Note: I changed the title and some of the language in last week’s post so as not to imply that activating a PLB is something to take lightly.
“(An expedition requires) a temporary ability to do without most of the people in the world.”
- Dave Roberts, The Mountain of My Fear
NOTE: JUNE, 2023 - Since I wrote this post, I decided to invite some friends to paddle sections of the coast with me, however long stretches of the trip will be spent alone.
Gales continued through last week, so I made it a rest week and hit my light aerobic goals on the indoor bike.
A question I’ve been asked about this trip: why on earth would anyone do it?
This seems like a good time to answer that, on the kind of day that makes me ask myself the same question.
A “love-hate relationship with people”
In The Pacific Alone: The Untold Story of Kayaking’s Boldest Voyage, author Dave Shively describes solo ocean adventurers as “sociable introverts.” The book’s subject, kayaker Ed Gillet, reports having a “love-hate relationship with people.”
The solo adventurers I know are outgoing and fun to be around, and they like to have a good time. This is a common theme in adventure literature:
On Jasper Winn’s solo journey around Ireland, he spent weather days in pubs, often singing and playing music.
Freya Hoffmeister modified the decal on the ND Explorer she paddled around New Zealand with an “S” to read “Sexplorer.”
The rakish French skipper Bernard Moitessier was described like this in A Voyage for Madmen, "Almost everybody he ever met loved Bernard Moitessier, and he loved them all back, freely.”
Solo adventure isn’t about rejecting relationships. It’s about being able to temporarily set them all aside to pursue something deeply personal in the outdoors.
As Lord Byron wrote, “I love not man the less, but nature more.”
“Because it’s not here.”
Nothing can motivate you to face fear on the water like a fear of the dullness that awaits you back on shore.
Maria Coffey relates how climbers experience this dichotomy in Where the Mountain Casts its Shadow,
“According to British Mountaineer Joe Simpson, the fears climbers face in the mountains are archetypal ones, of falling from heights or suffocating in an avalanche. Such fears evoke a ‘fight or flight’ response with a definite end result—survival or death.
Against these he sets ‘uncontrolled fears,’ about money, children, career, success, love—the patina of daily concerns that can never be fully resolved and which never go away.”
Fear on the water is real, immediate, and primal. It can be handled through seamanship and skill. Back on land, I don’t know how to “dead reckon” my way through dull pleasantries. There’s no brace stroke for a flooded inbox.
I’ve noticed on trips that I have way more energy, even though paddling all day is exhausting. I attribute this to the absence of those “uncontrolled” domestic fears.
Most people who have adventurous hobbies (myself included) work ordinary jobs. Sea kayaking is an escape in the best sense of the word.
When round Ireland kayaker Freya Hoffmeister was asked why she spends months away from her family to paddle around entire continents, she put a misanthropic twist on Mallory’s “because it’s there” saying, “because it’s not here.”
“Beauty and majesty”
Peter Suedfeld, a psychologist who studies isolation in extreme environments, describes an “internally directed mood state” that allows a person to thrive on a solo trip.
One Swedish study (referenced in The Pacific Alone) points to “situational absorption” as the key characteristic in the personality of a solo ocean sailor. They overcome fear and boredom through “the ability to become highly engaged with the beauty and majesty of the environment…”
That sounds about right. If I have to point to a single thing I love about exploring the coast in a kayak, it’s that switched-on feeling of total absorption in what I’m doing. In my experience, “the beauty and majesty of the environment” is intensified by the hard work and preparation required to be able to safely be out there on my own in a tiny boat.
“Comfort is just not enough for the soul.”
In the 19th century, the first mountaineers to climb the highest peaks in the Alps were Italian and British aristocrats. Born into wealth and comfort, they chose to seek out discomfort and risk their lives on high glaciers.
Psychiatrist Dr. Ruth Seifert writes of their motivation:
“They couldn’t just sit and enjoy what they had at home; they were moved to go out and explore. There’s some instinctive thing in mankind, that such comfort is just not enough for the soul.” (Where the Mountain Casts its Shadow, Maria Coffey)
They must have felt the same way about estates and titles that I do about pitch meetings and lazy beach holidays.
But solo adventure isn’t just about quenching my own restlessness. Lessons learned on the water build character in ways that help me show up in my work and family life.
Endurance sports put you in competition with the person you were yesterday. You “win” by overcoming your own character defects and by tapping into strength you didn’t know you had. These wins help you contribute more in everyday life.
Training for the New Alpinism--my training textbook for this trip--puts it brilliantly:
“Climbing is often seen by outside observers as a selfish pursuit providing no visible benefits, and indeed frequent injury or death to the climbers themselves. These points are rendered moot if you take the position that the person who has not known him-or-herself in a deep way has little to offer family, friends, or society in the first place.”
Thank you, Adventure.ie
Wicklow-based, Adventure.ie has been kind enough to provide me with my Real Turmat dinners for this trip at a discount. They’ve also given me an Adventure.ie buff for sunny days on the water. I’m thrilled to have the support of an Irish, family-run business for these critical provisions. Thank you!
Thank you, Team Fox donors! 🦊
Thank you to everyone who donated to The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research this week:
WE DID IT! This week, Tom McNaught put us over the $5,000 fundraising goal. Thank you, Kip & Chib O’Neill, and Michael Smart, for putting us on the way to doubling that initial target.
Thanks for reading,
-Charlie
Thank you to Mike Jones for coaching and guidance.
Kokatat is the official gear sponsor of The Lap.
The lap will be fueled by Resilient Nutrition’s Long Range Fuel and bars.
Expedition coffee by 3fe.
CH Marine will be providing a VHF radio and other safety equipment.
Tent and cooking gas provided by Paddle & Pitch. Trolley by KCS.
REAL Field Meals at a discount from Adventure.ie.
Great post, Charlie. So true!
If you'll forgive me for quoting myself, the following comes from "Killing Rommel." The speaker is a young British lieutenant serving in North Africa in the Long Range Desert Group. He's talking about an upper middle class "public school" upbringing of the 1930s and earlier.
"The public schools of that era produced a type of young man who was keen but not academic, athletic but not muscle-bound, gay of heart and confident of mien, a solid bloke, the sort who would sooner die than let the side down. Put another way, the system turned out the kind of individual who frequently displayed boredom or feckless complacency during times of prosperity, but who shone through in hours of trial. I have often wondered of comrades who fell as heroes during the war if, in the fatal instant, they weren't privately relieved to do so, dreading a deadly post-war normalcy more than the bullets and cannon shells of the foe."
Agree with this - “Comfort is just not enough for the soul.”