To walk alone is to know your whole self — without titles, without a gaggle of friends to text, without all the usual services of daily life. What makes your heart thump in fear, your jaw drop in wonder, and where your limits really aren’t the end.
In January, I went on my first-ever solo overnight trek — and because I don’t do anything halfway, I made it a big one:
Five days, four nights. 40 miles. 2,296 feet elevation gain in one day alone.
In the heart of Chile’s Patagonia, in Torres del Paine National Park, where four seasons in one day is routine and the wind is so fierce it knocks a person to her back.
I needed this, desperately.
Between major life changes and an intense job, I had lost little pieces of me the last few years — locked away or beaten down in the routine of daily life. I needed to recover myself, re-ground, and know again those parts of me that went missing.
So I promised my friends and family this trek was totally, absolutely safe to do alone (I was decently sure it was) and booked the trip.
Now, as I write with this pen on paper* on the edge of a slate cliff, overlooking the mountains I “W”-ed over the last days, I am so happy to say hello to my whole self once again — and I even found a few jewels I had no idea existed within me.
You are so much stronger than you think.
As I came to the Base of the Torres, I passed a 70s-ish woman hiking alone, and she was my hero. This was a 9km (5.6mi) mountain climb with an elevation gain of 2,296 feet — 36 percent of which is in the last 45 minutes of hiking.
Nearly everyone took pauses to get up that mountain. But the reward we all knew was there, just another step, and another, and another — worth it. So, pause and climb.
And then do it again tomorrow, with a 25-pound bag on your back.
You can surprise yourself.
It is an incredible gift to realize something wonderful is in you that you didn’t know existed.
I had a plan. I was going to warm up to this trek, do it in smaller pieces. But every day I went farther than I thought I possibly could, loving the strength I found in my muscles and the willpower waiting in my mind.
A trail buddy said to me, “You keep surprising me.”
I replied, without prior thought or hesitation, “I’m surprising myself.”
You can walk into the unknown.
I am a planner by love and genetic shaping. So there was no way I wasn’t going to plan the heck out of this trek.
When I booked my campsites in the national park, I made what I thought were good choices.
They were not.
In fact, I would have had to redo the hardest route one day, and compress two days into one on another. But I am nothing if not stubborn, and I’d already made that decision, so I was sticking to it.
Until I got to the first campsite on my first day, and the park workers recommended I hike NOW, today, to Torres, because tomorrow the weather was supposed to be bad.
So I went, best-laid plans constantly changing over the next days, based on weather, company and my amazing ability to sleep and recover, with no guarantee of finding space at the next campsite. And yet, I always did.
You can be that kind stranger.
Each day, at about an hour from my destination, I reached the “am I there yet?” stage of exhaustion, and started obsessively asking hikers coming in the opposite direction how far the next campsite was.
Without exception, these hikers from everyone around the world were kind, often stopping to chat and lending encouragement.
I happily offered the same.
At the end of every day’s gorgeous hike, hikers at the campsite would relate trail stories and count blisters at a shared cookstove table. One morning, I met a friendly German over my ramen soup breakfast, and we agreed to hike together for the day along with an American from Oakland.
You need to be in just one place at a time.
I saw a handful of hikers with headphones, which mystified me. The sounds of this park were a symphony in itself — the rush of the wind through the tall grasses, the roar of the giant waterfalls, the birds’ songs and the rumble of avalanches.
I saw a wild rabbit one day, only because I heard its thump-thumping away from my approach.
I know, to really be present and hear and see what’s around you is not easy.
At one point on the trail, my mind was circling obsessively about a past relationship so loudly that I had nearly blocked out where I was. Luckily, a splash of bright purple broke my circling, and I turned to see a whole field of these beautiful bell-shaped flowers.
To disconnect and not multitask, and just BE, that is the harder path — but so rewarding.
You should stop and stand in awe.
One afternoon, I sat and watched avalanches calve from glaciers, each tumble of ice causing a thunder-like roll through the Frances Valley.
“Look, look!” I called to my trail buddy for the day, yelling like a child and feeling the heart-hammering flush of amazement.
To feel awe like this is to feel alive.
I want to stand in awe more often.
Now my challenge, as always when amazing experiences wrap up, is to thread these pieces of me into every vein and keep them near the surface, so they are not lost again in routine and rush.
Or I guess I could always go back again — and this time for the 10-day trek!
pentraveler 