Caroline Paul

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courtesy Bloomsbury

A close-up of Caroline Paul.

Caroline Paul

Aging is both inevitable and something we should spend more time doing consciously. Caroline Paul’s book, Tough Broad: From Boogie Boarding to Wing Walking ― How Outdoor Adventure Improves Our Lives as We Age, specifically focuses on how women can become more adventuresome, more active, more satisfied, and more likely to live longer. She also discusses the science and the psychology behind the theory, with Wisconsin Public Radio’s Jill Nadeau. This free event is part of the Wisconsin Book Festival.

media release: Presented in partnership with Wisconsin Public Radio. 

New York Times-Bestselling author Caroline Paul has been an outdoor adventurer her whole life. From mountain biking in the Bolivian Andes to pitching a tent, mid-blizzard on Denali to flying experimental planes, Paul has never been a stranger to the beauty and benefits of outdoor activity. But as she hit her mid-fifties and was often the only woman paddling a surfboard or riding a skateboard, she began to wonder why women, like men, aren’t encouraged to keep adventuring into old age. “Isn’t being outside a vital elixir?” she writes. “Isn’t adventure enlivening, and an important challenge? Why, then, aren’t older women out here with me?”

In her newest book, Tough Broad: From Boogie Boarding to Wing Walking - How Outdoor Adventure Improves Our Lives as We Age, Paul embarks on a quest to understand how not just to live a dynamic life in a changing body in defiance of societal expectations but why we must. Along the way, she uncovers the science and the psychology that shows how outdoor adventure may be the single best solution for a healthy brain, a vital body, a confident mindset, and a longer, happier life, and meets women whose outdoor activities have changed their outlook on growing older, bringing them fulfillment, community and endless joy.

Combining scientific research, cultural studies, medicine, psychology, and memoir, Paul travels the country sharing women’s narratives alongside her own incredible experiences, illustrating how outdoor activity positively affects a person’s spirit, body, brain, and heart. From BASE jumping with 52-year-old Drew Brooks in Yosemite National Park to scuba-diving with 80-year old Louise Wholey, riding BMX bikes with 74-year-old Miss Kittie, the oldest female racer competing in the United States today, to meeting the weekly group of septuagenarian wave catchers who boogie board together in the San Diego surf, these women’s stories offer important insights into our own physical and emotional health as we age, showing that growing older is no reason for women to sell themselves short. 

Caroline Paul is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure and Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology, which has been translated into fifteen languages. She is also the author of the memoir Fighting Fire, the middle-grade book You Are Mighty: A Guide to Changing the World, and the novel East Wind, Rain. Her TED Talk, “To Raise Brave Girls, Encourage Adventure,” has been viewed over 2 million times. A longtime member of the Writers Grotto, she lives in San Francisco.

Featured women and stories in the book include:

Shawn Brokemond, a 54-year-old BASE jumper who jumps from El Capitan in Yellowstone National Park;

Miss Kittie, aka Kittie Weston-Knauer, a 74-year old BMX racer who is the oldest female racer competing in the US today, based in Des Moines, IA. Miss Kittie competes all through the season but since there’s no one her age she ends up racing against men, and those younger than her, but she continues to do it. When she taught the author to BMX race, she ended up in a heat with her and a 12 year old girl named “Lucy Tough Cookie” Cooke;

71-year old Cynthia Hicks, whose kids posted a video of her online wing-walking and facing her fear of heights after conquering breast cancer. Paul follows in her footsteps and takes a class on walking on the wing of an airplane at altitude;

80-year- old scuba diver Louise Wholey, who takes a trip with Paul to dive in Monterey, California, and teaches the author about the importance of mindset and curiosity;

 69-year-old Illona Aguayo, who had recently become a widow, and uses sea kayaking as a way to grieve;

93-year-old hiker Dot Fisher-Smith, who is a local celebrity in her town of Ashland, Oregon and known for her passion for walking;

Boogie boarding with a group of sixty, seventy, and eighty year old women in San Diego who call themselves the Wave Chasers and who taught Paul the importance of play for our health and our confidence

Austin, Texas based Virginia Rose, age 64, who found birding in her 40s, and went on to found Birdability, a non-profit that aims to share the joys of birding with people who have disabilities, and to ensure birding is accessible for everyone;  

Paul’s mother in Oregon who thought of herself as a big “scaredy cat” but skydived at age 52. Ten years later when she picked up cycling at 62, it was a time in her life when she was looking for distraction and recovery from heartbreak;  

74-year-old Vijaya Svrivastava and 59-year-old Diane Espaldon, who decide to learn how to swim later in life;

And the author, Caroline Paul, 61, who becomes a pilot of a gyrocopter after being inspired by the women she interviews for the book

Praise for TOUGH BROAD:

“In Tough Broad, Caroline Paul takes the prevailing view of how women age—the ‘long slow rot theory’ of aging—and completely upends it. By masterfully pairing the latest research on aging along with stories of amazing, adventurous women who are taking risks and playing outdoors well into their 80s and beyond, she demonstrates that women can not only survive but thrive during this period of their lives. Prepare to be inspired!” ―Juliet Starrett, New York Times bestselling author of Built to Move, and 3x Whitewater World Champion

“This arc of a critical life blueprint comes from the toughest broad I know, Caroline Paul. You turn the last page of Tough Broad and promise yourself to spend every minute possible in the Great Outdoors. You are determined to test new horizons, to abandon your fears, to breathe your deepest breath. I’m 74. Caroline leads those of us of mature and wise ages to the very real hope that we all of us have much more to explore.” ―Diana Nyad, subject of the new Netflix movie and the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage, at age 64

“Caroline Paul has long been my North Star for what it is to be an adventurer in the world. I'd follow her anywhere.” ―Bonnie Tsui, author of Why We Swim and Sarah and the Big Wave

“Oh, how I love--and need--this book! Paul's subjects don't deny or mask their years: they embrace who they are with gusto and vitality, seizing the opportunity to enjoy, to grow, to challenge themselves mentally and physically. And they remind us of a fundamental truth about women and aging: even as we become invisible to the culture, we become more visible--in the best of ways--to ourselves. I am here for you, tough broads!” ―Peggy Orenstein, New York Times bestselling author of Unravelling

“Caroline Paul and her fellow tough broads know how to live life to the fullest.  Every story in this book reminds us that life is truly what we make it and that our curiosity, love of the outdoors, and appetites for adventure don't have to end in middle or even old age.”  ―Natalie Baszile, bestselling author of Queen Sugar and We Are Each Other's Harvest