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Wednesday, August 10, 2005

It just isn't safe

Although I wish more people would take my poll, I have a pretty good idea what the results from a larger sample would be. I am seriously disheartened by some of the things I hear from smart, independent women on this question. To list a few:
  • Solo camping in the backcountry feels like a bad plan.

  • It just isn't safe. (See [LINK])

  • Rape is a crime of opportunity. (This one particularly bothered me--is every man, every male solo hiker like me, a potential rapist?)

  • You should never go camping alone.
I know the prospect of being out in the woods by yourself can seem daunting, intimidating, even scary, as many unfamiliar things are. What bothers me is hearing from people I've always seen as models of confidence this categorical rejection of a solo overnight in the backcountry. Indeed, it's more than a categorical rejection, its that the very idea of doing such a thing would never even cross their minds in the manner of "I could camp in the backcountry by myself if I wanted to." I learned that if others heard I had suggested that such a trip was even possible, the frequent reaction was "why would he want to endanger you that way?"

I know I'm going to hear that what I'm saying defies common sense, but if I should have a daughter I hope she will have the opposite mentality, and I hope the timid chorus from our society does not drown out whatever I try to teach my daughter about what she can do. "You can't do that, it's just not safe . . . a woman can't do certain things by herself . . . you might hurt yourself, etc." Obviously, I do want this girl to grow up with some common sense, but most common sense comes from exposure to things, and none from standing inside a wall somewhere hearing about the monsters outside.

To me it's not really a male or female thing, although I'll hear that I only discount the sex difference because I'm not a woman. When I was about seven, I rowed across a sizeable lake by myself to collect railroad spikes. People worried, but nothing remotely bad happened. One summer during high school my brother and I rode around Moscow on the Metro knowing three words of Russian and the Cyrillic alphabet. A week later I took a bus into central Leningrad (this was during the Chernenko years) by myself. Nothing remotely bad happened. I'm sure my calculations would have been different in modern Russia, and maybe also if I were a woman, but I can't see myself ever saying "oh, I can't possibly do that because I'm a woman."

Someone at my highly un-diverse high school reunion was telling me how one of our absent classmates, a successful music producer, had hired a black intermediary to meet with certain potential clients in certain areas of Los Angeles. I'm sure the business reasons for doing this were sound, but the story was told to me more like "and of course he couldn't go there himself as a white person." Now, I know there are some bad neighborhoods, and I know that most people from the little hometown would find it a novel and potentially disconcerting experience to be the only white person among many black people, but I'm pretty sure a white person doesn't literally take his life in his hands when going to such neighborhoods. It may be daunting, intimidating, even scary, as many unfamiliar things are, but it isn't beyond the pale of all reason.

The more familiar you are with a situation, or a type of situation, the better you are able to figure out its attendant risks and plan for them. I know I'm not going to die in the woods if I tell someone my basic itinerary and have a dry sleeping bag, but someone who shuts out the possibility of a solo trip never has a chance to figure this out. (Oh, yes, a bear or cougar could get me. I'm sure this is not a zero risk, but it's negligible.) I'm surely more likely to die or be injured in a car accident driving to or from the trailhead than I am while hiking. I don't have the statistics to prove this, but think about it for two seconds.

Backpacking is not scuba diving. You don't need a "hike buddy." It saddens me that a lot of people I know will never experience--would never even consider experiencing--the delights of hiking alone, of consulting no one, of following only a personal agenda or no agenda at all. It's too much to rule out because of misplaced fear.


posted at 11:01 AM

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