A longtime dearth of whackos in the bush leads solo tramper Hazel Phillips to conclude that, statistically, she must be the weirdo.

People often panic when they see a woman tramping alone. Once, at Lakehead Hut in Nelson Lakes National Park, I arrived in the dark by myself and was received with a moderate level of hand-wringing anxiety by those already in the hut.

“Where’s the rest of your party?” someone asked.

“It’s just me,” I explained.

“You’re … you’re by … YOURSELF?!”

“Yep, just me.”

“But … it’s DARK.”

“Oh yes, I know. It was dark when I left the car.”

We danced around in mutual panic (instigated by them, but these things can be contagious). We’d all calmed down by the time a man, about my age and build, walked through the door. Alone. Nobody panicked on his behalf. Perhaps reserves of redundant worry had been spent on me, or perhaps he did not appear panic-worthy.

People ask me: “But what about safety?” And I talk through gear, like my new Escapist fly (love-heart eyes emoji) and my OR Helium bivvy bag, and the importance of being able to look after yourself if something does go wrong because a PLB won’t cuddle you to sleep in a blizzard. They nod and listen, and then they raise their eyebrows meaningfully and say: “But what about safety?”

What they mean is: But what about all those lurkers in the wilderness?

There’s this idea that the bush is crawling with stalkers, but I reckon the wilderness is a long drive for a short day at the beach for your average fruitcake. Admittedly, there are plenty of stories of drunken hunters and blokes peeing on people asleep in their bunks. But proper, card-carrying nutbars are hard to come by.

This has led me to one conclusion: statistically speaking, this absence of proper weirdos probably means that I’m the weirdo. That’s okay, I know I’m pretty weird – you can look up some of my previous Wilderness columns if you need further info. After all, I wear Crocs and – well, isn’t that enough?

Sometimes, instead of panicking, people get all excited. “You’re amazing,” an elderly couple once informed me once. I’ve recently met a few blokes who take exception to this praise for women going solo. One mate reckons if a woman tramps solo she’s #inspirational, but if he does it he’s a societal pest, posing a danger to others. I understand that, but women are taught from the earliest age that the world is not a safe place for them, so there’s a lot to overcome. There’s an entire suitcase of fear to unpack and chuck out before you can even begin to contemplate going solo. 

On a deeply serious note, I wonder if this fear is embedded in the national consciousness and has melded into our tramping psyche. I’ve been hunting around, and I think the last criminal tramping situation of a gendered or sexual nature was the disappearance of the Swedes Urban Höglin and Heidi Paakkonen in 1989. I do wonder if such events – the Swedes were headline news for a long time – disproportionately affect how we view the risk of harm from others while in the bush.

I tramped into East Hawdon Biv recently, armed with bivvy bag and tarp in case it was occupied. A Brazilian guy was in the biv but there was a bunk spare, so I introduced myself and we spent a pleasant night sharing stories from our respective cultures. I admit I had to overcome some discomfort at sharing a tiny space with a hulking man with a crossbow. I did consider going further up to bivvy solo. I suspect he was equally uncomfortable with the prospect of sharing the bivvy with a random woman. In Brazil he’d never seen a woman by herself in the backcountry. He said he wouldn’t even go there by himself because of the risk posed by other people. Bandits and so on.

Another guy I met, a European, said it’s totally normal where he’s from to see women solo, but the sheer number of people he’d see in the backcountry helped. Perhaps culture has a stronger influence on our level of comfort than we realise.

People might think the wilderness is over-run with crackpots, but in reality their mothership is usually parked somewhere at a bar on Ponsonby Road. Ask me how I know.