[pct-l] Why do you hike solo?

[jjolson at uwyo.edu (Jeff Olson)]

As each day passes, the busyness of workaday life slowly fades into the
background and insignificance.  The world is not narrowed or reduced.  It
expands to include feelings buried by the mad dash of modern life.  Patterns
of meaning long ignored slowly emerge.

Being alone is hard.  Being alone and open to what comes is very painful.
Emotional/psychic pain marks the opportunity to grow and take responsibility
for being in the world, exactly what the busyness masks and distorts. New
priorities reveal themselves and the old way of being is forever
transformed.

I've said this before, but in my hikes along the PCT and in a lesser sense,
the CDT, the younger you are, the less likely a person is to choose to hike
alone.  I remember meeting five folks on the traverse high above Sonora Pass
and Kennedy Canyon.  I asked if any of them had tried hiking alone.  All of
them got a haunted look in their eye.  Only one fellow answered, and he said
it was too hard.

Its a curious time of history we live in where we are not routinely given
the tools to learn to be alone.

Jeffrey Olson
Laramie Wyoming...