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Outside Magazine April 2003

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The Solitary Way
Sure, it's lonely out there. (And if trouble strikes, you're on your own.) But the mind-clearing rewards of solo adventure, says veteran mountain guide JACK TURNER, make all the risks worthwhile.

By Jack Turner


	(Archive Photos/Hulton Archive)

I take a bearing before I drop off the mesa, then descend through long stretches of sandy hills and scattered juniper until I reach good ol' Jurassic slickrock. Immediately I feel at home. In the distance is the main canyon of the Escalante River. It's early spring, a quiet day beneath mackerel skies, though the forecast calls for snow. I am heading for a side canyon that ends in a steep, smooth slab of sandstone. I've climbed up the 30-foot slab before, but never down. I'm carrying a pack with a week's supplies, and I am alone.

No one knows where I am, for the simple reason that I don't know exactly where I'm going. Not knowing is a key ingredient in this game. It allows freedom from order and schedules, from what I expect and what I am obliged to do. I'm not worried about animals or getting lost. Mistakes are another matter—my mind possesses a vast archive of them. I have known dozens of people who have died in the wild, and I've had my own close calls with the Fates: from an avalanche to an overly enthusiastic bear to a half-dozen bad climbing falls. All of which provide fertile ground for my imagination, which grows wilder the farther I go into the wilderness, and sweet reason never quite conquers its intrigues.

Soon the Aquarius Plateau, the 10,000-foot-plus highland at the head of Utah's Escalante drainage, fades behind veils of distant snow. I can barely see the main canyon of the Escalante, so I get the map out, place it on the slickrock, weigh down the corners, and try to take bearings on a rock buttress in the distance, all the while wishing I had brought my reading glasses. As I put on my parka, big, wet flakes spatter the map.

I head northeast through falling snow, across swales of wet rock. As I lose altitude the snow turns to slush, then rain. When I hit the buttress head-on, I'm terribly pleased. Then I reach the slab. It's soaking wet. I don't like it. I step onto the slab, canting my ankle so that my foot's weight will be distributed over the whole pad of sticky rubber on my climbing shoe. I force my heel down—Climbing 101. Then I commit my weight. Step down. "Attend to just this one thing," I always tell my climbing students back in the Tetons. "Let the rest of the universe be dark."

I shoulder the pack and head downstream. At dusk I reach the Escalante River. It is low. I camp on a hard, rippled sandbar. I heat water on the stove for soup and tea; I put on more clothes. I set up my MegaMid tent, spread the space blanket, unroll the Therm-a-Rest, fluff the bag. These tasks are comforting, necessities that crowd out the junky monologues in my mind. An archaic order begins to reclaim my life, one based on warmth.

I carry a cup of tea to the river and sit in the dark among the coyote willows. I listen to the riffles and ponder with them yet again Zen master Bassui's great question: "Who hears?" The nematodes, the leaves, and the minnows go about their business quite oblivious to my complicated world. Indifferent. Soon I will be more like them.

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