"I did a lot of hiking and I loved it"
About this Quote
A line like "I did a lot of hiking and I loved it" lands because it’s aggressively unglamorous coming from a person whose job is, in public imagination, mostly premieres and close-ups. Ashley Judd isn’t selling an epic conquest or a transformation arc; she’s choosing the plainest verbs in the language. That understatement is the point. It signals a desire to be read as a body in the world, not just a face in a frame.
The intent is modest but strategic: to normalize solitude, effort, and self-directed pleasure without turning it into a brand manifesto. Hiking is an activity that resists the performative polish of celebrity culture. You can post it, sure, but the experience itself is sweaty, repetitive, and stubbornly offline. When Judd says she “loved it,” she’s staking a claim to joy that isn’t mediated by applause. It’s a soft rebuttal to the assumption that fulfillment must be spectacular to be real.
The subtext is emotional triage. In the kinds of interviews where this line tends to appear, hiking functions as shorthand for recovery, recalibration, or escape: from set life, from noise, from expectations. It’s also a gentle class signal (time and access to trails) that she keeps from feeling smug by refusing grand language. The sentence works because it refuses to audition for meaning while quietly offering one: contentment can be earned in small, physical increments, and you don’t have to dress it up to make it credible.
The intent is modest but strategic: to normalize solitude, effort, and self-directed pleasure without turning it into a brand manifesto. Hiking is an activity that resists the performative polish of celebrity culture. You can post it, sure, but the experience itself is sweaty, repetitive, and stubbornly offline. When Judd says she “loved it,” she’s staking a claim to joy that isn’t mediated by applause. It’s a soft rebuttal to the assumption that fulfillment must be spectacular to be real.
The subtext is emotional triage. In the kinds of interviews where this line tends to appear, hiking functions as shorthand for recovery, recalibration, or escape: from set life, from noise, from expectations. It’s also a gentle class signal (time and access to trails) that she keeps from feeling smug by refusing grand language. The sentence works because it refuses to audition for meaning while quietly offering one: contentment can be earned in small, physical increments, and you don’t have to dress it up to make it credible.
Quote Details
| Topic | Adventure |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Judd, Ashley. (2026, January 17). I did a lot of hiking and I loved it. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-did-a-lot-of-hiking-and-i-loved-it-43498/
Chicago Style
Judd, Ashley. "I did a lot of hiking and I loved it." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-did-a-lot-of-hiking-and-i-loved-it-43498/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I did a lot of hiking and I loved it." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-did-a-lot-of-hiking-and-i-loved-it-43498/. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.
More Quotes by Ashley
Add to List








