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‘Into the Wild’

Einav Stern on Solo Travel, Nature and Self-Reliance.
Abigail Zamir
|
6 min read

Sisterhood is the future

Three Israeli communities that prove we’re better together.
Daniella Tourgeman
|
4 min read
Sisterhood

Cross-Cultural Relationships

Embracing differences and building a life with mutual understanding.
Abigail Zamir
|
9 min read
A couple walking in the field

When Art Speaks: Reflections of October 7th

Art has a magical way of transforming complex emotions, helping us process and navigate them into new forms of expression. Here are some inspiring examples from the past year.
Noa Lara Meir
|
4 min read
Shoshke's daily postcard

Where Are You From?

For Israelis abroad, this simple question stirs complex emotions.
Abigail Zamir
|
6 min read
Home is where

Must-Knows Before Making Aliyah

10 tips for a smoother adjustment.
Abigail Zamir
|
5 min read
Israel on a map

What to say to Israeli friends right now?

A few simple ways to be there for your Israeli friend during these challenging times.
Noa Lara Meir
|
4 min read
Hands hugging a tree
Einav Stern

‘Into the Wild’

Abigail Zamir
|
6 min read
Einav Stern on Solo Travel, Nature and Self-Reliance.
Sisterhood

Sisterhood is the future

Daniella Tourgeman
|
4 min read
Three Israeli communities that prove we’re better together.
A couple walking in the field

Cross-Cultural Relationships

Abigail Zamir
|
9 min read
Embracing differences and building a life with mutual understanding.
Shoshke's Daily Postcard

When Art Speaks: Reflections of October 7th

Noa Lara Meir
|
4 min read
Art has a magical way of transforming complex emotions, helping us process and navigate them into new forms of expression. Here are some inspiring examples from the past year.
A little wooden house

Where Are You From?

Abigail Zamir
|
6 min read
For Israelis abroad, this simple question stirs complex emotions.
Jaffa and the sea

Must-Knows Before Making Aliyah

Abigail Zamir
|
5 min read
10 tips for a smoother adjustment.
Hands hugging a tree

What to say to Israeli friends right now?

Noa Lara Meir
|
4 min read
A few simple ways to be there for your Israeli friend during these challenging times.

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Hebrew Nugget:

‘Into the Wild’

Einav Stern
In celebration of Women’s Month, we’d like to feature extraordinary stories that inspire courage, self-discovery, and transformation. Meet Einav Stern, a brave explorer, tour guide, and advocate for reconnecting with nature. From hiking thousands of kilometers solo to leading immersive outdoor experiences, she challenges conventional ideas about travel and personal growth. What compels someone to embrace the wild alone? How does nature shape identity and perspective? In this conversation, Einav shares her journey, the lessons she’s learned, and the experiences that continue to shape her work today.

First of all, thank you for agreeing to share your inspiring story with us. Could you start by telling us a bit about yourself and what you’re involved with these days?

Of course. Currently, I’m a tour guide both in Israel and worldwide, a lecturer, workshop facilitator, and travel consultant. After extensively exploring Israel’s trails, I embarked on a two-year journey that included hiking the Pacific Crest Trail for six months – 4,300 kilometers through snowy mountains and desert forests – from the Mexican border to Canada. Since returning to Israel, I’ve had the privilege of giving numerous talks, wanting to share the insights and tools I gathered along the way. My outdoor adventure company is called “Walking My Path” and this year I launched a new concept called “ReWILD” (פירוא in Hebrew). This concept comes from the sustainability world, representing an advanced approach to conservation. At its core, it describes a process of returning to nature, allowing it to do its thing and heal itself. Einav Stern

Photo by: Ran Shenkar

What inspired you to develop the ReWILD concept?

ReWild trips were born first and foremost from a deep love for nature and people. They stem from the belief that time spent in nature and developing various outdoor skills connects us to ourselves and creates space for inner healing work. Whether it’s getting your hands in the mud, walking in the rain, or setting up a tent and watching the stars by the campfire – all these create a playful space to encounter ourselves. We’ve created a unique framework that supports more and more people in stepping out of their comfort zone through connecting, wild experiences. On a personal note, I’m actively working to promote women’s hiking both in Israel and abroad, aiming to make the sense of capability and development of inner authority accessible to more and more female travelers.

Why do you think women’s group trips are especially important and relevant?

I think the hiking world is very male-dominated – from the tour guiding profession that doesn’t accommodate female guides who are mothers (let alone nursing mothers), to hiking gear that’s usually not designed for women, to marketing that’s typically aimed at men. As a woman, I’m happy to bring the feminine essence into this field, to create a style of trips that’s more oriented towards women and to make hiking more accessible to women who want to start their journey.

Let’s go back to the beginning: What made you want to travel solo, what fears and thoughts did you have, and what did you learn along the way? 

My big solo journey began from a crisis. At 27, I found myself lacking confidence, bitter, and angry. From the outside, my life seemed to be flowing and I was busy with positive things, but this setup wasn’t working and the pillars of my life started crumbling. The crisis led me on a journey of inner exploration, starting with letting go of my “old world” – my entire previous identity as a musician, partner, student, and so on. After releasing my grip on everything that had defined me until then, I set off on a wandering journey of almost two years, during which I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail for six months, visited Cuba, traveled in Jamaica, and lived in the United States for over a year. I think my biggest fear was being completely alone, truly facing myself with all the fears and challenges such a journey brings up. I was scared of traveling alone as a woman, of all the possible bad things that could happen along the way. One of the main things I experienced on this journey was learning to know myself deeply. I said “yes” to many exciting experiences and encounters along the way, but also learned to say “no”. This sharpened my connection to myself, teaching me to trust myself and my intuition. To truly understand what serves me well and where my boundaries lie – and this led me to experience renewed trust and joy from this self-discovery.  It’s incredibly exciting to realize there are whole parts of yourself you don’t even know exist! And this journey, through various extreme experiences – from a face-to-face encounter with a black bear, to learning survival skills like making fire and finding shelter, to hitchhiking and exploring business opportunities – each experience expanded my definition of who “Einav” is. Through this, I got to know a new, wild, and upgraded version of my true self. Einav Stern Hiking

Photo by: Ran Shenkar

Wait, you had a face-to-face encounter with a bear? You have to tell us the full story!

One day while hiking along the Pacific Crest Trail near Yosemite National Park, I went to use the bathroom and left my backpack on the main trail. There’s this unwritten rule when you’re solo hiking that you leave your pack visible so others know you’re around, especially in case of an emergency like a fall or a snake bite. When your pack is in the middle of the trail, it’s the only way anyone would know you exist at all. When I came back, I found a black bear sniffing my backpack. I immediately freaked out because all my anti-bear gear was inside it: my knife, bear pepper spray, and emergency whistle. The bear wasn’t very big, which scared me even more because I realized its mother was probably nearby. I was pretty much panicking, but at some point I decided – this all happened in just a few seconds, I didn’t have much time to think – that it would be better for me to confront it rather than let it eat everything in my pack and end up stuck for days without food. Then a thought popped into my head – I remembered some hiker I’d met on the trail who told me that if you see a bear, you need to make yourself look really big and territorial. So I grabbed my hiking poles and started dancing toward it, and the bear just walked away. It was quite an amazing experience that taught me a lot about mental flexibility and my ability to react quickly to changes. This was the most extreme example, but I think many experiences along the trail taught me that I always have a choice: encounters with bears, near falls, hypothermia – all kinds of situations that happen on long trails. I developed resilience toward all sorts of circumstances outside my control, and realized the only thing I can actually control is how I react to the situation. I became much more in tune with my intuition and stronger in terms of trusting who I am.

That’s such a powerful story. It really shows how facing our fears in nature can lead to discovering our own strength. Now that you’re guiding others, what do you find most meaningful about your work?

In recent years, since becoming a guide myself, I find the most meaning in accompanying travelers as they fulfill their dreams, whether it’s reaching a mountain summit or simply embarking on a walking journey. When I guide people as they face their fears and watch them step out of their comfort zone, I’m filled with deep satisfaction and joy. I find profound meaning in witnessing people transform through their encounters with nature.

Photo by: Daniel Batash

🔗 You can follow Einav Stern’s activities on the following pages: https://www.facebook.com/einav.walking.my.path?mibextid=ZbWKwL https://www.instagram.com/einav.walking.my.path?igsh=MXU1dzFoejZ3bm1jYg%3D%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApNt9c6vQsU&ab_channel=EinavStern 🎧 And listen to recorded interviews (in Hebrew and in English): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4H96y4rLdMdf4aEAmdMkhb?si=Ac63PXjsR0yhq0zX4MH3Ug&utm_source=copy-link&nd=1&dlsi=9492f4efc34d4110