What Price Solitude?

I recall a science fiction story about a world where the human population had grown so great that finding a few moments alone was precious. Only the very rich could afford a pleasant space to themselves.

The longer I live, the more it seems I love solitude, especially in nature. From my home in south Austin, within 10 minutes I can be on the Barton Creek Greenbelt, walking along the cool, shady paths by the creek. Sometimes I bring the dogs, and their feisty romping brings a fresh liveliness to the experience. Never a moment of boredom there. They are ALIVE, tuned in to every sound and smell, every rustle and snap.

I fantasize about the solitude and grandeur of pristine natural settings. Mountains, river valleys, forests, and especially, remote South Pacific islands. In my dreams I fly over coral atolls and see the waves breaking on the outer reefs. Over and over, I walk in slow motion, carrying my surfboard down a green-dappled jungle path, bare feet sifting the sand.

In summer 2007, my 11-yeard-old son and I spent three days in the backcountry at Denali National Park. This was as close to real wilderness as most of us will ever come. Although we were never more than a few miles from the park road, a line of mountains separated us from it, and it turned out to be much harder than we ever imagined to get from the Teklanika River back to the road. More on that in other posts...

I think some people might wonder, wouldn't it be lonely out there? Wouldn't you miss the swirl of human companionship and conversation? Are you some kind of anti-social lone wolf?

I once had my Myers-Briggs type analyzed at work. Turns out I'm an ENTP, combining the four types Extraverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Perceiving. Caution: these words are loaded with rich layers of meanings ascribed by the M-B system; conventional definitions do not fully or correctly apply. The M-B Web site describes the ENTP type as "Quick, ingenious, stimulating, alert, and outspoken. Resourceful in solving new and challenging problems. Adept at generating conceptual possibilities and then analyzing them strategically. Good at reading other people. Bored by routine, will seldom do the same thing the same way, apt to turn to one new interest after another." I view this sort of like a horoscope, with mixed degrees of skepticism and surprise that much of it seems on target for me. But one point here is that I don't seem cut out to be a loner.

Still, I find solitude nourishing, rejuvenating, liberating. Again, especially in natural settings. But what does it cost? There are significant financial costs to get to Alaska or to a remote island, costs so high that most people will probably never get here. And the personal costs can be great--what sacrifices would you have to make, what relationships would be strained or broken, what career paths might be truncated or forsaken?

Certainly, you could find natural solitude in a city park or in your own back yard at the right time of day. Can that be the same as the solitude that comes when you know there are no others around for hundreds or thousands of miles? For me, there is a distinct difference. Agreed, the experience of natural solitude is partly a function of perspective and attitude, the way you look at things. But there is an order of magnitude difference achieved in remote, pristine settings.

How costly and difficult is it becoming to find that "real" solitude? How many of us who have lived awhile can recall visiting some beautiful place in youth, only to return decades later and discovered that tourism or civilization have arrived, that the place is transformed to be almost unrecognizable, that people and buildings and cars and planes are now there, and the solitude has moved on, farther out, farther away.

And so the diaspora continues from civilized, urban zones, with each generation pushing the boundaries farther. All of this drives the importance of setting aside or protecting places, parks, "refuges" where people and animals can find what solitude remains. That also has a price. In the context of this topic, it is some of the most important work being done on spaceship Earth. But it is not free. Someone will pay.

Probably my son will live to return to Alaska in future decades, and he will see it changed. Maybe he will come back with his son or daughter to Denali National Park. And I doubt the park and its mountains, rivers, tundra meadows, taiga forests, bears, wolves, caribou and willow ptarmigans will have changed much. The highway outside the park will have even more pricey hotels and lodges. The paving and parceling of The Last Frontier will have advanced. There will be more people and roads and buildings.

But someone paid to set aside six million acres of wilderness in Alaska. Some people still pay the price to get there. It's worth it.