Adam Shoalts and I spoke about dealing with being lonely on long canoe trips by yourself.

Firstly, it depends on the nature of your journey. If your journey is a physically demanding undertaking, you probably won’t have to worry about loneliness at all because every minute that you are awake you’ll be consumed by the task. When you are alone there is no division of labour, you can’t have one person go fetch water, the other person get the tent up, the other person chop firewood. You can’t even take for granted having one person in the bow of the canoe looking at the GPS or map while the other guy is paddling. Every moment of the day you essentially have a task in front of you.

You need two hands on the paddle at all times, so even getting a drink of water or looking at your map becomes a challenge. If you set down your paddle the wind could blow you to shore or where you don’t want to go, or often in Northern Canada it can be hard to find a landing spot for a canoe. The shore line might be nothing but alders and willows, or it could be swampy, it could be cliffs or mud flats, it could be hard to get in there. So even just going to shore for some routine task is a big undertaking. So from the moment you wake up and start rolling up your clothes, taking down your tent, portaging everything back down to the lakeshore, to the moment that you hit the sleeping bag at night, you will be busy and therefore don’t really have time for loneliness.

Now there are circumstances, for example if the wind has forced you on shore and now you have all the time in the world and the minutes drag, that’s when people may start to experience loneliness. But there’s definitely a cure for that, which is to bring something to read. One of Adam’s favourite adventure stories is from Joshua Slocum who wrote Sailing Alone Around the World. He was the first person to sail alone around the world, he did it in the 1890’s and it took him close to 3 years to do it. In his book he talks about loneliness of the extreme sort where he’s on a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or the middle of the Indian Ocean. He famously wrote that his books were ever his friends, that as long as he had his books he wasn’t alone because his books were always his friends.

Having a book you really enjoy is a good way to combat the feeling of being alone. Another thing you can do is stay active. Adam busies himself taking notes, looking at the trees and wildlife, etc. Anyone who is traveling in wild places should pack a field guide to the birds or to the plants, and finding the plants or birds you see in the field guide along your journey adds another dimension to the trip, making it more rewarding.

My entire interview with Adam Shoalts is available here in video format [ Ссылка ] and/or in audio podcast format here: [ Ссылка ]

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