Just got to reflecting on the times I have been alone in the wild; at the longest, a week. I was doing field work for my master’s thesis, collecting oriented samples from a square mile or so, as deep as you can get into the forests of the Front Range. It was only a couple miles to hike out to civilization, but while sitting next to the campfire, eating freeze dried food from a metal Seirra cup, the sky bright with the galaxy, absolutely silent except for that strange rustling at the edge of the firelight, talking to yourself, stirring the fire with a stick, reflecting upon everything you’ve ever done, all of those you’ve ever known.

Or those long traverses, dropped off by car or helicopter, several miles to explore, samples to load the pack, notes to take, a map to get lost on, make sure you get to the rendezvous point when you are supposed to without serious injury. And that’s the thing about being solo in the wilderness. You have to be so careful, so aware, every step, every choice of path, every noise, every scent. It’s a heightened level of awareness we don’t normally experience.

You’ll encounter things that both delight and terrify you. That fresh deer kill with mountain lion tracks in the mud. The herd of deer you wander through. A bobcat face-to-face while rounding an outcrop, or the dancing rattlesnakes, that strange outcrop when you just have to stare at over your packed lunch and a cigarette. A pile of horse skulls in the middle of a grassy glade. You experience these things alone. Sure, you get to have some stories to tell later. But your exclamations, your laugh out loud’s, your curses of bashing your shin, are heard only by the wild and the wind.

(Just a snippet of something I’m writing today. ER’s memoirs and Pebble’s encouragement has me spending more time writing, spending time practicing playing the chords, strumming the stings…)