On Vancouver Island, Canada, there’s a 77-year-old woman who spent the afternoon baking a pizza over hot coals. It’s a simple but appetizing sight, topped with roasted garlic, olives, red peppers, and salami. She preps her dinner on camera, surrounded by a thicket of trees as far as the eye can see. Next to her: a beat-up green camping tent, a dog named Milo, and the great outdoors.
No extreme weather or makeshift survival shelters. This woman doesn’t search for food, and uses ingredients brought from home. (In one video, she pulls out a container of parmesan cheese, which she sprinkles over reheated egg noodles and roasted chicken.) Danger isn’t lurking around every corner; there’s zero need to sensationalize the moment.
Here, nature can be peaceful. It’s a far cry from the macho, hyper-optimized, rugged outdoor adventure content that dominates much of the internet.
Welcome! You’ve stumbled onto Wendy Outdoors’s YouTube channel, where more than half a million people can’t stop watching her do exactly this.
Who is Wendy Outdoors?
Wendy Eden is a septuagenarian solo camper on Vancouver Island whose unhurried, go-with-the-flow YouTube channel has drawn 538K subscribers in roughly five years. Audiences watch as she camps, paddles, hikes, and cooks across British Columbia, usually with only her dog, Milo, for company.
Her most-watched video, a solo summer tent camp, has passed 1.3 million views.
It’s nothing flashy. In that video, Eden heads to Lake Horne Regional Park, where she spends two days baking cinnamon rolls, basking in the warm weather, and paddling her canoe through the lake’s clear, blue waters. Here on her channel, she’s curated the loveliest pocket on the internet: a woman doing the thing she loves and allowing you to tag along.
Where’d she come from?
In 2020, stuck at home and restless, Wendy Eden turned to the internet for connection. YouTube videos captivated her, and she spent hours watching people film themselves in nature: wilderness vlogs, camping how-tos, canoe expeditions. But there were hardly any ladies, and none were her age. Eden had hoped to find people like her: older women, out in the wild, doing it all by themselves. Instead, it was mostly men pushing their limits and doing their best Bear Grylls impressions.
It was her husband, Bob, who sparked the inspiration. One day, he told her: “You’re an old woman and you’re going out doing things, so why don’t you make a channel?” So Eden packed a bag, learned how to use a camera, and never looked back. The adventure creator she’d always yearned for never appeared. So she became it.
Go with the flow
If the alpha-male version of the outdoors is about conquering, Wendy’s is about listening to herself, her surroundings, and the current moment. Before a 2,000-kilometer solo road trip to the Yukon, her first big drive alone, she told viewers her plan: “I’m going to go as far as I feel I can and still have fun. And if I stop having fun and I’m getting anxious, I’ll turn around and come home.”
She doesn’t wear a watch or check the time, and trusts her instincts to guide her. In one of her videos, she tells us: “I’m just going to go with the flow. And right now, the flow says, ‘Why don’t you sit back and absorb it? Don’t push yourself.’ So I’m going to do it.”
This relaxed attitude to nature puts viewers at ease. There’s none of the high-stakes pressure found in other solo adventure videos, where survivalists arrive in the remote wilderness with nothing but the clothes on their back, or sleep in dangerous conditions.
You can trace that easygoing, curious attitude back to Eden’s first backpacking trip, now decades ago, when she was 35 years old. She hiked part of Vancouver Island’s brutal West Coast Trail in a pair of stiff new leather boots, and by the end of it, her feet were covered in blisters. Although she was crying, it’s a memory she remembers fondly: “I was floating. I was so thrilled that I had done this thing.”
What her fans actually say
No one amasses a follower count like Eden’s without a whole lot of love. On solo-camping forums where women trade advice, one person calls Eden’s channel “a breath of fresh air.” Another states, simply: “Wendy Outdoors is the mf GOAT.” Eden acknowledges this relationship with fans, telling Backpacker: “I’m like everybody’s grandmother.”
But it’s more than just affection. Through her videos, Wendy Eden inspires women from all over to dare, to go out into the world and be courageous.
“I’m going on my first solo trip this week because of her,” one person on Reddit writes.
Another treats her like a nerve-settler: “I put her videos on as my trip is approaching. It helps with all my nervous feelings. Her bravery and ability to just go with the flow are very inspiring.”
Natasha Pierre sums it up beautifully on her personal blog: “We’ve been conditioned to think getting old sucks—you can’t do the things you used to, you can’t move without being in pain, you don’t even know how to use a smartphone. Wendy is the complete opposite of all of those things.”
A new normal
Older women are among the most invisible in content creation, where they’re usually paraded onscreen as somebody’s grandmother or as an ageist cautionary tale. Wendy Eden is none of those. She’s capturing her own footage, she’s her own framing shots, and in some of Canada’s most remote locations, Eden is the lead of her own story.
Because the thing standing between most people and the open wildness usually isn’t a lack of gear or fitness. It’s shame. Or confusion, or the embarrassment that you don’t know where to start. Too many women believe they’re too old, too inexperienced, too late, or too scared to begin. Wendy’s whole channel takes that apart. Guess what? She gets scared too. The difference is that she goes anyway, setting her own pace.
Her message to anyone wavering at the edge is totally on-brand: “Just start small, and remember, it’s OK to be afraid. It just doesn’t have to stop you.”
