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Post by skschrip on Mar 10, 2016 19:23:38 GMT -8
(Apologies if this isn't the best place to put this thread...)
Disclaimer: it's about to get mushy and feely, and maybe a bit woman-ish for a lot of you machos.
What has your experience been with the state of your mind while traveling? Especially (but not limited to) traveling alone/with people you are unfamiliar with. Do you get lonely? Do you have a hard time re-entering normal society after a longer trip?
I cycled across America three years ago, solo-ish. Although I ended up riding much of my trip with a fantastic couple from Milwaukee (became quite close with them!), part of the trip I did alone. I found myself not quite lonely, per se, but something close to it- almost as if all the beauty I was taking in was too much to bear (I know I know, gag me with a spoon. Sorrynotsorry.) Of course, I have my own spiritual leanings which I believe explain a lot of what I felt, but I just want to hear what other people think about this subject! Because as side-issue as it sounds, it's an actual issue for me.
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tigger
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Post by tigger on Mar 10, 2016 19:43:50 GMT -8
Agree with Ben - A very realistic issue. I've done some off-trail hikes where I dealt with some points of intensity. Sometimes, it would take effect within just a few days. Then I would get in a groove for a while.
When we went out on the Ice Sheet of Greenland, I noticed tension a few times when people got a bit stir crazy being stuck with the same people for so long. It was an issue that we were cautious about.
Personally, I kind of embrace that feeling and just ride it out as a new experience. Going solo or with a group can each have their drawbacks but I just try and focus on the experience either way. Not everyone has the mental fortitude to handle such experiences.
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foxalo
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Life is infinitely stranger than anything the mind could invent.---Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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Post by foxalo on Mar 10, 2016 19:58:43 GMT -8
I don't take long trips by myself, but I wouldn't be against it. I rarely feel lonely when I'm by myself, whether I'm hiking or sitting by myself in my home. However, I have felt lonely in both small and large groups of people. I mentioned in another thread that for me, if I hike with another person, it has to be the right person. I'm quite comfortable with my own company on a hike, but I don't mind sharing it with someone occasionally.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2016 20:32:20 GMT -8
Hiking or backpacking solo is how I maintain my sanity (such as it is). I venture out somewhere every week, always solo. My longest time alone and living out of my backpack in the backwoods was 2 1/2 months, in my early 20s. During that time I spoke with only four people that I can recall and then only briefly.
The solitude and long days of walking tended to produce an altered state of consciousness, a natural high that was a bit mystic but self-limiting. My hermit venture ended in a 4-day December blizzard. I ran out of food the day before the blizzard hit, and went 5 days without a bite to eat.
Some people would say I was hallucinating. I became, for a while, so introverted that I found myself to be the inner child of an outward self. I dreamed of starting a bakery. I craved even so much as a dry, moldy piece of bread. I drank warm water to make my stomach feel full. I survived because a child's life depended upon me, and I fought hunger to save that child from the outside world. A world of hypocrisy, vein charades, useless conveniences, and plastic masks. A world of superficiality and endless posturing.
With a down sleeping bag, a crude shelter, a small fire, and intense hunger, I understood that I could not survive like that. I had to somehow make peace with civilization. But the man grew to be old, the child grew to be a man, and he consents now to take my getting-old bones hiking every week — to live like other animals, sleep on the ground like other animals, dwell in the forests or steppe like other animals, and eventually die like other animals.
I firmly believe that I cannot be true to other people unless I am first true to myself. Therein lies a measure of sanity that likes to wander off trail and enjoy a good blizzard now and then.
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rebeccad
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Post by rebeccad on Mar 10, 2016 21:50:46 GMT -8
I have done some solo hiking, including one 2-week trip (with a break in the middle visiting a friend in Stehekin). I also traveled Europe alone for 2 months. It may sound odd, but I found it was much lonelier in the cities than on the trail, even though I was also able to join up with people in youth hostels, etc., for a day or two of fun. Never any real connections, though. After a month, I stopped in Brittany to visit parents of a friend (I'd met them only once), and they took me in like I was their daughter, and I just about wept for the joy of having someone who gave a damn for me. Never felt that on the trail, though I've never been solo for a month.
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amaruq
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Post by amaruq on Mar 11, 2016 5:19:54 GMT -8
Hiking? I revel in the 'aloneness' (not necessarily loneliness). But that may be because I know it's only a short reprieve from social life. Friends will still be there when I come back in a few days. I've no qualms with getting too absorbed into my own head, I'm pretty introverted (in real life) so bursts of lonesome are not unlike a breath of fresh air.
I can sort of enter the same state even while hiking with one or two of my closest backpacking pals, as we could go about our backcountry tasks wordlessly, almost as if both hiking solo but within the vicinity of each other. I try to avoid long hikes with unfamiliar folk because I'm often the trip planner and so I like to know everyone's abilities. My closest backpacking bud tends to overestimate himself ("oh yeah, 20km in a day? I can do that, easy stuff."), but by kilometer 11 he's ready to set up camp. It's no longer a problem because I am aware of this. Someone I know nothing of? I'll need a few short hikes first. Maybe I'll learn I'm the one holding them back!
Travelling? I can't comment because I've never been gone long enough or lonesome enough to know. But I can say I travel to experience places that interest me and having someone along who wants to do different things than what I may of thought of can really make the trip more fun. Pull me out to places I hadn't heard of, order food I wouldn't want a whole plate of, put me in social situations abroad that I wouldn't normally get into, and generally push me out of my comfort zone. That was basically how my most recent trip to Japan operated: I had a few non-arguable to-do's, but the rest was open to suggestion and some of those suggestions made for quite memorable moments.
All that being said, I've never been more lonely than after moving to Canada's biggest city. Chalk it up to living alone for the first time, I suppose.
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Post by tipiwalter on Mar 11, 2016 5:58:02 GMT -8
All good replies.
If someone is in a relationship "at home" with a significant other and then hits the woods for a weekend or a week or a month on a solo trip, that person just may not ever feel "real" loneliness, because he/she is never really alone. There's someone waiting back home for him. Real loneliness in the woods is a tough nut to crack. There's no one "back home" who gives a crap whether you're out or not and could care less.
It usually causes normal people to seek out other people, and often due to assuaging both loneliness and lust. The woods under the right conditions can be a starkly lonely place, discounting of course the John Muir types who find companionship with the bugs and the trees and the birds and genuinely have no need for human contact. Most of us are not that spiritually advanced.
I do 95% of all my backpacking trips solo, and yet I have Little Mitten in my life and I know no matter how long I am out she is still in my life and so I do not the experience the loneliness I used to regularly experience at other times in the woods.
I lived in a North Carolina ridgetop tipi for 21 years and had severe bouts of loneliness at times, and at times relieved by short-term relationships "down the mountain".
I believe loneliness is a universal truth like deep space or the cold of space or the heat of the sun or the vastness of the universe. We temporarily blunt it with relationships and/or families or children but Me Alone is the universal truth and so it must be dealt with eventually. The best person is the person who can embrace loneliness unconditionally and still be perfectly content.
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Post by Lamebeaver on Mar 11, 2016 6:58:34 GMT -8
I found myself not quite lonely, per se, but something close to it- almost as if all the beauty I was taking in was too much to bear Personally, I'd much rather deal with solitude than conforming to a group, but there have been times that you see something incredibly breathtaking, like the multiple hues of purple the mountains turn at twilight. Not too much to bear, but rather a shame not to share.
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Post by Lonewolf on Mar 11, 2016 7:33:45 GMT -8
I spent some 18 years traveling as a telecomm contractor, driving solo all over the lower 48 and often working alone in remote places for what could be weeks at a time. Most jobs were T&E (time and expense to a company) and even my boss often didn't know where I was. I was hiking and backpacking solo even when I was a kid (1st summer solo at 10, winter at 12) and continued it as an adult because I was always in different places where I didn't know anyone. Many times I'd be driving to the next job, see a TH, park on the spur of the moment, grab my pack and head into the woods for a few days to a week or more depending on when I was due at the next job. I've backpacked and hiked in places over the years that I don't even remember any more other than "somewhere in X state...". I can and sometimes do hike with others but I do better solo because I can change routes and time out without having to notify anyone. I've always been a "soloist" and have no issues with being alone as long as I have books.
Being alone is not the same as being lonely.
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tomas
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Post by tomas on Mar 11, 2016 7:53:13 GMT -8
Being alone is not the same as being lonely. I pretty much subscribe to this as well. Due to employment requirements, I live near DC and commute into town everyday for work. So for 9 hours a day, five days a week I'm a fish in a sea of humanity. Yea I enjoy the comforts of having a big city nearby (I'm a foodie and I love concerts), but I'm also an introvert. So I need to go solo into nature to unwind. Being away from people re-energizes my internal batteries. I could probably count on two hands and have a few fingers left over the number of times I've hiked with another person in the pst 20 years. At times I've gotten a bit lonely, but typically by the next morning I'm fine with being out alone again. Do I wish I had a trail partner who was also a life partner like some of the people on these forums? You betcha. But that doesn't seem to be in the cards and I've survived this long without it so I expect to survive the next however many years without it.
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Post by tipiwalter on Mar 11, 2016 8:00:28 GMT -8
It could be with the saying, "being alone is not the same as being lonely" that lust is the dominant factor in loneliness, or at least the pining when alone for physical union with another person, whether male or female.
I have studied this in detail and wanted to know why I would leave a perfectly good tipi in the woods with a fine woodstove and an ample wood supply to go off the mountain to seek out relationships with people I had almost nothing in common with. Loneliness? Lust? Both?
Perhaps a truly lust-less person could really always be alone and never get lonely. But as Ed Abbey liked to say, "Hope springs eternal in the male gonad."
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Post by Lamebeaver on Mar 11, 2016 8:09:59 GMT -8
Perhaps a truly lust-less person could really always be alone and never get lonely. Perhaps. I hope I never find out, and I wish the same to you.
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daveb
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Post by daveb on Mar 11, 2016 8:30:31 GMT -8
If someone is in a relationship "at home" with a significant other and then hits the woods for a weekend or a week or a month on a solo trip, that person just may not ever feel "real" loneliness, because he/she is never really alone. There's someone waiting back home for him. Real loneliness in the woods is a tough nut to crack. There's no one "back home" who gives a crap whether you're out or not and could care less. I wonder if the difference here is between loneliness and emptiness? I cherish my time in the woods and I seek solitude for myself as if it were a treat but I've really only felt the burn of complete loneliness on the return trip to an empty home.
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rebeccad
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Post by rebeccad on Mar 11, 2016 8:34:26 GMT -8
If someone is in a relationship "at home" with a significant other and then hits the woods for a weekend or a week or a month on a solo trip, that person just may not ever feel "real" loneliness, because he/she is never really alone. There's someone waiting back home for him. Real loneliness in the woods is a tough nut to crack. There's no one "back home" who gives a crap whether you're out or not and could care less. That's an interesting perspective. I haven't tested it, but I also wonder if having a spouse who isn't present doesn't make loneliness more intense. I'm used to having the spouse there to share the wonderful moments when we are out in nature. OTOH, I just spend 2 nights in a hotel in another city without him, and though I missed him, it was also sort of nice to go to a room, shut the door, and be silent. Not that we talk all the time (far from it), but just being alone is nice. Of course, I'm used to being alone much of the day at home, and being at a conference all day makes this introvert need to find absolute peace and quiet, so that probably wasn't a good test!
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tarol
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Post by tarol on Mar 11, 2016 8:38:23 GMT -8
For years I lived in remote areas by myself. I worked, so wasn't alone during the day. But was at night. And I did many solo backpack trips during this time. Didn't bother me at first, but after a while I did get lonely. But at the same time just having one or two people to hang out with is good enough for me, as I dislike crowds. These days I'm content to hang out with my husband and/or son.
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