Backcountry Fears

Number one: being crushed by a moose

“Don’t pack your fears.”

That’s a common admonishment when people post a list of their backpacking gear for online commenters to rip apart. It becomes a shorthand to cover a wide variety of pointed questions. Why are you bringing a hatchet when a pocket knife suffices? Are you really going to eat ten thousand calories a day on a weekend trip? Do you even know how to use half the items in your first aid kit?

But when I talk to people offline about backpacking, the fears they most often express are harder to pack for. How do I get over the mental block of peeing outside? What if I can’t hike as far as I thought I could? What if a raccoon steals my boots from the tent vestibule? (Okay, that last one is mine.)

Sometimes we are perfectly confident in our gear and skills, but the fears come from other people. A couple weeks before my solo trip to Isle Royale in 2022, I went to my annual checkup with a new primary care physician. The intake questionnaire focused heavily on healthy and active habits, likely screening to make sure I hadn’t fallen into a pandemic depression. The doctor seemed skeptical that I was accurately reporting my activity levels, so to convince her that I do occasionally get off the couch, I mentioned that I was about to solo backpack 40+ miles in a remote national park.

If that scene had been in a sitcom, there would have been a record scratch as my doctor put her pen down, looked me in the eye, and said, “Well, I just don’t think that’s a good idea.”

My only response was a brow furrowed in confusion, so she followed up by asking me if my parents were on board with my trip. I was 34 at the time.¹

She hemmed and hawed a bit more and then presented her main argument: “Last year, a woman was pushed off a cliff by her boyfriend at a national park out west.”

I managed not to vocalize any of my initial reactions:

1. Good thing I’m single and this is a solo trip!

2. No one is going all the way out to Isle Royale to murder me—do you know how fast those ferry reservations fill up?

3. If you’re going to worry about anything, it should be the moose. Moose have terrible eyesight, so one could trip on my guy lines and fall on my tent while I’m asleep. My tent would absolutely crumble under 1000+ pounds of flailing hoofs and antlers, so I’d be flattened into a very unappetizing pancake.²

What I actually said: “I have a satellite messenger with SOS capabilities, so my parents can track my location during my hike and I can reach out if something goes wrong.”³

Neither of our arguments convinced the other, so we eventually moved onto other topics. However, her words still shook me. I knew I was capable, so why did a stranger look at me and see incompetence?

En route to Isle Royale soon after, I had a very different exchange with an older woman. I had turned the long drive to the ferry in Grand Portage, MN into a scenic road trip, with my first night at Amnicon Falls State Park. My campsite lacked trees on one side, which gave me a direct view into the next site. Three generations of a family were spending the weekend together, along with a very sweet pup named Daisy.

Daisy didn’t understand why her people were studiously ignoring the fact that a stranger (me) had set up a tent just a dozen yards away from them and she was getting more and more stressed by my presence. So, I asked the matriarch if I could introduce myself to Daisy—let her sniff me to show that I was friendly.

While I showered Daisy with pets, I chatted with the older woman. She was surprised that I was camping alone and even more so that I was heading off to Isle Royale solo. I half expected another cautionary finger wag as I gave her the broad strokes of my itinerary, but instead she said, “I wish I had done that when I was your age.”

I wonder what fears stopped her from going. Had she worried that her kids and husband couldn’t fend for themselves while she was away?⁴ Had she tried on a heavy external frame backpack and doubted whether she was strong enough to carry it? Or had her doctor—like mine—told her that it wasn’t safe for a woman to backpack alone?

I also wonder what could have been said to encourage her younger self. Because the worst backcountry fears aren’t the ones that add five pounds of deadweight to our packs. The worst backcountry fears are the ones that prevent us from ever stepping foot on trail.

1. And yes, they were on board!

2. If anyone has an idea for how to pack for this fear, I’m all ears.

3. I got a Garmin inReach Mini after my trip to the Porkies where I got stuck in the mud and was super anxious about missing my check-in time with my parents because I didn’t have cell service. You can read the whole story here:

4. She did all the camp chores—cooking, cleaning, walking the dog, filling water, garbage runs—despite the fact that her husband, two kids and their spouses, and three teenage grandkids were all just lounging around the campsite the entire time I was there.