3 SOLO EPICS

‘startling changes’

‘It was a moment of pure, uncomplicated confidence – and lasted about 10 seconds.’ It was 1977 and Robyn Davidson had arrived at Alice Springs station with a plan to trek 1700 miles through the Australian desert, with four camels and a dog called Diggity for company. The walk to the Indian Ocean took nine months and while she shared some of it – with Eddie, a Pitjantjatjara man who guided her to water, and Rick Smolan, a photographer from National Geographic – much of it, months of it, she spent alone among the sand and spinifex, and ‘when there is no-one to remind you what society’s rules are, and nothing to keep you linked to that society, you had better be ready for some startling changes’. Few of us will experience solitude so intense or so transformative, but Davidson still, more than 40 years later, prizes the chance to be alone: ‘I try to factor solitude into my life, because more and more that’s becoming a very precious and rare commodity.’

READ ON: See Tracks by Robyn Davidson

‘a nice lark’

She had raised 11 children and survived an abusive marriage, and in 1955 Emma Rowena Gatewood, aged 67, told her kids she was going for a walk. Weeks later they discovered in a newspaper article that she was hiking the Appalachian Trail, alone, and she soon became the first woman to complete its 2190 miles solo in one go. Her kit consisted of canvas shoes, a drawstring bag thrown across one shoulder and a shower curtain to keep the rain off. When asked about the walk she said she thought it ‘would be a nice lark’. She then added: ‘It wasn’t. This is no trail, this is a nightmare. For some fool reason, they always lead you right up over the biggest rock to the top of the biggest mountain they can find.’ Still, she went on to hike it again – becoming the first person to do it twice – then a third time in sections, and clocked up another 2000 solo miles on the Oregon Trail too. READ ON: See Grandma Gatewood’s Walk by Ben Montgomery

‘waves of delight’

As part of her exploration of solitude and silence, Sara Maitland spent 40 days and 40 nights living alone in a small white cottage at the foot of the Black Cuillin on the Isle of Skye, where she ‘walked a good deal when the weather permitted’. She records eight distinct experiences in this chosen silence including ‘an extraordinary intensification of physical sensation’ where plain porridge becomes an ‘intense pleasure’ and the sound of the wind ‘like an orchestra’. Climbing up into a corrie she experiences a powerful moment of oneness, ‘a connection as though my skin had been blown off… as though the molecules and atoms I am made of had reunited themselves with the molecules and atoms that the rest of the world is made of’. There were also ‘waves of delight, gratitude and peace’ and those weeks have ‘informed my choices and my life ever since. I have been engaged trying to build those experiences into a daily and sustainable lifestyle’. READ ON: See The Book of Silence by Sara Maitland