When I went on the road to live in the wilderness, I thought that being alone in nature would heal me. I thought I would find bliss, peace and comfort after my wife’s death had destroyed my identity (husband, caretaker) and my world.
I was grieving and I was broken. I didn’t know what else to do.
Nature healed me – just not the way I expected it to.
- Instead of finding peace and beauty, I found hardship, inconvenience and discomfort.
- Instead of enjoying the solitude, I craved the companionship of other human beings- any human beings.
- Instead of relaxing in nature, I froze at night, got rained on in the day, spent nights in rest areas and kept lookout to prevent Snickers from getting snatched by coyotes.
- Instead of peaceful dinners watching the sunset, I’d search for PBS radio just to hear a human voice while eating a can of tuna and a semi-frozen hunk of cheese.
After two months, I realized that I belonged in society. I wanted to have running water, electricity, shelter and heat. I wanted to be around other people – even though I was still grieving and incapable of being more than marginally social.
I knew where I belonged and it wasn’t in the wilderness.
Now, 3 year later, I can look back on those two months with some fondness. There were good times. All of those times involved other people.
- The guy and his wife from Tucson who taught me how to backup my trailer.
- The four guys who were on their 35th annual desert boon docking vacation who invited me over for beer and burgers.
- The 2 rancher women who arrived with rifles, horses, a donkey, a wolf and four dogs at my first Arizona campsite outside of Tombstone AZ. They warned me about coyotes, advised me on campsites and invited to join them on a trip at the end of the summer.
- The normal woman from Boston who asked for my story, then listened as I told her about my wife before giving me a big hug.
- The Apple store guy, who let me bring my dog into the store and bumped me ahead of 50 other people so he could reset my phone and run diagnostics after it black screened in the middle of nowhere.
- The couple I helped in the Gila Mountains when they had 4 flat tires. It was the first time I felt useful in the 5 months since my wife had died.
The kindness of strangers reminded me that I craved the company of other people.
So, in this unexpected way, nature and solitude did heal me.