Going It Alone

Why solo hiking alone in nature might just be the best way to discover who you really are.

Somewhere above Coire Mhic Fhearchair, the fog came down so fast I lost sight the path in about ninety seconds. One minute I’ve got clear skies and a clean line up toward the ridge, the next I’m standing in a grey nothing with a compass, a flask that’s already half empty, and a lone sheep watching me from about four feet away with a, I swear, bemused expression I can only describe as judgment. I sat down on a rock and thought to wait it out, because the skies can close in like this and then clear again minutes later. Not always but it happens. So wait I did and somewhere in that waiting, cold and slightly annoyed at myself for not checking the forecast twice, I started grinning. Properly grinning, alone, at nothing. Yeah, not going to lie, I probably looked a bit crazy right there. That’s the bit people don’t put in the brochure.

I’ve been chasing light in these hills for years now, camera on my back, usually alone, and if you’d asked me early on why I kept doing solo trips instead of bringing someone along, I’d have given you some line about needing to move at my own pace for the shots, how I need to wait for the light. That’s all true, but it’s not the only answer. The other answer is that hiking with company and hiking alone are basically two different activities wearing the same boots.

When someone else is there, even someone you love, there’s a conversation running. You’re managing pace, managing mood, filling silences that don’t actually need filling. Take that person out of the equation and something strange happens to your head about forty minutes in. It gets loud. Every unresolved thing you’ve been avoiding shows up uninvited, every concern, musing, worry, reflection, flood back at you, usually when you have found your rhythm and the walking has taken over and when you’re breathing too hard to distract yourself with a podcast anymore.

Most people bail right there. Turn the podcast back on, or turn around. I get it, that internal noise is genuinely unpleasant. But I’ve learned, the slow and slightly stubborn way, that if you just keep putting one boot in front of the other, the noise burns itself out. Not because you resolved anything. It’s more that the sheer physical effort of the walk eventually outcompetes the mental chatter for your attention, and what’s left underneath is quieter than anything you get at home with four walls and a phone.

A guy I used to teach photography to asked me once why I bothered with solo trips when a group would be safer and more fun.

Fair question.

Safety, sure, that’s a real conversation and I’m not going to pretend solo hillwalking is risk free, if you are planning a solo hike anywhere - tell someone your route, check the weather twice not once, carry proper kit, all of that stands. But fun is where I’d push back. There’s a specific kind of satisfaction in making every decision yourself out there. When to stop, when to push on, whether that side path is worth the detour, whether the light’s about to do something worth waiting an extra hour for. Nobody’s opinion but yours. You get blamed for nothing and credited for everything, which is a rare deal in most areas of life.

The confidence thing is real, and it’s not the Instagram version of confidence either. It’s not standing on a summit with your arms out for that opportune selfie. It’s smaller and it sticks around longer. It’s the version of you that navigated down off Beinn Eighe in low cloud without panicking, and then three weeks later handled a horrible client call without panicking either, because some part of your nervous system quietly filed that hillside under proof you can hold it together when things go sideways. You don’t consciously connect the two. You just notice you’re steadier than you used to be, and if you trace it back far enough it usually leads to a hill somewhere.

I won’t oversell the happiness angle, because happiness is a slippery word and anyone promising you a guaranteed dose of it via hiking boots is selling something. What I’ll say instead is that there’s a specific, physical kind of relief that happens when you’ve been alone with hard weather and a demanding trail for six or seven hours, and you finally sit down with something warm to drink and your legs are done and your head is, for the first time all week, completely empty.

Not sad empty.

Clean empty.

That feeling doesn’t show up from a walk round the block. It seems to need the difficulty, the aloneness, and enough hours for your usual defenses to run out of fuel.

If none of this sounds like you yet, that’s fine, it didn’t sound like me either before I started. You don’t need the Scottish Highlands on your first go though I highly recommend it at some point as it’s so beautiful here. Pick somewhere fifteen minutes from your front door, somewhere you half know already, and go without your phone glued to your hand. See what shows up in your head around the forty minute mark. It won’t be pleasant at first. Stay with it anyway. I promise you that you will be a different person for doing it.

The sheep, for what it’s worth, was still there when the fog lifted. Didn’t move an inch the whole time. I like to think it was unimpressed either way.