On the trail with Meredith Ewenson

The Newport resident is a digital creator in the outdoor space, where she shares insights on regional hiking excursions and wellness practices, and hosts local hike meetups and overnight trips for women.

Photos by Meredith Ewenson

It’s no secret that Rhode Island offers many beautiful vistas and countless ways to access local nature sites, whether they are coastal lookouts or forested walkways. Still, it can be hard to know of every trail or what to expect when you get there. Enter Meredith Ewenson, whose love for the outdoors has spawned a career sharing what she knows with others who are interested in getting outside and spending more time in nature.

Ewenson, who has more than 37,000 followers on Instagram, has become an influencer and digital creator in the outdoor space, both around Rhode Island and greater New England. She often shares videos of hiking trips or recommendations, along with best practices or snippets of her wellness routine.

Recent installments have included everything from “How to spend 36 hours in the Berkshires, MA,” and “How to dress for XC skiing,” to “Learn from my biggest backpacking mistake,” “8 coastal hikes in Rhode Island you MUST add to your list for summer 2026,” and “My favorite places to relax and restore: Newport, Rhode Island.”

Ewenson has lived in Newport since 2011, which is when she began working part-time at newportFILM, eventually becoming the organization’s full-time marketing director. At the time, the nonprofit was newly established and gradually building what is now a well-known summer film series, with indoor screenings held year-round. During her tenure she watched attendance grow from 300 people to nearly 3,000 at summer screenings.

“It was really cool to be a part of that and help build it,” Ewenson says, adding that she met a lot of people in the community during that time, and honed a lot of her skills.

On the side, she was also dabbling in the wellness space, as a yoga instructor at the old Thames Street Yoga studio, and maintaining a blog, where she would share things that were of personal interest.

After leaving newportFILM in September 2017, she did a bit of freelance work, including a three-year stint as the digital marketing consultant for “To Which We Belong,” an environmental documentary about regenerative agriculture, ranching, and ocean farming.

Ewenson would eventually collect all these skills and channel them into developing her own business as a digital creator and marketer. She recalls thinking, “Now it’s time to do this for my own brand,” which would focus on “sharing what I love — which is getting outdoors.

About three years ago, she started reaching out to travel and tourism boards, along with known outdoors brands, about partnering for social content. Some of her favorite organizations to collaborate with
include REI, a co-op company specializing in outdoor gear with more than 25 million members and hundreds of stores across the U.S., and Discover Newport, which supports the tourism economy of
Greater Newport.

“I love sharing about where I live and the best of what people should expect when they come here,” she says, which includes promoting local businesses in the wellness space.

Scaling influencer status

Her work in this space came about at a time when more and more digital creators were gaining large followings and going viral for certain content— which often catapults people to influencer status. The more followers one has, or views one gets on a post, the more likely they are to acquire brand partnerships or find ways to monetize social media content.

Still, connecting with brands like REI can take a long time, she says, and entails sending a lot of pitch emails and hoping to connect with the right person at the right time.

Ewenson, 40, admits she loves working, and credits her work ethic to her parents, who owned restaurants and bars in Chicago, where she was raised. Owning her own business means that she is always
working in some capacity, which can be especially tricky when her work exists in, and depends on, the realm of social media — where there is never a dull moment and trends are ever-evolving.

“I’m the employee of my business,” she says, meaning “I am able to have this objective relationship [with what I post] — if something doesn’t do well, I don’t make it about me, I don’t take it personally.

“I’m a whole person,” she adds, “going on hikes isn’t what I’m doing every second of every day.”

Having specific things that she likes to shoot gives her a framework for when she is collecting content and when she is not, as does setting boundaries around times that are for living more than documenting, like enjoying dinner with friends or family.

While planning and executing a hike takes time, editing the footage she collects takes even more time. Ewenson usually spends several days organizing photos and videos, making selections, editing
them together and overlaying text or audio, then coming up with caption info and the appropriate social media tags. In some ways, her previous work marketing films has come full circle in a moment of
social media reels — which are essentially film shorts.

Ewenson wants you to take a hike

Her work also extends into the tangible. In October 2023, Ewenson launched the Rhode Island Hiking Collective, which currently has 2,300 members. It started on the app Geneva, which has since been acquired by Bumble; the group can be found on Bumble BFF, which is the friend-finder version of the
dating app.

Through the collective, members can connect and organize their own group hikes or share events. Ewenson generally hosts a hike once a season and has had 20-30 people join past excursions. She also hosts hiking trips for women. Past destinations include Iceland, Peru, and New Hampshire, with upcoming trips slated for Madeira, Portugal and the Dolomites in Italy. She partners with local guides, who lend their expertise and wisdom, elevating the trips to cultural immersions in addition to physical excursions.

“I think of hiking as being such a great way to get to know people,” Ewenson says. “People connect over the experience.”

When she hosts a hike, she often suggests participants tune into the sights and scents of their surroundings. It helps people stay present, in the moment. “They feel connected and grounded and restored in a different way through nature,” she explains.

Age doesn’t matter; women aged 60 have joined women aged 20 on her trips. “Everyone jives and gets along. It’s the best,” she says, adding: “The mental grit factor is sometimes more important than the physical capability.

“I’m just generally impressed with people’s attitudes — they go into something they don’t expect, and fully embrace it,” says Ewenson.

For her, hiking is a team sport, where participants are in it together. She thinks of the local guides as the coaches and considers herself the team captain.

Ewenson knows the feeling of needing to get up and get out. She recalls a time when she was sitting at home at her computer and experiencing burnout; she realized she needed to connect with and be in nature. So, she headed to the Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge in Middletown. “Everything felt so vivid, so heightened,” she recalls, “I needed more of this.”

That was the beginning of her pivot to working in the outdoor space. Now, she aims to help others get outside more to avoid or offset similar feelings of burnout.

Five of Ewenson’s favorite local spots to get outside

• Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge, Middletown, R.I.
• Norman Bird Sanctuary, Middletown, R.I.
• Touisset Marsh Wildlife Refuge, Warren, R.I.
• Claire D. McIntosh Wildlife Refuge, Bristol, R.I.
• Osamequin Nature Preserve, Barrington, R.I.