Day 9 - blissed out! Part I

I won't pretend to have found the following quotes through anything other than the internet.  Whilst I might think I am well-read, it all depends on the titles.  I have read absolutely none of the following although I have dabbled a little in Thoreau.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.
Thomas Jefferson

The doer alone learneth.
Friedrich Nietzsche

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
Henry David Thoreau

We are rarely proud when we are alone.
Voltaire

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.
John Muir

I have heard so many people say it is irresponsible to travel alone.  Throughout my entire Outdoor Education career I have worked in groups, taught safety in numbers and planned to the strengths of the weakest link.  My only real experience of solitude was a 24-hour assignment set during my Philosophy of Outdoor Education class at the then Charlotte Mason College in Ambleside, Cumbria.  Colin Mortlock was my lecturer and he challenged us to spend 24 hours alone.  A friend of mine crawled into his wardrobe - he managed two hours before his room-mate got fed up of hearing him fart in such a confined space and pulled him out.  Another friend was doing well until it started raining and she was in danger of being drowned on her little island that used to be a small rise in a sheep field.  I don't remember anyone lasting the full 24 hours.  I lasted three.  My orange bivvy bag filled up with rain as I tried to wait out the weather on the fell top.  My sleeping bag was drenched and I was absolutely miserable and promptly gave up.

At eighteen I thought the outdoors was about survival.  I never realised that being outdoors was not about working against nature but living with it, in harmony. 

Don't push. 

Bend. 

The late Bill Mason taught me that through his books and videos.  Journeys with Wilderness Inquiry as a "plug" showed me the way and all my subsequent adventures with Jane have helped build upon this philosophy.

Last year I spent my first real solo time in Uummannaq fjord.  Five days with the Folbot Kodiak and a humpback whale, hundreds of icebergs and little old me in between.  It was amazing.  Both liberating and a real test of my expedition plans and the boat.

I have wondered if having contact with the outside world during TSS2010 makes a nonsense out of the idea of solitude, but there were plenty of days where contact was not possible and this beautiful campsite was one of them. 

In returning to my thoughts of safety in numbers I can only add that I honestly think my days of travelling with groups are over.  Small groups maybe, Jane and I definitely, but I really need to make time for me and the big sky, the open water and the call of the wild.  Jack London is on my reading list.  He is partly responsible for this whole northern adventure.  But when you have lain in your sleeping bag and heard the Arctic Fox announce his arrival, the whale exhaust his lungs when passing by, boulders crash and icebergs calve then the wild has truly called, and I wish to live long to answer that call again and again.

Of course, the last quote I have chosen is just going to make you wonder!

You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
Al Capone