I took a similar path to soloing as many of you, for the same practical and life-circumstance reasons as already stated. I continue doing it for the subjective benefits.
As I get older, there is seemingly more risk incurred, but it is worth it. To anyone who has not spent at least a few days out there alone with little to no human interactions, I would say you really don’t know what you are missing. You will likely find peace and calm, and face some inner demons and irrational fears as well. Self-sufficiency, introspection, awareness of one’s surrounding and natural world, there is a lot to experience in a heightened way.
One late-season sunset evening on a rock slope to the water on an island, after a few days alone, it was dead calm. I sat there for several hours, motionless. My mind was actually still. I could hear the faintest mountain stream way off in the distance, every now and then. Two loons took off far away, and then flew by just overhead in the gathering darkness. A beaver came by. A frog popped out of the water and landed at my feet. The moon came up and stars rotated across the sky. Trunks and branches squeaked and cracked, water lapped, insects clicked and buzzed and chirped, birds cooed in roosts. It was unremarkable, and so remarkable. So much and so little happened, that could not have happened with companions about.
When I need to calm down, I often choose to go back there. I had a half-hour medical procedure without the aid of any drugs to speak of, and it should have been somewhat uncomfortable. At the end, one of the technicians asked me where I went. I knew what she meant, and replied simply that I had been on an island.
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