Books, loon watching, trying to catch fish, plus I have a dog. Camp chores all fall on you, so unless you’re moving every day, you’ll have fun tweaking the campsite. If you’re moving, you’ll be plenty occupied. I don’t get lonely much.
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Happy Winter Solstice! 🌇🌃
Solo - fears and boredom
- Thread starter Blukanu
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I think one of those inflatable doll things might be just the ticket. It would take care of the loneliness and boredom and your biggest fear would be getting caught.
Mine is in the shop.
For repairs?????????
Probably a lube job.
Total restoration -
Been a couple years since I started this thread. I’ve done a lot more solo camping since.
Find I need to have a mission. Whether it’s fishing or hunting for a meal, exploring, etc. The day’s go by really fast as I find lots to do…even if I just sit watching clouds for an hour, make my 87th attempt at a bowdrill fire, gather wood, etc.
Interesting how fears subside the more days you are out there. That first night you’re on high alert. By the last night you’re kind of open to the idea of something interesting happening.
The evenings are still a lonely, creepy time. Normally with friends this is the golden time of camaraderie talking around the campfire. Being solo I really don’t know how to spend this time. I anxiously watch the fire die down and wait for a reasonable time to make my escape to bed. Fall camping is best but you have more darkness to manage.
Find I need to have a mission. Whether it’s fishing or hunting for a meal, exploring, etc. The day’s go by really fast as I find lots to do…even if I just sit watching clouds for an hour, make my 87th attempt at a bowdrill fire, gather wood, etc.
Interesting how fears subside the more days you are out there. That first night you’re on high alert. By the last night you’re kind of open to the idea of something interesting happening.
The evenings are still a lonely, creepy time. Normally with friends this is the golden time of camaraderie talking around the campfire. Being solo I really don’t know how to spend this time. I anxiously watch the fire die down and wait for a reasonable time to make my escape to bed. Fall camping is best but you have more darkness to manage.
As I head up for some solo camping this weekend I've been thinking what I will bring to keep me occupied around the fire and during non-paddling time. Some good tips eariler in this thread, thanks for starting it.
You have to make really good friends with yourself. It can be a long process.
Depending on the regs in your area you can have a tremendous time night fishing. I don't mean make casts into dusk, I mean wait until like 10 - 11 pm. There are some pretty freaky things swimming around out there - some actually have fins. You won't be bored.
One of my fondest tripping memories was shoving away from camp just after sundown and spending a few hours fishing in Woodland Caribou. I caught some walleye but the best part was just being out there in the complete calm and dark.
A family of otters swam out to fish the same point as me. I assume they were catching crayfish. I could hear them crunching away after they resurfaced. After a bit I got tired of fishing and just paddled around the lake.
Alan
With my BSA young adult (typically college age) high adventure trek leader guide students, during their field exercise training while canoe camping at a remote Adirondack lake setting, I have a favored campsite on a lake shore. There is a lakeside trail that goes for a couple of hundred yards. On a dark clear night, I instruct the students to walk in complete darkness in single file without talking or making any unnecessary noise. They were to take in and process all they heard and saw. The swishing of the long grass by their feet. Any gentle breeze on their face. The soft sound of ripples on the shore rocks. A frog or two croaking or jumping. A loon or owl may call in the distance. The bright stars in the sky and maybe a meteor trail among them.
Back in the day of the first generation of Iridium sat phone satellites, at a known given time and location in the sky, they would predictably produce an intensely bright flash of reflected sunlight narrowly directed at a given ground location from their flat panels. Calculated a day or two ahead of time I would carry a list of those predictions with me and at the carefully timed right moment I would point to that area if the sky to name a star or two when a dimly moving satellite would suddenly produce enough of a bright flash to cast a shadow for a few seconds before going faint again. Each student would then relate to everyone their experiences of night sights and sounds. And that's how I looked at the night.
Back in the day of the first generation of Iridium sat phone satellites, at a known given time and location in the sky, they would predictably produce an intensely bright flash of reflected sunlight narrowly directed at a given ground location from their flat panels. Calculated a day or two ahead of time I would carry a list of those predictions with me and at the carefully timed right moment I would point to that area if the sky to name a star or two when a dimly moving satellite would suddenly produce enough of a bright flash to cast a shadow for a few seconds before going faint again. Each student would then relate to everyone their experiences of night sights and sounds. And that's how I looked at the night.
I love being in the woods at night. Probably half of my 46's were done starting at midnite, and fishing for brown trout at nite is a favorite past time.
Growing up in northern Michigan we had easy access to the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes, and you could literally walk in any time. Nights with a full or almost full moon could find my buddy and me hiking the dunes. Moonlight on beach sand provided all the illumination you needed. Dunes 400 - 500' feet tall heading down to Lake Michigan after a couple of mile walk from the parking lot. Like a different planet, and that is where I got my love of the nite.
Growing up in northern Michigan we had easy access to the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes, and you could literally walk in any time. Nights with a full or almost full moon could find my buddy and me hiking the dunes. Moonlight on beach sand provided all the illumination you needed. Dunes 400 - 500' feet tall heading down to Lake Michigan after a couple of mile walk from the parking lot. Like a different planet, and that is where I got my love of the nite.
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I think it's awesome that you're becoming more comfortable solo. The only issues I've had with disengaging completely from others is that it might become addictive and I can't afford to do it more.
Evening / night fishing is a great suggestion if you need something to distract from feeling lonely. You'll likely need a headlamp and, if you have one that has red or green leds, you'll find that you'll draw fewer bugs while unhooking your catches. (you'll also probably find that you catch far more fish after dark than you did during the day)
Evening / night fishing is a great suggestion if you need something to distract from feeling lonely. You'll likely need a headlamp and, if you have one that has red or green leds, you'll find that you'll draw fewer bugs while unhooking your catches. (you'll also probably find that you catch far more fish after dark than you did during the day)
Think the issue here is really the mind manifesting fear as a result of being alone.
Likely an evolutionary survival mechanism from back in the days when early humans routinely faced mortal threats. Those that were a little more ‘alert’ when alone and preferred the safety in numbers faced better odds of survival. Thus most of us modern humans ended up with those traits.
Night time must have been an extremity perilous time considering how common fear of the night is. Guess the cover of darkness is how that saber-tooth tiger got the drop on our ancestors.
Likely an evolutionary survival mechanism from back in the days when early humans routinely faced mortal threats. Those that were a little more ‘alert’ when alone and preferred the safety in numbers faced better odds of survival. Thus most of us modern humans ended up with those traits.
Night time must have been an extremity perilous time considering how common fear of the night is. Guess the cover of darkness is how that saber-tooth tiger got the drop on our ancestors.
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Alternatively, you could always get a dog. Purists will argue that you're "not truly solo" but lots of people do it.
I haven't done much solo paddling, but I do most of my hiking solo, and occasionally backcountry ski solo. Most of my hikes include significant amounts of bushwhacking and I navigate solely by map, compass, with the occasional assistance an analog altimeter. I enjoy hiking with one or two other friends, but there is something special about being offtrail, in the wild, alone, with only simple tools and your own brain and body. Each bushwhack starts with a little bit of hesitancy or apprehension, akin to jumping off the high-dive, but almost immediately, the focus shifts to navigation, reading the woods and the terrain, and being in the present. I am in my comfort zone.
When I arrive at the summit or an outcrop or take a break far from a trail, I soak up the magical feeling of being alone in a large, wild area, and revel in it. Every once and while I find that I don't know where I am within a given area. What most people would call "being lost." There can be a flash of panic or the beginning creep of fear. When this happens, I stop and slow down. I ask myself, with the tools that I have, including my senses, what do I know? How are my resources of strength and energy, temperature regulation, water, and food? What do I need to do, which direction do I need to go, to figure out where I am? I work through these questions methodically, slowly, and logically. I go through them again, trying to make sure that I am making the most logical assessments and decisions. Then I put my plan into action, making adjustments with new information as needed. I figure out where I am.
Perhaps not surprisingly, I have found that when these situations happen, they are easier for me to resolve when I am solo and don't have to deal with the anxiety of another person. In the first instance, my trip partner was a close, good friend, and experienced hiker, but they had only done a bushwhack hike once before, also with me. After trying to work through the problem in tandem with them, and having a hard time focusing well enough to anylize our situation, told them that I need a couple of minutes of quiet to work out the problem on my own. Once I had done so, I proposed my solution to my friend, they assented, and we got back on course.
The most recent time was with another close friend and the person I hike with most—frequently offf-trail—when not solo. This is a person who has climbed Denali, paddled the Yukon with a friend pre-internet, backpacked and hiked in Uganda with just his required guide shortly after the deposal of Idi Amin, and solo hiked and bushwhacked all over the lower 48. And yet this summer, when we found ourselves unsure of our location on a bushwhack late in the afternoon, he was stuck in "mini-freekout mode"—very mini—and wasn't able to contribute to the conversation of what our next step would be. In hindsight, I wonder if tiredness and hunger contributed to this reaction. Fortunately it was a pretty easy situation to resolve.
In terms of comfort in the night/darkness, it is natural—yes?—for humans to be aphrensive in the night, as we are a diurnal species. However, in my experience, the more time you spend outside at night, the more comfortable it becomes. LED headlamps, especially the Petzl Tikka, were a game changer. With the advent of lightweight, long-lasting headlamps, suddenly darkness was no longer a limiting factor. Still on the trail when darkness falls? No problem? Want to get a jump on a trip with a late-night start after work or a predawn start? Easy. The devlopment of halogen lights with relatively compact, NiMH rechargeable batteries, followed by HID technology, Li-ion batteries, and later, high-powered LEDs, further opened up the night to mountainbiking, longer-distance cycling, and backcountry skiing.
One of my favorite experiences in the outdoors was a night-time, solo backcountry backcountry ski in the middle of a snow storm. At the turnaround, high on the mountain, I poured myself a cup of tea, heavily laden with Vermont Maple syrup, and turned off my headlamp. I enjoyed my tea amidst the swirling snow all around, howling wind, and dark solitude, knowing that I was almost surely the only human soul on the mountain.
When I arrive at the summit or an outcrop or take a break far from a trail, I soak up the magical feeling of being alone in a large, wild area, and revel in it. Every once and while I find that I don't know where I am within a given area. What most people would call "being lost." There can be a flash of panic or the beginning creep of fear. When this happens, I stop and slow down. I ask myself, with the tools that I have, including my senses, what do I know? How are my resources of strength and energy, temperature regulation, water, and food? What do I need to do, which direction do I need to go, to figure out where I am? I work through these questions methodically, slowly, and logically. I go through them again, trying to make sure that I am making the most logical assessments and decisions. Then I put my plan into action, making adjustments with new information as needed. I figure out where I am.
Perhaps not surprisingly, I have found that when these situations happen, they are easier for me to resolve when I am solo and don't have to deal with the anxiety of another person. In the first instance, my trip partner was a close, good friend, and experienced hiker, but they had only done a bushwhack hike once before, also with me. After trying to work through the problem in tandem with them, and having a hard time focusing well enough to anylize our situation, told them that I need a couple of minutes of quiet to work out the problem on my own. Once I had done so, I proposed my solution to my friend, they assented, and we got back on course.
The most recent time was with another close friend and the person I hike with most—frequently offf-trail—when not solo. This is a person who has climbed Denali, paddled the Yukon with a friend pre-internet, backpacked and hiked in Uganda with just his required guide shortly after the deposal of Idi Amin, and solo hiked and bushwhacked all over the lower 48. And yet this summer, when we found ourselves unsure of our location on a bushwhack late in the afternoon, he was stuck in "mini-freekout mode"—very mini—and wasn't able to contribute to the conversation of what our next step would be. In hindsight, I wonder if tiredness and hunger contributed to this reaction. Fortunately it was a pretty easy situation to resolve.
In terms of comfort in the night/darkness, it is natural—yes?—for humans to be aphrensive in the night, as we are a diurnal species. However, in my experience, the more time you spend outside at night, the more comfortable it becomes. LED headlamps, especially the Petzl Tikka, were a game changer. With the advent of lightweight, long-lasting headlamps, suddenly darkness was no longer a limiting factor. Still on the trail when darkness falls? No problem? Want to get a jump on a trip with a late-night start after work or a predawn start? Easy. The devlopment of halogen lights with relatively compact, NiMH rechargeable batteries, followed by HID technology, Li-ion batteries, and later, high-powered LEDs, further opened up the night to mountainbiking, longer-distance cycling, and backcountry skiing.
One of my favorite experiences in the outdoors was a night-time, solo backcountry backcountry ski in the middle of a snow storm. At the turnaround, high on the mountain, I poured myself a cup of tea, heavily laden with Vermont Maple syrup, and turned off my headlamp. I enjoyed my tea amidst the swirling snow all around, howling wind, and dark solitude, knowing that I was almost surely the only human soul on the mountain.
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I used to enjoy sitting by a nice fire, smoking a good cigar and enjoying some coffee. Now that I've quit smoking..... Well now I just sit and enjoy my coffee while listening to the night creatures. I miss my cigars.
Roy
Roy
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