By Wayne E. Rivet

Staff Writer

HARRISON — Like many others, Paige Emerson decided hiking was the best cure for the Covid-19 blues.

She loves the outdoors — she finds comfort being in nature.

She was tired of isolating indoors.

She wanted to challenge herself.

So, Paige laced up her hiking boots and set out to reconnect with nature. But, where to start? A hiking guide sounded like a good idea, but Paige found what might be an “easy” hike for some could pose obstacles for “plus-sized” people. So, she created “Chubby Hiker Reviews,” which to her complete surprise became a social media hit.

“The main thing it is personalized reviews from someone who is plus-sized. A lot of the time, you’re looking at trail reviews, they may not be from somebody that necessarily looks like you. My hope is that people can look at my page and feel inspired,” Paige said during last week’s “Hiking and Body Positivity” talk at the Harrison Village Library.

A resident of Richmond, Paige is a licensed clinical social worker, as well as a Maine Guide. To date, she has reviewed (chubbyhikerreviews.com) about 65 trails. Her posts include tips on hiking gear (“because it can be really hard to find hiking gear in plus sizes,” she said, “when I find resources for that I usually post them”), trail rating, whether there is cell service, whether dogs are allowed, whether bathroom facilities are available, and lots of photos.

Several audience members ventured to the Harrison Village Library last Wednesday night to meet Paige in person, after following her on social media.

“I’m super excited she’s here,” said Susan of Waterford, who along with her husband also share Paige’s moniker as “chubby hikers.” “That’s why we’re here. You’re awesome.”

Thea from Oxford enjoys hiking too, “but physically, there are some things I’m just not up to as other people. Somebody shared with me this post (about your talk) and I wanted to hear you.”

Paige was quick to address an obvious question, Why Chubby Hiker?

“A lot of people seem kind of shocked. Isn’t chubby a bad word? Or, they think that maybe I’m insulting myself or something. It’s meant to be ironic because it’s always been a bad word or a little bit offensive. A lot of people are trying to take back the words chubby or fat and say they’re not a big deal. It’s a descriptor, like having brown hair or blue eyes. Someone is fat. Someone is chubby. It shouldn’t be an insult, it’s just a fact,” she said. “So, that’s why I named it that. It’s meant to be kind of ironic. People ask me if I’ve always been a hiker, and I really haven’t. I grew up being outdoorsy. As a child, I was kind of overweight and I didn’t think that hiking was for me. I never saw anybody with my body type hiking, so that just never occurred to me.”

During the pandemic, a friend invited Paige to go for a hike. She discovered the words easy or hard, when it comes to trail ratings, “are really relative to the person that’s rating it — it depends on your body type, your fitness level, your experience with hiking.”

“We talked about how we wish there was somebody rating trails in a more realistic way,” Paige said. “My friend said if there isn’t anybody doing that, why don’t you start?’ So, it started as a small thing, which I didn’t think would go anywhere. I got a lot of messages from people who were really inspired and started hiking because of me. They didn’t know they could do it until they saw my page. That gave me the passion to keep doing it, and to keep going forward.”

Today, Paige has about 12,000 followers, and made an appearance on “Good Morning America.”

“It kind of exploded and was not what I ever expected, but it’s been really cool,” she said.

Like most people, Paige started with easy trails and worked her way up to more difficult climbs. “That first trail was harder than I expected. I just picked trails that had low elevation that weren’t very long and kind of worked up from there and tried to figure out what was comfortable for me,” she said. “I would add things like higher elevation or maybe things there were more technical, like having rock scrambles or iron rungs that you had to climb. That first year, I kind of motivated myself by setting a goal and so my goal was Tumbledown (Mountain) because that was the biggest mountain that I had ever done. I eventually made it. It was an incredible experience.”

The challenge was the “rock chimney” — otherwise known as Fat Man’s Misery.

“I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to pull myself through it,” she said. “It wasn’t as bad as I thought. It’s narrow and intimidating, but I was able to get through it. Making it to the top is still one of my proudest moments because I was able to conquer something that I wasn’t sure that I could do.”

One audience member asked Paige if she goes to a gym.

“I hate being inside and I don’t like the gym environment just because I feel like a lot of people are staring at me, so I’d rather be outside,” she answered. I do a lot of trails during the week when I have time.”

After listing off some of her favorite trails, Paige shifted back to the topic of body positivity.

“It basically means accepting yourself for who you are in the body that you’re in,” she said. “A lot of us have this mindset that we always have to be working to change ourselves, to be smaller, to be thinner and the body positive movement just says it’s okay to be the size that you are. If you’re skinny, that’s great. If you’re fat, that’s fine. Like you’re who you are, and that’s okay.”

When Paige started Chubby Hiker Reviews, she started doing it for fun and then she realized that there were other people out there who were encouraging everybody to love themselves.

“I found that really life changing. A lot of people feel that they have to justify being fat. So, they might say, well, I’m fat but I’m healthy or I’m fat, but I exercise a lot. They feel that they have to justify their existence. But the truth is that it doesn’t matter if you’re healthy or if you exercise, you deserve respect no matter what size you are, whether you’re healthy or not,” she said.

As a Maine Guide, Paige does lead group hikes. She has had some people question whether she is a hiker or a walker because Paige ventures out on short, flat surface trails.

“I like to remind them that the dictionary definition of hike from Oxford English Dictionary is ‘the activity of going for long walks, especially in the woods or countryside.’ So, it doesn’t say anything about difficulty or length, it just says, if you’re walking in nature, you’re a hiker. So, I say, if you want to be a walker, that’s fine, you can call yourself that. But if you want to be a hiker, you have that right to, and it doesn’t have to be this thing that only certain people can participate in.”

Whether one is thin, average, athletic or chubby.