The Solitary Beast

August 19th, 2026

Big Pine Creek, California

---------------

I’m sitting at a sturdy picnic table as I type this. Names and initials are chiseled into it, and a layer of thick brown paint covers all but the most recent inscriptions.

I’m here taking a week’s vacation. The trip was launched with minimal planning- I just needed some time off after a 4 month marathon of planning a wedding, cancelling it, breaking up and moving. The nearby Sierras seemed like a good place to to limp across the finish line. I already had all the necessary gear. What my lack of foresight failed to grasp is that I would once again be throwing myself in to the expanse of the desert with no choice but to reckon with the forces of loneliness. Here I was again, facing my conscience with none of the welcome distractions of city life.

These solo trips always start as dreams of freedom: “I’m off to explore the American West with four wheels and a tent!” Invariably, usually on the second night, I realize what I haven gotten myself into. All the sinking feelings of the past few years rise to the surface. All the heartache, all the bad decisions, all the things that didn’t go my way. The beast I’ve managed to fend off back home finally boomerangs back and find me.

Yesterday, that beast slayed me while I was hiking back down from an alpine lake.

The elements, the weight, the exertion, and the hunger. They all amplify emotions on the trail. Although uncomfortable, it is helpful. With the volume turned up, it helps me hear the message. With hours of discomfort and nowhere to hide, and my usual slight-of-hand techniques gone, I am left with no other choice but the feel my goddamn feelings.

The beast mocked me, “How sad. Forty-one years old, and you’re taking your vacation all by yourself. No partner, no girlfriend, no wife or kids. No one to remember the vista above that turquoise lake. Just you. Forever twenty-one. Getting the freedom and quiet you always wanted, only to realize the price is paid in sadness.”

I had been resisting too long. Years of not wanting to look down the deep dark hole. I had to admit the pit sadness was right here in my chest. The same loneliness had been there on all of these trips. That empty feeling was what had me jump, grasping for the shore, hoping for something, or someone, to hold onto.

I stopped on the trail, and leaned my hip-belt on my trekking poles. I allowed my face to scrunch up, almost pretending to cry. It felt so foreign, like I was self-consciously singing karaoke but yearned to let it rip. It seemed indulgent to feel sorry for myself. But it made the tears come, so I fanned the flames of despondent self-loathing. “What if I’m really fucked? Maybe I really fucked up. What if I really fucked my life up? Ohhhh fuck what if it never happens for me?”

I could only go there for a few moments. It was a fairly busy trail, and I didn’t want anyone to be burdened with a hot mess in their way. The muscle memory of composing myself set itself in motion, my face and heart became stoic, and I marched on.

I stopped again a few minutes later and let the beast lash into me again. The twisting and squinting came easier this time. I felt noticeably better immediately afterward. Hmm. Wow. Really? So is THIS what people mean when they say you’ve got to feel your feelings? Out here in these beautiful mountains miserable all by myself? Sounds like a great vacation.

I had been avoiding facing and feeling all this, and now I could see it wasn’t going to swallow me whole. I had engaged in so much bad behavior in attempts to distract my attention from landing on this pain. I’ve tasted the rainbow of hangovers that ensue from these distractions enough to know the truth. They do not work. The pot is not filled with gold. It is filled with unpaid receipts soggy with tears and bleeding their toxic ink onto balled up tissue paper, sticky with dried up discarded human DNA.

Anyway, this is all to say, the pit was deep, and I knew it. There was more to face, more cheeky bastards to punch me in the face before I would have escape velocity. I kept walking and enjoyed the partial relief. I could start to see another way. I could see that letting it touch me would not engulf me in terminal depression. Oh, contraire, dear friend. It would relieve me of the burden.

The late afternoon sun demanded respect as the trees gave way to a broad, open, shade-less valley. There were still another thousand vertical feet to descend. I had run out of water half an hour prior. I knew the creek was close by, and I had a water pump if needed, so I kept trudging on. The ever-so-faint and familiar feeling of the feathers of heat exhaustion tickled my neck.

I got back down under the canopy of the cool creek bed. I was on the home stretch. I passed the cabins that I would have wanted to bring her back to, but never would.

I got back to the car, and then back to camp. I could feel my body was in a very subtle state of emergency after the long hike. I immediately got my stove out to boil water. I made instant mashed potatoes, and folded some cheese in for a slash of protein. I drank the carbs in and cracked a cold three dollar mocktail from the cooler, and then another. I was actually taking decent care of myself. My mind was blank. I rinsed off in the frigid stream, and felt reset.

Then, after all these basics were completed, I laid down naked in my tent. The padding was comfortable. For a moment at least, it was time to stare at the ceiling. And then my chest clenched in on itself. The sadness smacked me in the face, harder this time. It was personal this time. With the sound of the creek to muddle my crying from anyone in earshot, I let it hit me. I let the pain touch me. I let the horrible feelings have their day in court.

After the third or fourth wave of despondency, I sat up deliberately and pulled my meditation cushion over. This is the practice, after all. It is about dealing with what comes up, honestly. It is about allowing and investigating what’s ACTUALLY there, not how I want it to be. And this, too, is grist for the mill.

I set my timer and started to chant. I wept the chants out dramatically like a child having a meltdown at the grocery store. Snot and tears flowed into a concoction of misery, an excrement that was finally coming out to be seen. After the chants were done, I sat, raw but calmer. I sat firm, resolved to acknowledge what was there and not try to change it, skip it, kill it, or avoid it. I would recognize, acknowledge, investigate. I could do all of this. I knew how to soldier through those. But could I find care for myself? Could I give kindness to myself? Could I hold myself in a way that I’ve so often yearned for another to hold me? That was what had been eluding me. How to Handle Myself. How to Hold Myself in Times of Trouble. I had been so focused on Doing it Right and Figuring it Out that I had been really hard on myself along the way. With every challenge and bump in the road, I focused on improving my performance, and getting better, and fixing myself, or fixing others, or fixing my circumstances. But I hadn’t been letting myself breathe. I hadn’t been allowing the beautiful acrimonious sadness of life to shave my balls with the vulnerable blade of truth.

This story does not end, and it surely does not end with some insightful resolution. I cried in the woods all by myself, ok? But the truth of life is we keep moving forward, feeling kinda shitty, but find a crumpled piece of the map in our pocket that we had forgotten about. We unfurl it, flatten it out on the table, find the scotch tape, and add it back onto the map.