“Wow, so you traveled all over Alaska all by yourself?”
He looks at me with shock, even disbelief, as if I’d just told him I ran a marathon on Antarctica or perhaps the moon. I nod with a smirk.
Yes. I traveled all over Alaska all by myself.
What, like it’s hard?
Here’s a multi-faceted realization I’ve found in recent years: I absolutely love to travel solo — and most people absolutely do not. Traveling solo doesn’t daunt me; indeed, it ignites something primal and wondrous in me.
Comparing myself to how most other people travel, though, is another mountain: Why are they not like me? Why am I not at all like them?
Left to my own wanderings, I feel no fear or shame in venturing to faraway places by myself. I just wandered across Alaska for two weeks, and I’ve done it across 48 other states and 6 provinces for nine months on the road. These past two years, I’ve taken solo trips to national parks in California and Washington, getting off the grid with the Lord, a journal, and the blessed open road.
Have I felt lonely at times? Sure.
But have I felt despondent, mired in solitary misery throughout these journeys? Not at all.
On the contrary — something leaps within me when I’m alone in a place I’ve never been. Or when I’ve returned to a place I love, for that matter. It’s as if hope takes tangible form before my eyes: every dash in the road, every peak beyond the horizon, every park, every city, every cup of coffee in a local café.
Alas, our comparisons to other people induce a terrible conflict. How we look, how we dress, how much money we make, how many friends we have, and pertinent to this post . . . how we travel.
When I peek beyond my wandering bubble and hear of friends and loved ones sharing special trips with one another, my heart sinks. Social media does us no favors here.
But my heart doesn’t stay sunk; it bubbles back to its usual place in my chest amid the tension of many other feelings.
I want what they have; also, I do not.
Because back to my bubble, I enjoy traveling solo. I really do. It’s thrilling to wake up every day with only a vague sense of what’s coming. I’ve learned to love traveling spontaneously within a skeleton of structure (ie, I know where I’m sleeping each night, but the next 16 hours of daylight are up for grabs!).
Back outside my bubble though, I wonder: Am I intentionally missing out? Am I robbing myself of other joys? Why do I look back on fifteen years of travels as an adult, mostly travels without people but also some with them, and more fondly recount the trips without?
I put Alaska right up there — one of the best trips of my life. I’ll be reliving that solo trip for quite some time.
Here’s the thing, though, about my solo travels: it’s rarely entirely solo. I’ve long enjoyed using Couchsurfing as a way to find not just free lodging but full-fledged connection with like-spirited hosts who volunteer their homes for story-seeking travelers. And there’s nothing like a hostel to bring together eclectic wanderers from all corners of this planet. Both modes of lodging are great for a budget, but even better for a story.
So, yes, I traveled solo across Alaska for two weeks. And also I didn’t.
~
In the mountain-cupped island paradise of Juneau, accessible only by air or sea, I stayed downtown in a hostel for three nights. There, I connected with this young German guy named Leon who was taking a summer trip around Canada and the Pacific Northwest. As my big trip was just beginning, his was nearing its end.
We bonded over our nightly shared misery of another roommate’s horrific snoring — nay, wheezing — as well as our shared love for solo travel. We even bumped into each other at the airport on our ways out of Juneau — he to Seattle and myself to Anchorage.
I told Leon that Seattle is my favorite city, besides Asheville, and I gave him a list of my favorite places there. We followed each other on Instagram, and I experienced a precious joy upon following another human’s story once our pages finished overlapping (for now).
The rest of my Alaskan adventure, I enjoyed seeing where Leon’s southward journey went as my own continued northward.
~
I stayed with an older guy in Anchorage via Couchsurfing. I learned that he’s an elected government official, serving his third and final term for the city of Anchorage. He and his friends took a last-minute weekend trip the day before I arrived, but he still let me crash at his house while he was away. He gave me the code to his back door and everything.
“Make yourself at home,” he messaged me. I certainly took him up on that.
For most of my two days in Anchorage, I had that house to myself. It was the only rainy stretch I encountered in Alaska, and it was lovely to settle in after some poncho-ridden explorations of the city. I did some laundry and watched some Phils games, emotionally and physically refueling in this middle part of my trip.
My host returned home on my last afternoon there, and he was just as lovely in person as he was via messaging. He treated me to dinner and volunteered to drive me high into the foothills for a grander view of Anchorage — a view I’d have never found without a car, certainly, but also a view I’d have never even known existed without a local’s telling me so.
That’s the magic of Couchsurfing. It’s more than a free meal or a free door; it’s a window into living somewhere. It’s the uncommon kindness of hosting strangers but also the common hope that we can all share this same vibrant air.
My host dropped me off at the train station the next morning with a hug, and I’m still touched by his hospitality — whether he was home with me or not.
~
Arriving by 7-hour train at Denali National Park, I started feeling sick: headache, fever, general wooziness. I took some meds and pitched my tent at the campground, deciding to settle in for the evening rather than explore the park until 10:30 sunset. It was a bummer not to make the most of my limited time there, but I’ve been learning to listen to my body when it’s in pain — something that doesn’t come naturally, for whatever reason.
My body was sick, and yes, my soul also felt alone.
I was reading a book at my site’s picnic table when a young man from the neighboring campsite started stepping my direction. I had noticed him earlier with his large family over there. Now it was just him by himself, and I started wondering why in the world he would be walking over to me.
“Excuse me,” he said, “I don’t mean to intrude. But we made an extra baked potato for dinner over here, and I was wondering if you’d like it?”
I smiled, graciously accepting Ryan’s potato. He even brought over tubs of butter and sour cream to complete the gesture. I told him a little about my solo trip across Alaska as he shared about his family’s trip to Denali. He explained that his fellow adults and the children were all out exploring while he manned the camp with his sleeping infant.
Eventually, that sleeping infant started to cry and Ryan fled to tend to her. But for a few lovely minutes, sickly though my body remained, my soul felt a little less alone in Alaska.
~
Back down in Anchorage for a night, I connected with another Couchsurfing host: an eccentric guy named Mark who unfortunately had a car accident the day of my train ride. No worries though, he assured me; his mom would pick me up from the train station instead.
Yup. His mom. And she was such a mom, too.
Barbara was her such-a-mom name. She sported short, gray hair and glasses, and she drove a Subaru SUV. She waited patiently for me in the train station lot while I waited impatiently for my luggage to come off the train. It must have been at least thirty minutes, and she never appeared put off — by the delay or with picking me up in the first place.
She gladly drove me to her and her son’s house, where I met Mark. I was going to treat him to a meal that evening if all the timing of things had worked out, but that’s the area I love to grow when it comes to solo travel especially: things change; you must adapt.
“Maybe you could help me remove some slugs from my potato plants?” Mark offered instead of that meal.
Like I said, eccentric.
Barbara showed me how to work the coffee the next morning, inviting me to fix some eggs and toast for myself before I left. Mark drove me in his mom’s SUV to the bus station the next morning for the next leg of my journey.
“We didn’t have much time together,” he said on that twenty-minute drive, “so tell me one travel story before you go.”
And so I did. Reached back to 2014 and told him one of my favorites.
~
These last few years of solo traveling, I’ve been on high-alert for local art that stirs something in me. I’ve started filling my home with art pieces of cities and parks, manifestations of the memories I found traveling there. In Juneau I grew enamored with the mountains and glaciers surrounding that city, and I wanted a piece of artwork to remember that visual always.
I wandered into a downtown art gallery with an elderly couple at the cashier’s window, and I perused the walls of that place adorned with work from a dozen artists. I gravitated to one wall featuring imaginative/nature artwork by a college student in Rhode Island. A sign on the wall with his short-haired picture read that any purchases of his artwork would help support his college endeavors.
My heart leapt; I couldn’t not support this guy. One of his pieces was of Juneau’s Mendenhall Glacier, and it was exactly what I was looking for.
Just to be safe, though, I waited a day to peruse other art galleries in the city. No impulse purchases. Even though my impulses are generally pretty good (I think).
After confirming my initial impulse, I returned to that gallery the next day, the elderly couple behind the desk replaced by a younger guy with long hair. I didn’t think much of it, walking to the back wall to retrieve that glacier artwork. I went to checkout, and the guy behind the desk smiled at me.
“That’s actually one of my pieces. I hope you enjoy it!”
I laughed; of course it was him. Alain, the artist, signed and messaged the back of his art for me, and it now hangs in my home alongside paintings of the Seattle skyline, Oregonian mountains, and more. I hiked to the Mendenhall Glacier the morning before the afternoon I left Juneau, and Alain’s artwork of the place makes it all the more memorable.
When I look at his piece now, it brings me back to that trip. His message on the back connects me not just to an artist with a smiling face, but also to a whole crop of people who made this solo adventure across Alaska so special and not so solo.
~
For two weeks in Alaska, my heart soared across four cities and two national parks via train and bus and plane and boat. I saw bald eagles with their teenage chicks; I saw puffins soaring over the sea; I saw glacier melt rivers that shimmered grayish green through long canyons; I met strangers who wanted to talk to me; I got sick; I healed; I couldn’t get enough — then, I had enough.
After two weeks, you know, I was ready to come home. Ready to return to my bed, water my thirsty plants, resume work at my usual coffee shops, and otherwise reconnect with the beautiful people of the Blue Ridge.
Asheville is my favorite city, after all.
Even though I do love traveling solo, how it fuels me like few things do, I love my people-time too. Maybe I require more time away from others than most. Maybe my cup gets filled more easily on the road without them around. Maybe I’m just weird like that. Maybe it’s okay to be weird.
But despite my affinity for solo travel, I also recognize this other vital truth.
I need regular souls in my circle. Souls who know my name, souls who know my broken tune.
I need the thrill of an open road to walk alone from time to time, and I need the return to a lighted doorstep.
