Important to go slow and careful when alone

I can't tell you how many times I have heard people say that I should reconsider backpacking into wilderness alone. They are concerned about what may happen if I had an accident with noone to assist me or go for help.

I listen to their concerns and understand that I am taking a risk, and so go slow and careful when backpacking to as not to have trouble on any of my trips.

What my friends may not understand with their well-intentioned advice is that the reason I go backpacking alone is because that is the best way to witness the beauty of wilderness days and nights. I don't believe one returns from these trips quite the same person, but is changed from the clarity of a fews days of simple living in a mountain wilderness.

I just returned from a February backpacking trip where I set up camp high late in the afternoon high on a mountainside on the only level spot at the base of tall granite south-facing cliffs.

I sat on huge boulders and ate my dinner with a gorgeous forested valley spread out below me, and a high green shaded mountain towering above the valley and my camp.

Occasionally my dogs would detect sound from a deer or elk or coyote or some other wild animal in the valley.

The quarter moon set to the west before 10pm, leaving stars so bright that the forest was softly illuminated by their light. We all slept peaceful, protected from the twenty degree nights by the warmth of my old tent and a couple layers of polarfleece in my bag.

A half hour after sunrise the south-facing rocks began to warm and me and the dogs sat basking in the sun to shake the chill from the cold night and morning.

Memorable on this trip was the silence that is so common in the wilderness, altered only by an occasionally breeze in the long needles of Ponderosa Pine.

Quality experiences like this are hard to come by, and instill themself in the in the areas of the heart where peace and love of freedom and beauty abide.