Thoughts On Being Alone

9/29/23

Apline, WY

In my opinion, being alone is terrible. Being alone by choice that is. Something to be avoided at all cost. The other person(s) doesn’t need to be doing anything, they just need to be there. However, being with someone isn’t always perfect either. Two people means two opinions, desires, and needs that have to be accounted for.

Living with another person on the road means I need to find time to be alone. It’s hard for me to think too deeply in someone else’s company. But that ends around when the sun goes down. Going to sleep alone, especially in the middle of nowhere with bad service, is not something I enjoy.

Adventure sports are also difficult to do alone. Some people make it work, and I’ve tried it, but it’s also very scary. Having a buddy means safety, when ropes are involved, and if anything goes wrong. But having a buddy can sometimes mean slowing your buddy down, or dragging them along.

I’ve never been great at finding a comfortable balance of being alone and not being alone. If there’s something I want to do I don’t like to let anyone keep me from doing it, even if that means going alone. But I also hate doing anything alone. And I hate not being able to do what I want to do.

So for me, in my outdoor activity career, it’s been complicated. Something I still think a lot about.

I’m sitting alone in the van, (Hannah’s in the bathroom, I think) in the Cabela’s parking lot in Idaho Falls, ID. They allow overnight parking I guess. I’m not super comfortable sitting on my cooler, and I’m thinking a lot about which layers to wear to bed, so I’m not thinking through many of my thoughts on this subject. More so rambling. It’s all inspired by a conversation I had with a man in Alpine, WY this morning, preparing for a hunting trip.

The man’s name was John, and I met him while he was filling up the water and emptying the sewage from his RV at the truckers stop in Alpine. I was waiting to fill up my water jug, and figured I might learn something (I was mostly curious about how much water his RV could carry. The answer is 30 gallons, which is less than I would have guessed).

Chetco: “Do you live in it?”

John: “No, just for a couple days at a time when I’m hunting.”

Chetco: “What does a hunting trip look like for you?”

John: “I usually drive out about an hour, then I climb about two to three hundred feet each morning, depending on the situation. So I can see what’s going on. Then there’s smell, and wind, to think about. If it’s farther north you have to worry more about grizzlies.”

Chetco: “What are you hunting for?”

John: “Elk you can only hunt with a bow right now. Then there’s mule deer and everything else.”

Chetco: “Is that what you use then, a bow?”

John: “Yeah.”

Chetco: “How long have you been doing that?”

John: “About six years now.”

Chetco: “Do you go by yourself?”

John: “Yep.”

Chetco: “Did anyone teach you how to hunt or were you self taught?”

John: “I was pretty much self taught.”

Chetco: “Do you like going out alone?”

John: “Those are the only times I’ve caught something big. It’s nice having the company but when you’re alone you can do whatever you want. Start as early as you want, walk as fast as you want.”

It could easily go either way, but I think that some adventurers might agree, the biggest moments often happen when you’re on your own.

(After we parted ways I thought about how glad I was that I didn’t say that I was a journalist.)