Newton Native Revisits College Rape, Response, in 'Girl in the Woods'

Photo Credit: Dey Street Books

In 2008, on her second night of college, Aspen Matis was raped by a fellow first-year student. Matis, a who grew up in Newton Centre, reported the rape to the college. Both the boy and Matis testified, and the Colorado College administration found the case inconclusive.

Matis fled to the Mexican border and launched into a 2,650-mile walk through the desert and mountains to Canada. The story of how her “recklessness became her salvation” turned into “Girl in the Woods.”

Matis is available for a meet and greet and book signing for “Girl in the Woods” on Friday at 7 p.m. at Newtonville Books in Newton Centre.

The following is an announcement for “Girl in the Woods” submitted by Dey Street Books:

In 2008, Aspen Matis left behind her quaint Massachusetts town for a school two thousand miles away in Colorado. Eager to escape her childhood as the sheltered baby girl of her family, Aspen wanted to reinvent herself at college. Hoping through her college experience she’d meet friends who hadn’t known her high school meekness; she would explore thrilling newfound freedom, blossom, and become a confident adult.

But on her second night on campus, all those hopes were obliterated when Aspen was raped by a fellow student. The academic year commenced; Aspen felt alone now, devastated. She stumbled through her first college semester. Her otherwise loving and supportive parents discouraged her from speaking of the attack; her university’s “conflict mediation” process for handling sexual assaults was callous— then ineffectual.

Aspen was confused, ashamed, and uncertain about how to deal with a problem that has become common at institutions of higher learning throughout the country. Her desperation growing, she made a bold decision: she fled. She dropped out and sought healing in the freedom of the wild, on the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail leading from Mexico to Canada.

In “Girl in the Woods,” Aspen Matis chronicles an ambitious five-month trek that was as dangerous as it was transformative. Forced to survive on her own for the first time, squarely facing her trauma and childhood, she came to realize that the rape was not the only shameful burden she carried with her as she walked.

A nineteen-year-old girl alone and adrift, Aspen conquered desolate mountain passes and met rattlesnakes, bears, and fellow desert pilgrims. Among the snowcaps and the forests of America’s West, she found the confidence that had eluded her all her life. After a thousand miles of solitude, she met a man who helped her learn to love, trust, and heal. Then from the endless woods she blazed a new path to the future she wanted—and reclaimed it. What emerges is an unflinching portrait of a girl in the aftermath of rape. Told with elegance and suspense, Girl in the Woods is a beautifully rendered story of emotional and physical boundaries eroding to reveal the truths that lie beyond the edges of the map. Matis is a writer living in Greenwich Village, where she’s finishing her degree at The New School and working on a novel.