The Life of a Solo Traveling Boy

The life of a solo traveler is oh so solo: I wait solo in the airport, I sit solo on the flight, I drive solo in my rental car, I eat solo at campgrounds and in all restaurants (ie, In-N-Out four times), I walk solo down city streets, I hike solo down long silent trails, and I camp solo for longer, silenter nights.

The life of a solo traveling boy can be oh so lonely, and also oh so glorious.

I rarely check a bag these days, but I do check one for this BiGTRiP to Nevada and Utah since I’ll need my tent and sleeping bag for four campouts across four national parks. It’s a relatively new goal within a goal – not only visiting every national park in America, but also camping at each one. By the end of this trip I’ll have hit 31 of 63 on the former goal; though probably only 10 of 63 for the latter. I have some catching up to do in the camping department.

My first campout of the week returns me to Zion National Park, a park I visited eleven years ago during my “Running To” road trip around North America. Back then I camped out in the backcountry, a grueling and isolated ten-mile hike that was more than I bargained for. This time, I’m literally “hiking” across the visitor center parking lot to the nearest campground in the park.

But first, Angels Landing – one of the most famous hikes in America, certainly the best named, a narrow ascent that towers above Zion, including sections of trail with chains bolted to the rock face. Hold on tight, lest you slip and plummet and pray the angels catch you.

I didn’t hike Angels Landing eleven years ago. This time, I’m delighted to win the lottery, literally, after entering my name for access in the park’s lottery system, which limits the number of hikers on this popular trail. I imagine my odds are easier than, say, a family of five who need all five slots to hike the trail. I’m a solo traveling boy, after all.

I hop the park’s first shuttle amid the 5am dark, and Zion’s first sparks of color split the sky as we cut deeper into the park. It’s like straight out of Jurassic Park, this place. I swear I can hear John Williams and the screech of a T-Rex if I crane my ear.

I set out for Angels Landing, the same trailhead that led to my backcountry campground over a decade ago. I remember this ascent, weaving back and forth up the mountain with a glorious view of Zion. The chipmunks are everywhere, and they’re aggressive, not put off by humans, even encouraged by them, skittering by hikers’ boots, one pouncing on me in search of some nuts and dried mango that I munch along the way. I discover one sluggish squirrel with a literal pot belly, and Zion must be where rodents go to retire.

I hike to the peak alongside a family of four, two parents with a teenage son and daughter, and I immediately spot their Philly accents. The son is wearing an Eagles cap, and we chat a little at the top. They’re from Bucks County, my home county, even the same town where my aunt lives. The world is small.

The dad asks if I would be so kind to take their family’s picture, and I gladly do. And I feel my first pang of sad on this trip.

Beyond this Philly family, I also can’t help eyeing this trio of college students, as I latch onto their conversations along the trail. They’re on their own national park tour across Utah, only in the reverse direction of mine: starting in Moab, home to Arches National Park on the eastern side of the state, and finishing their way westward to Zion. I smile, thinking about how I’ll be in Moab and Arches by week’s end. I watch them cheer together as one guy lies on his stomach and cranes over the edge of a cliff with his phone pointed thousands of feet down, the other two guys pinning his legs and feet behind him.

The pangs hit me harder with this group. It’s a sadness mixed with loneliness, but this feeling is less about yearning for a couple other people here with me on this hike, or in this park, or on this eleven-day road trip; it’s more about yearning for a couple college friends to have joined me on such a hike, in such a park, on such a road trip back when I was in college.

I don’t know if this complicated feeling has a name — some posthumous yearning for what could have been and simply never will be. It’s the finality of it all.

One of the college friends sees me taking a selfie on the peak. “Would you like me to take your picture?” he asks. I feel invaded, my chosen solitude intruded upon, but I accept. For this fleeting moment, my phone in his hands, all four of us atop this landing where angels gather, I am a friend amongst them. Upon receiving my phone back, I never see them again.

Back at my car, I’ve packed some ready-to-eat meals that require only boiling water. I unpack my jet boiler and fire it up in the parking lot. Only after boiling my water do I realize I’ve forgotten my outdoor cutlery set at home.

How am I going to eat this chicken teriyaki rice meal out of the steaming bag? I scour my luggage and every crevice of the rental car, searching for a fork or some fork-adjacent item. I go to my toiletry bag and find my toothpaste. I squeeze the paste down the tube to the closed end, now sturdy enough for scooping rice and chicken like a little spatula.

The life of a solo traveling boy can be oh so glamorous.

That night, I set up my tent at my site but the temperature remains over 90 degrees even after sunset. Lying alone in my tent with no airflow, it’s kinda miserable.

To add a chef’s kiss to the moment, my newly purchased inflatable sleeping pad deflates after just twenty minutes. The gravely ground welcomes my back, the air still sweltering around me, and I escape the prison of my tent for the freedom of my rental car twenty yards away. I roll down the windows and lean the driver’s seat all the way back, and somehow I find sleep.

An hour later, I’m awoken by powerful gusts, the wind whistling through the parking lot. I frantically think about my tent, which I’d left unpegged, and I rush back to find my tent overturned in a bush, nearly into the neighboring camp site. I strip the poles and bunch up the tent, throwing it in the back of my car to deal with tomorrow.

Only I don’t.

The next night at a campground in Bryce Canyon National Park, I see no point in rebuilding my tent when my sleeping pad still has some hidden hole that I don’t want to waste time locating. How would I even patch it? As with Zion, I sleep in my car for the second straight night.

So glad I checked a bag for this trip.

Like Zion before it, Bryce Canyon is inundated with visitors. So. Many. People. It’s the value and also the price of a national park tag; nature can be a bit of a drag.

But Bryce is beautiful. I’m refreshed by the sudden influx of green amid the orange-saturated landscape of southern Utah, and I’m wowed by the army of hoodoos, these spindly, otherworldly rocks that have undergone generations of weathering. They stand in rows in the park’s central amphitheater, not technically a river-cut “canyon” as the park’s name suggests.

This park, this amphitheater feels more like a sanctuary. Dozens of hoodoos align in what’s called the Silent City, as if a quiet choir, ready to sing.

I’m convinced these particular rocks will be the first to cry out should we humans ever lose our way.

The next day I venture further eastward to Capitol Reef National Park, my third national park in as many days, and one of the most low-key national parks I’ve ever visited. It’s the most inland of Utah’s five national parks, the most obscure, clearly the least visited. There is no entry gate, and no enforced fee, unless you go by the honor system at the visitor center. The red rock walls stand just as mightily as Zion and Bryce, only with a more tangible, sacred hush.

No summer crowd is divine.

My campground at Capitol Reef neighbors a fruit orchard, one of several in the park, and visitors are encouraged to pick fruit when said fruit are in season — which, sadly, they are not. How lovely is that, though? Several deer frolic freely through my campground, and I can’t help feeling like I’m catching a glimpse of Eden.

The temperatures more favorable, I decide to pitch my tent tonight after spreading my limp sleeping pad on a picnic table and actually locating the hole fairly easily, patching it with some medical tape from my first aid kit. I shake my head; I get oh so stuck in my head sometimes.

I sleep soundly this night. Perhaps the checked bag was worth it, after all.

I wake up before sunrise and drive through the 5am dark a couple miles away to a place called Sunset Point. It’s named for the opposite time of the day, but I figure this spot will do. I brew a cup of coffee with my jet boiler and walk out to a rocky ledge and sit.

I watch one of the best sunrises of my life — just me and my coffee and the sun and the Lord and the red rocks of this national park. Just another morning in the life of a solo traveling boy.

Yeah, the loneliness is there. I notice it. I feel it. I resist the engrained impulse to update my Instagram story amid this eleven-day stretch without social media.

I sit with myself, I sit with Jesus, and I survive.

Beyond the loneliness that follows me from Vegas into the wilderness, I also feel the spark of possibility in each new day of traveling solo. Of seeing more of this epic creation. Of driving roads I’ve never traversed while thinking and praying words I’ve never thought or prayed, as yellow lines snake before me and beside me, mesmerizing me mile by mile.

I feel more connected to myself, my actual self, not my projected social media self. I feel more connected to Jesus, better able to articulate my fears and angers and sadnesses with him. I am not editing or edited out here. I am as raw as the weathered rocks of Utah. It’s oh so lonely and oh so intimate.

I travel solo to see more of the wonderful things out there, and also those things deep within, the beautiful and the difficult, and to survive, and to return home more integrated, more alive.