A Spokane man sought female hiking companions. Instead, he found social media snark — and support

Jeff Heatwole lives in Spokane. He's 35, a divorced dad with a 5-year-old son, a music teacher by profession, and a member of a Facebook hiking group. And Jeff got more attention than he was bargaining for recently when he posted a seemingly simple message.

He told KUOW’s Kim Malcolm about what he posted, why, and what happened next.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Kim Malcolm: Your message was pretty simple. It said, ‘Looking for women to hike with.’ You added a smiley face at the end. I'm curious, were you looking for dates? What was your intention?

Jeff Heatwole: No, my intention wasn't looking for dates necessarily. I just wanted to find women to hike with in order to learn more, to inform me how to be better for future partners. I was just looking for women to hike with to broaden my social circle and just learn.

So, that is not how the message was received online. You got a lot of responses, and it kind of reflects something I think we've seen online before, where women don't feel safe with men out in the wilderness. When you got those replies, were you surprised by them?

I was a little bit surprised by the humor. Of course, anytime you post on Facebook, and you say something controversial, even remotely, there's people that chime in and want to argue. I've had my back and forth. I didn't expect it to turn into kind of a meme.

Yeah, it really did take off. We asked some of our colleagues to read some of the responses...

“Jeff defended me against a mountain lion attack armed only with a spray bottle. The man saved my life.” - Rhiannon.

“Jeff found us when we were lost and led us to this beautiful spot for a drink, a rest, and some snacks. We asked if we could repay him, and he just tipped his hat and said, ‘Ladies, your smiles are payment enough.’ And just like that, he was gone.” - Dusty Marie

“Went on a hike with Jeff. He showed up in a fleece that said, ‘Safe Space Sherpa’, handed out ‘Goddess Fuel’ trail mix, and tried to lead a sharing circle about emotional vulnerability on the mountain. - Anna Marie

There was a slew of other ones as well. At one point, you chose to be more open about why you had posted your message. Can you talk a bit about that?

Jeff Heatwole: Just recently, I'd gone through a breakup. I had a fiancé who was away in college, and we went through a lot of hard times with her being away. It kind of culminated to us growing distant and being kind of cold towards each other. Over the course of the following couple months since it happened, I just felt worse and worse about what I'd done and started to reflect on the mistakes I'd made.

I was realizing that I pushed somebody away. So, I basically made a post just to give a little bit of a background as to why. I was just looking to move forward and get some perspective from women’s point of view on how these things transpire, or what women need in the course of a relationship to keep these things from happening.

And then it seemed like there was a turn in the response. What happened then?

At that point, I started to get a bunch of support messages, people just sharing stories with me about breakups that they'd gone through and divorces, and how they can relate. That kind of turned my mental state around a little bit, and made me feel a lot better about the whole thing.

And did any women come forward and say, actually, I think I would like to go on a hike?

Several of them. Obviously, that context, when you're walking with somebody, or hanging out with the opposite sex somewhere, and you're spending time, that's really quickly assumed as a date, but these hikes that I've gone on so far, and the situations I've been in with women so far, they didn't feel so much like dates, but kind of just really informational, educational experiences. They haven't turned into anything romantic, and I don't plan on that.

What has been the most interesting thing to you about this whole experience?

The most interesting thing would probably be just the effect that it had on my mentality. You still go through ups and downs. When you're alone, you still feel really alone. Before, I tried medication. That was the first step that I took when I was going through the depression and the anxiety and struggling with it the most at the beginning of the breakup, and I wasn't feeling good about taking medication. I started to have a lot of skepticism. I didn't like the way it made me feel, so I stopped taking the medication, and two months passed.

The feedback that I got was making me feel way better and keeping my mind out of the gutter much better than what medication could from what I could tell. So, that was the most surprising thing. I feel like community and comedy and support from human beings kind of helped me change my mind state and my brain chemistry more than I felt like the medication was. That's probably the best part of it all. I really feel like I've been making connections with people and meeting them, and it's been just really genuine, and the interactions have been really great.

You updated your page. You wrote, 'This whole thing isn't just about advocacy for mental health, but also for men to do better.' What did you mean by that?

I just feel like a lot of guys, we just get to a level of stress, and we don't feel like communicating, like we put up a wall or something. We feel like we can't communicate with our partners, and then we project. Possibly we're projecting traumas or things that happened in our past onto our partners. I feel like we just need to stop, communicate more, and be more vulnerable with each other. I have some friends that have come forward and talked to me about just being more open, and it's like, okay to cry, and it's okay to talk to people about what's going on in your life.

Ultimately, I just feel like we're just not opening up enough to each other and to our counterparts and our significant others, and so I think it's just creating barriers and it's causing breakdowns in relationships, and that's why a lot of us end up wondering what happened. And so, I'm just trying to get people to snap out of it and communicate now and realize what they're doing before it gets to be too late, and they regret what's going on.

In hindsight, would you do it the same way over again?

Yeah, I absolutely would. I think it's been really beneficial. I definitely would. And I appreciate, honestly, the tragic comedy. It's actually really funny to me. It's just right up my alley. So, I definitely would do it again.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.