Every time someone dies alone in the backcountry media reports often blast solo tramping as dangerous and irresponsible. But going alone might be better for you than you think
Heavy rain was hammering Graham Sutherland who – dirty, soaked and tired – had been alone for nine days. He was on the last day of Rakiura/Stewart Island’s North-West Circuit and other than a lone German tramper heading in the opposite direction, he hadn’t seen a soul for four days. You might assume he was having a miserable time, but that would be wrong. It was a day of unforgettable euphoria and one that remains vivid in his memory eight years later. But Sutherland struggles to explain why. “I think it’s close to the idea of oneness,” he says with slight hesitation, not really happy with the word ‘oneness’ to describe his experience. “The bush really comes alive when it’s raining hard and I felt so good walking with the rain falling on me. “It seemed so natural and made me feel really alive as well. “I’m sure if I was tramping with others I would not have felt that experience as strongly and for as long as I did.” Eight years later, just talking to me about this day motivates him to plan his next solo tramp. “I’m not a spiritual person, but solo tramping is probably the closest I get to it,” Sutherland says. “Certainly, I feel I have a deeper connection with my surroundings and the Earth.” Sutherland, 45, has been a soloer since 1998 when he moved to Wellington. Going solo was a necessity; he had time in the week to go tramping, but no one to go with. So he went on his own and not only discovered that he liked it, but eventually that he preferred it. Before long he was soloing in the Tararua Ranges every week and on longer trips once a month. “It’s not just about being on your own, it’s more about the purity of the experience, having nothing else to distract you from nature,” he says. “It’s one of those things you get a taste for and you start doing a bit more of until you start wanting to do bigger tramps alone.” Sutherland was so intrigued by solo tramping he decided do his master’s thesis on it while studying at Victoria University. He completed Going solo: A study of solo tramping in New Zealand in 2002 after researching the topic for two years. It discusses who and how many people are doing it, some of their experiences and an overview of its place in New Zealand’s outdoor culture. It credits ‘Mr Explorer’ Charlie Douglas as possibly New Zealand’s first recognised solo tramper. Douglas lived from 1840 to 1916 and explored South Westland’s mountains and valleys, often on behalf of the New Zealand Surveying Department, but also to satisfy his own fascination with the backcountry. Sutherland says Douglas was a contemporary of American philosopher and naturalist Henry David Thoreau and like Thoreau waxed lyrical about his wilderness contemplations in his journals. ‘Fools say that knowledge can only be acquired by books and men – cribbing, as it were, other people’s thought – and call me a fool and even worse for wasting my life in mountain solitudes, simply because I don’t open up mines of gold and silver,’ Douglas wrote in one entry. ‘I have now been wandering about the uninhabited parts of New Zealand for over five and thirty years, always finding something in nature new to me and the world.” Since the time of Mr Explorer Douglas, as he came to be known, many have gone alone into the hills in search of solitude, peace and quiet and a deeper connection with nature. [caption id="attachment_6482" align="aligncenter" width="1280"]
