Travelling Solo

I learned today that my company will very likely be sending me back to Alaska in a couple of months. Commence existential vacation planning.

I was last there in August 2009 and, while the whole trip was good, Denali. I so want to go back to Denali. I remember certain moments there as being the most awe-filled moments of my life.

I phrase it that way – “remember as being” rather than “was” – because while I was actually experiencing it I probably would’ve described it as “pretty cool” or something else short of intense awe. But the memories, those faulty bundle of neurons, suggest that this was a profoundly transcendental experience. And so to say that I’ve been itching to go back would be an understatement.

I’ll be going to Alaska with some co-workers whom I really like, and I imagine we’ll probably end up doing some ice fishing or snow shoeing or something equally as awesome. But I’m thinking I’m going to need to extend my stay for a few days or a week, and go it alone.

I’ve only done one other solo-trip, and it was in Miami / the Everglades. It was pretty great, but it was, um, Miami / the Everglades.

Solo-trips are greatly underappreciated, I’d say. Never going on a trip alone seems to me every bit as Missing Out as never having a meal alone. And I don’t mean eating-your-burrito-in-front-of-your-computer alone, I mean truly just you and the food. No other stimulus. When it’s truly just you and the food, the experience is wildly different. Without the pollution of conversation or ideas or social conventions (not that they are “pollution,” but I couldn’t come up with a better term), the food tastes different, or more accurately, it just tastes.

Being alone outside of my house is uncomfortable. I sometimes entertain the idea of dinner at a restaurant alone, not because I can’t find anyone to go with me (okay, I can’t) but because I like the idea of being alone with food. But I have yet to do it (in Durham) because the awkwardness and discomfort dissuade me.

Solo-trips, though, I can do that. For whatever reason, I’m more willing to be adventurous if I am outside of my home city, probably because the relative anonymity ≈ privacy ≈ comfort. (Which is probably a lot of what appeals to me about NYC, the combination of stimuli and, weirdly, “privacy.”)

So I’m probably going to take an existential trip to Denali, which I realize probably sounds horribly cliché to anyone who has seen/read Into the Wild, but I am only vaguely aware of the story, so I am immune to that cliché. I think it might be a good time to try that thing I mentioned wanting to try, which is no interactions with any people at all, written or spoken, email or books, verbal or non-verbal, nothing. 2 days? 3 days? 7 days? I don’t know, but I’ve got to give it at least a day.

I’ll probably try some other stuff, too, like, I dunno, meditating on mountaintops or tackling meese (which I’m convinced should be the plural of moose). Last time I was there the bus driver dude referred to the little prairie dog-looking rodent thingies as “snickers bars for the bears.” That made me want to try one. I wonder if they have a delicious peanut-y core. So many things to explore.

Basically, I’m excited. Brace yourself, Denali. Here I come.