Solo Travel, Loneliness, and Beginner’s Mind (1 of 2)

For many of us with Parkinson’s, our Leviathan is the ever-encroaching progression of the disease. For others who live or travel alone, their Leviathan may be altogether different… always there, always lurking, always attempting to darken their path. Maybe, like me, you grapple with both of these. The following is the first installment of a two-part dispatch that seeks to explore the occasional loneliness that comes with solo travel (or solo living), and the attitudes that may equip you with a better posture for growing through such phases of life. In the second dispatch, I offer a few structural lifestyle tools that other solo sojourners may find useful along their journey.

There is an area in California’s gloriously vast and beautiful Sierra Nevada mountain range called the Desolation Wilderness. I have no idea how it got that name (I’ll let you Google it), but it is absolutely gorgeous, with trails for miles and miles. It’s not far from Lake Tahoe, situated to the southwest of the lake, and far enough away from the tourists, overnighters, and gamblers who have overwhelmed the circumference of the lake over the past 40 years while I have been absent. It may not be quite as “desolate” anymore, but it was back in 1990.

A very dear friend and mentor during my teenage years, we’ll call him Paul, had spent a fair amount of time in the Desolation Wilderness. He was a VERY accomplished backpacker, musician, wilderness instructor, outdoor sports guy, and rock climber who left a very powerful mental mark on my life during my early years. Paul was very much an introvert and had been on some amazing and downright daunting journeys over the years… very long and arduous voyages, undertaken solo. He mentioned to me once that spending 30 days totally and completely alone, without seeing another human being, was one of the most mentally and emotionally difficult things he had ever done.

During the summer of 1990, I had just graduated from high school. I was 18, and I was eager to spread my wings with my new (used) Ford Escort and start going to some of the amazing natural locales that my home state offered. I wasn’t into partying or getting into trouble. I was actually a pretty good kid most of the time. Being outdoors and mastering my newfound craft of analog photography were ALL I wanted to do. Paul’s experiences beckoned me, too, along with the writings of Tom Brown, Jr., who spoke at length about going on vision quests in isolation.

Now, I wasn’t attempting to go on some full 30-day journey beyond the fringes of civilization, but I did desire to simply go on a solo backpacking trip, see the Desolation Wilderness that I had heard so much about from many different sources, make photographs, and experience some genuine alone time. So that’s what I did in the early part of that summer. I only planned on about six days. I planned my route, took some topographic maps, food, and a robust selection of equipment, and went alone.

The first couple of days were great. I briefly saw several other hikers on the trail, and on about the third day, I climbed one of the highest peaks there, Dick’s Peak (9,974 ft./3,040 m), the third-highest peak in the Desolation Wilderness. It was only around the fourth day that I started to experience something that I couldn’t remember ever having felt before. Could it be that I had made it to age 18 without ever going multiple days without really talking to or associating with anyone? I mean, I met a few people along the trail, but my exposure to people was truly scant, and I started to experience my first real bout of loneliness that I can remember. Mentally and emotionally, I was bringing a very deep script to the surface that I would not soon forget. I had only been there for about four days!

I was learning a very important lesson about myself during that trip. I fully went into it with the arrogance, ignorance, and lack of self-awareness typical of any 18-year-old. This was what gaining a critical and previously unknown insight into myself felt like, and I didn’t like it. I was eager to get back and have some sort of human interaction. I’m not bashful about admitting that experiencing these emotions did precipitate a slightly earlier departure, although at the time, I probably just said, “I’d seen enough.” I hiked out of the Desolation Wilderness (the irony of the name) with a few decent photographs, dozens of miles logged, and a “bagged” peak, all in just under six days. Most importantly, however, I left with a lesson learned about myself regarding my social life. I was a peninsula that had fancied itself an island.

I have read enough nomad forums online to learn that I am literally not alone (pun very intended) in discovering that the nomadic solo-slow-traveler life can be depressingly isolating. In the forums on Reddit and elsewhere, you can actually find this as a repeated theme in their threads. And, yes, this has also been something that I have had to contend with during my journeys over the past year.

Ever been alone in a crowd? That is what nomadic slow travel can frequently be like if you jump into this routine without having good self-awareness and without doing the work of purposeful social connection wherever you go. Social circles among the locals of southern France aren’t always easy to break into, and if you don’t “parlez français” very well, you may find yourself isolated quickly. This will happen anywhere, of course. In France, where I am currently living, I have put forth a lot of effort toward networking and have made worthwhile connections that have fulfilled both emotional and pragmatic needs. But still, there are times when I wish I had a more robust network than I do.

Just as I ambled into my first sample lesson about my own propensity for loneliness when I was 18 in the Desolation Wilderness, some nomads may embark on this lifestyle without being fully aware of themselves. This lack of self-awareness is one reason why many expats rush into living somewhere for a while and end up returning home frustrated. They weren’t wrong or dumb for trying, but they may have been better prepared if they had systematically built a support structure with purpose and forethought immediately after they arrived… especially if they happen to be “people-people.”

If you’ve ever taken a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test (the MBTI… HIGHLY recommended), you may know that the very first identifier is either an “E” or an “I” for either an extravert or an introvert. You introverts out there certainly have a leg up on this compared to us extraverts, but not all of you are completely immune. If you know that you gain energy from social scenarios, as I frequently do (though not always), as an extravert, you may want to pay closer attention to my next dispatch. I am no psychologist, but I do know that knowing yourself (and your limits) is a critical component when embarking on an adventure such as this.^[1]

Self-awareness and curiosity. Two prerequisites for fostering Beginner’s Mind. If you weren’t curious by nature, you probably would not be wasting your time on this Substack. And you probably would just as soon stay home as live in different countries for months on end. BUT let’s expand on this, because there are a lot of travelers from everywhere who show up to look at a lot of new places but never actually see…

Perhaps one of the most detrimental things you can do if you struggle with loneliness is cast yourself into a new culture and bring all of your judgment and bias along with you. These things are the antithesis of curiosity, learning, and intellectual growth. You MUST learn to banish these things if you wish to gain a deeper understanding of the people and the place you’re in. Embrace not knowing. Pretend, or realize, that you may not know best. Be truly open to rewriting or modifying some of your own operating scripts, at least while you’re abroad.

Let me say that again… if you are pursuing lifelong learning, truly attempting to make genuine connections, and combating loneliness, you absolutely MUST leave your judgment and bias back in your former home. If you aren’t capable of suspending your bias and harboring a mindset of absolute openness to your new environment, with all of its lumps and bumps and maddening peculiarities, you risk greater loneliness, and you will fail as you depart while blaming “those insufferable [insert the citizens of any country here].” This is Beginner’s Mind at its CORE. You cannot understand your bias without self-awareness, and if you aren’t even curious, well then, you never would have even read this far…

“If you ardently maintain a grasp on casting judgement in accordance with your time-honored thought matrix you will inevitably lose agency when it comes to understanding the full reality, at least somewhat, because “when you feel certain, you stop observing.” You’ve tricked yourself into thinking that you already know because of your pattern recognition hardware. In effect, “your judgments create a screen between you and reality.” Instead, foster and cultivate an attitude of “detached empathy” …. observing without the shoot-from-the-hip personal projection that is ingrained in our minds. This echoes the Buddhist concept of non-judgmental awareness, mindfulness unspoiled by ego and bias. So, even though we may be imminently capable in multiple endeavors, we must now become experts at suspending judgment long enough to actually see. It’s Beginner’s Mind in another context, and it is the prerequisite position our mind must be in to grow outside of the fixed pattern we cling to which keeps us from recognizing a new reality, our new reality^[2].”

Our nomadic adventure IS that new reality, and if you want to succeed at slow travel, a nomadic lifestyle, or simply desire to travel and learn, then Beginner’s Mind is where we begin. With everything. Please join me here soon for the second installment of this dispatch, and I will illustrate my own waypoints for avoiding loneliness and making this an effective, if not preferable, way for some of us to hold back the Leviathan.

This is the Nomadic Parkinson’s Dispatch.

^[1] In case you were wondering, I am an ENTJ who has also tested as an INTJ. So yeah, I gain energy from being with other humans… until I just don’t.

^[2] See my premier dispatch “Beginner’s Mind”