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On the first weekend in May, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went backpacking. According to an Instagram story posted from the trail, the Democratic congresswoman took up hiking in January, soon after the attack on the Capitol, during which her office was targeted by rioters, forcing her to hide in the bathroom -- an experience she later described as "trauma."
"Last weekend, a lot of you asked ... how I take time off, how I care for myself, which I appreciate the question," she says in the video, speaking to the camera with blue sky behind her and a pack on her back. Then she turns the phone to show the larger scene: a large, flat-rock outcropping with the landscape falling away behind. "This is one way, we started backpacking right here in New York."
Later in the video, she says: "After the insurrection, I felt like I really needed a practice to help ground me. It was getting a lot harder for me to settle my mind in the immediate aftermath."
Ocasio-Cortez says she started doing more city hikes, including Pelham Bay Park and Orchard Beach, early in the pandemic, before ramping up to an overnight backpacking trip upstate. Her use of therapeutic language, and suggestions of easy places to start, sound much like a friend trying to nudge you toward a Couch to 5K.
She ends the video by asking her audience for its "favorite women, POC, LGBT, LNT, conservation, etc., camping accounts," posting responses including @unlikelyhikers (which shared a clip from the story on its account), @nativewomenswilderness, @outdoorafro and @pattiegonia. One follower asked for disability-friendly hiking accounts and got back the suggestion @disabledhikers. "Lots of recs here!" Ocasio-Cortez adds over a pinboard-like collage of responses. "I'll check them out and learn more."
The story may seem simple -- telling her 8.8 million followers what she did that weekend, just like a regular millennial -- but it was also a powerful demonstration of Ocasio-Cortez's ability to get her message across visually, through graphic design, through fashion, and through social media.
At the beginning of her time in Washington, Ocasio-Cortez used to broadcast from her kitchen, taking questions while cooking dinner. During election season, she encouraged people...