If you are unfamiliar with YOLO (you only live once) then I
am sorry to say you haven’t been spending enough time on Facebook since this
expression is currently trendy. (Which means it is soon to be replaced by the
next meme that comes along). Anyway in honor of those mischief makers and
uninhibited souls who invoke this particular war-cry I decided to set off on an
expedition I have been wary to commit to for some time now. But since you do
only live once I figured I needed to get my big girl panties on and just go for
it.
I need to preface my story with some facts. For one thing I
have a large imagination, I am sort of afraid of the dark (I still run and jump
into bed when I turn off the lights), and I have grown up with a family that
likes to remind me of what happens to girls when they (insert activity) alone,
you get kidnapped/robbed/rapped/etc. Now I know that this is serious business
and sometimes unsuspecting women do fall prey to those seeking to take
advantage of them, this is a sorry fact of life I wish was not true. Also a
fact though is that if we are supposed to be afraid of everything that could
harm us in life we might as well not leave our houses (and even there we have
plenty that can go wrong so really we’re never totally safe.)
With these facts kept in mind I offer you my solo
backpacking trip. This trip has been a long time coming for me, I have always
wanted to be brave enough to hike off into the wilderness with my survival
essentials on my back and sleep in the forest. For many reasons I had not
actually gotten around to doing this. Some of those reasons are listed above.
Possessing a very active imagination is great for creativity until you find
yourself picturing just how large the strange creature must be that is making that
unearthly noise in the dark. Also when one wants to backpack into the
wilderness there is certainly going to be long periods of darkness where
anything beyond the scope of a small illuminated slice of the world lit up by a
headlamp is mysterious and potentially full of things that go bump in the
night.
For these reasons and also the time constraints of
internships, college classes, and work, I had not yet ventured alone into the
forest. Note: I didn’t discuss the potential threats of being a woman alone in
the forest because I believe that being smart about your surroundings and whom
you interact with as well as knowing important self-defense, ie. Kick, scream,
run, gouge eyes out (and these are things my martial-arts-black-belt-toting
boyfriend told me when I asked for self-defense lessons) can make it
potentially as safe or safer than being in a city. Plus I have a few really
amazing friends that are women, who I look up to, and they have gone many times
alone into the wilderness. Anyway back to the point, I hadn’t yet joined these
wonderful women in taking a solo trip.
This past weekend I remedied that. I recently bought myself
a Big Agnes Copper Spur 1-person tent I strapped that along with my sleeping
pad to my backpack, threw in some food, water, and a guidebook to the North
Carolina mountains and I was in business. I ended up hiking out 6 and ½ miles,
up two mountains (Shortoff Mt. at 2,880’ and The Chimneys at 3,557’). I ended
up camping at the top of The Chimneys with an amazing view the other mountains
spreading out before me. I can’t say I fell asleep right away, which partially
stems from the fact that the tree I picked to hang my food in ended up having a
bear sanctuary sign on it and my imagination was plenty amped once I was zipped
into my tiny abode. But eventually the length of the hike, ascents and descents
of some good elevation, and that it had been 60+ degrees (I got sun-burned!)
took over and I fell asleep. In the morning I watched as the sun came up over
those beautiful mountains and I hugged myself against the chill of the morning,
but also to congratulate myself on finally going it alone.
On my hike back out that day I ran across two guys who were
hiking out the opposite direction. I had seen them the previous day on my hike
in, and I stopped to ask them if they had camped near the spring that I was
going in search of to get water. They gave me directions and then as we were
getting ready to part one of the guys looked at me and asked, “Are you going it
solo?!” I smiled and told him I was, without missing a beat he followed with,
“That’s awesome!” And I have to agree, it felt pretty damn awesome.
