Trail Tales: You Shouldn't Be Out Here Alone

and other unhelpful things we've been told

I’m not fearless. I worry quite a bit.

I worried I was going to get a flat tire and have to fix it. I worried my favorite campground was going to be full and I wouldn’t have a place to sleep. I worried about tiny logistical things that could go wrong and leave me stranded and vulnerable.

Here’s what I wasn’t worried about on my first solo camping trip:

I wasn’t worried about hiking alone. I wasn’t really worried about taking my sea kayak out on Lake Superior alone. And I wasn’t genuinely concerned about bears.

I really do think September is one of the best months for camping. The bugs are gone, the days are warm but not hot, and the nights are cool but not cold. In September 2018, I was camped out at the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula in Copper Harbor, Michigan, slowly working my way southeast and home.

As a then 22-year-old woman, a solo road trip wasn’t really my first choice. A few years before, a friend and I had been followed on a popular hiking trail near Tahquamenon Falls, and I was still a little leery of being in the outdoors alone.

But I had just come off a summer of sea kayak guiding on Lake Superior, cranked out several short solo kayaking trips, and felt altogether comfortable alone in the outdoors.

Besides, tough girls go on solo road trips. I wanted to be that kind of tough.

Tough, and I was traveling from Northern Wisconsin to Michigan and planned on sea kayaking along the way, a niche hobby. My half-hearted search for travel companions came up empty.

I pitched a tent at a campground at the tip of Michigan, the farthest you can go into Lake Superior before land drops off completely to water. To me, it felt like being in the heart of Superior, a lake I’d been casually obsessed with for about three years.

September 2018; a solo paddle of the Pictured Rocks

I hadn’t spoken to anyone all day, and was still sweaty from an afternoon hike when I popped up my tent and made myself dinner.

Alone in a campground isn’t really alone, and both has the safety net of other people around and the uneasy guarantee that you will run into other people.

If you can look busy, probably no one will talk to you. I must not have looked particularly busy.

“Hey there!” Two men in their mid-thirties walked up the path to my site.

“Hi,” I said back, and smiled. I ate another bite of pasta while they walked between me and my car.

“We were just coming round to let you know there’s a bear in the area,” One of the men told me.

I nodded, wondering if it was weird or not that they’d walked into my campsite itself without asking. I sort of thought it was. I wondered if they’d walked between me and my car on purpose, cornering me, or if that was just something they hadn’t thought of.

“We thought we’d warn ya, ya know,” said the other man.

I smiled warmly. “That’s very thoughtful. I’m not too worried though, the family down the way is making hot dogs. Any bear will be down that way.”

One of the men laughed, loudly. The other put is hands on his hips.

“Are you out here all alone? Don’t you know you’re up in bear country? You don’t mess with bears.”

“I’m a wilderness guide. I sea kayak guide in the Apostle Islands in the summer, and I’ve seen plenty of bears,” The wilderness guide thing is a canned response. It lends a little bit of legitimacy that I maybe don’t always deserve. “My food and smellables will be in my car, locked.”

The friendlier man took a few steps closer. “Apostle Islands hey? I’ve been there. That’s a cool place. Is that your kayak? You don’t take that out on Superior alone, do you?”

I pointedly ate more of my pasta, a visual cue that I was in the middle of dinner.

“I only paddle alone close to shore. I check the weather pretty diligently before, and monitor a marine radio,” I answered.

“Man, that’s so cool. You’ve got it figured out. That’s a beautiful boat,” the friendlier man said.

The other man frowned, then quickly covered it with a smile. “You really shouldn’t be out here alone. You’re so young.”

I chewed my food for a bit, trying to decide if he meant the State Park Campground, or Lake Superior, or the Outdoors more generally.

“Well, we should let you get back to your dinner,” said the friendlier man.

I nodded. “Thanks for the warning though. I’m sure the family down the road will appreciate it too with all those kids.”

“Good luck,” said the other man.

I smiled warmly and thanked him, and he nodded, and seemed to decide I wasn’t offended, and that his warnings and entry to my campsite had simply been his civic duty.

I didn’t see those men again, but I’ve heard those words over and over, from a different person every time— you really shouldn’t be out here alone.

And hey, maybe they’re right; there’s inherent increased risk when doing anything solo.

The next morning I got up, and had breakfast alone in a small diner, and wrote in my journal. I sat on a beach alone for lunch, watching the waves and letting the sun bleach out my hair, then chatted with an older woman out walking her dog.

“You’re out here all alone?” she grinned. “Oh man. You’re living. Really living.”

There is a magic in your own company, and the strangers you meet that make you not alone at all.

Maybe I shouldn’t be out there alone, but I can’t afford not to be.