Why You Should Spend Time Alone in the Wilderness
The first time I went on a solo backpacking trip was the summer after graduating from college. Soon after the ceremony was behind me, I found myself confused and a bit terrified, with no perception of what the world had in store for me. I originally planned the entire trip with my partner at the time. We had the start date and the wilderness reservations. Getting a wilderness reservation for the John Muir Trail is no small feat. You literally must win a lottery with hundreds of competing applicants - and I scored them on my first attempt. Many people I know tried every day for a month before finally attaining late-summer reservations.
The relationship ultimately failed, and I was left without a hiking partner. I was heartbroken at that time, but in retrospect, that was the best thing that could have happened. About a month before the scheduled start date, I decided that I wanted to do the hike anyway. I couldn’t see letting a very precious Happy Isles to Whitney Portal reservation go to waste. As it turned out, that trip was the start of a huge life transition for me. I built a better relationship with myself than I ever thought possible.
The best thing about being alone in nature is that there is nothing to distract you from your own thoughts. There is no light pollution washing out the stars, no air pollution hiding the scenery, no noise pollution masking the birds, no advertisements or graffiti vying for attention, and no zooming vehicles to dodge. Often, there’s not even any human interaction. In 2017 on a 3 month hike in the Sierra Nevada, I went 3 days without seeing another soul. It was surreal. I vividly remember one campsite alongside a lake at 12,000 ft. elevation. Everything was so still that I could hear my heartbeat echoing in my chest. I had this thought: “The world could be ending right now, and I could be the last person on the planet.” I felt like I was. I felt fear, yet safe at the same time. It’s in moments like these that you realize how important it is to have a strong relationship with yourself. In the end, you are all that you really have.
Humans are too dependent on technology. Leave your phone at home and it’s like someone cut your thumbs cut off. The constant stress caused by electronics and electromagnetic pollution has long been overlooked and its effects are only now starting to be studied. I have found that when I am isolated from these things, I feel all the tension in my body melt away. Pain that I didn’t even notice before dissipates. The need to be constantly contactable is a burden. It creates a tug of war between where you are presently and somewhere you are not. It creates the illusion that the present is insufficient all by itself.
Unless you are so vain that you bring one, there are no mirrors in the wilderness. Over-attachment to our physical appearances can be toxic and tragic. I’ve heard stories of people waking up before their partner so that they are not seen without makeup. Some people spend hours getting ready to leave the house. Being comfortable with your body is one of the most important things you can do for yourself. The only mirror in the wilderness is how you reflect on your own thoughts. Insecurity infests the mind like a parasite. Every time you look in a mirror and say something bad about yourself, the organism grows. Separating you from the attachment to your body allows you to view yourself in a fresh new way. After a while, you forget what you look like. Further, what you look like becomes unimportant. Being comfortable just being you is what matters.
Many in modern society focus on group-identity rather than on the individual. Buy what your group buys, do what your group does, consume what your group consumes… When you detach yourself from all of this by falling down the rabbit hole into the wilderness, you start to remember what it actually means to be you. You start to feel alive again. Life is about loving and experiencing every moment as it happens. It isn’t about getting ‘likes’, having a mortgage, or owning a car – even though many in Western society want you to think that it is. Sometimes I wonder how much free thought is left on this planet. I believe that life is about being your truest self and about being content when you have nothing but your own company.
