I tried that on one trip. I'm not willing.

Yeah. I'm not willing to do it. Furthermore, let's be real, of what we was talking about earlier, this is not for me. So, Chris, on a positive note, give us your final thoughts, something that you would like to share with the audience that you would like for us to take away from this altogether.

Well, I think what I want to say is that the natural world is such an amazing, beautiful, humbling place. And I think it's really helpful, even if we're in the middle of a city, to find a little natural patch and go watch birds and get a sense of what the wild is like, because I think as human beings, we're naturally drawn to that, and it makes us a little stronger. To stay connected. So I would say stay connected, sit out on your back stoop, get a little uncomfortable for 20 minutes every day and see how that gives you some verve.

Mm, you heard it from Christine Woodside, stay connected. Christine, it's been a pleasure having you on the CJ Moneyway Johnson Show. Thank you for sharing your journey and insights with us today. We're excited to see how your book inspires others, and I wish you great success on your book and all the other things that you do in life and keep exploring. Hey, you have been listening to the CJ Moneyway Show with your boy CJ Moneyway. Until next time, we out of here. Peace.

Thank you for listening to the CJ Moneyway Show. Don't forget to share this episode with your friends, leave a comment, and drop a review. Be sure to tune in every Tuesday and Friday for more inspiring journeys. Who knows, your story might be next.

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