I felt like a nomad, going to conquer the woods on my own with my big backpack, apple in one hand, and water bottle dangling from the carabiner attached to my hip straps. As my boots shuffled the dry leaves on the trail on the way to finding my spot, I was itching to start writing. When I couldn’t wait any longer, I ventured off the trail and into the trees. They all looked the same. As I walked deeper and deeper into the woods, I tried to memorize their features so that I would be able to find my way back. My heartbeat quickened as I took mental notes: to my left was a stump with two small branches sticking out like arms reaching for the sky on either side. In front of me was a tall oak, its branches in a column, pointing in the direction I was walking. A few steps ahead, I passed a huge rock with green moss covering one side. Behind it was an evergreen tree with short branches and needles that held the last bit of snow before the strong summer sun would pierce the canopy covering over me in the coming weeks and melt it away. I finally came to two, decently sturdy-looking trees where I set up my hammock for the night. I pulled it out from its small sack and wrapped the hanging straps around the trunks that would become my temporary home as I would sit with my thoughts, some markers, and paper where I told myself that if I poured out my soul for the next twenty-four hours, some earth-shattering revelation would magically come.
I always used to search for ways to leave a trace. I wanted desperately to be remembered, and I aspired to leave a legacy on every sacred place I touched. I wanted to be remembered as the kind, yet somewhat mysterious character that I thought I was. I wanted this so badly that it consumed my thoughts. I believed that trying to make a certain impression as the person I thought I wanted to be would lead to leaving my mark. Alone in the woods, I expected that in moments of solitude and reflection, I would experience some kind of emotional breakthrough or profound self-discovery where I would realize exactly how I had changed during my time in Colorado, and that I would write a reflection about this that would stand out above all the others. For months I had been mentally preparing myself for this spiritual experience that I was sure I would have when I spent my twenty-four hours alone in the woods. I had no doubt in my mind that the speech I would write would bring people to tears, make them question their lives and think about things greater than themselves. And most importantly, they sure as hell wouldn’t forget it.
I started unpacking my backpack as I absorbed my surroundings. I wish I could say that this place was memorable…that it was on top of a mountain with some breathtaking view, or by a flowing stream in a clearing with deer walking toward me like I was a member of their own kind. But the truth is that this place was just trees. Tall, brown, leafless trees towering over me and my navy blue hammock and my overstuffed green backpack with the duct-tape eyes I gave it when I adopted it. I took out my tarp and started walking the fifty-foot radius around my hammock trying to find rocks to pin it down to the ground. But I couldn’t find any of the right size, so instead I collected sticks that I could stake into the damp soil under my feet. I found myself cursing the forecast for rain because I convinced myself that the rain was the only thing keeping me from sleeping outside under the stars. I took out my notebook, crawled into my cocoon, and started to reflect.
An hour later my notebook was still blank, so I put it down. The hunger pangs set in, and I realized that I was so focused on what I should write about in my profound reflection that I had forgotten to eat. I took out my sandwich and granola bar, and then dragged my backpack under the protection of my tarp so that nothing would get wet in case it rained. Or snowed, because I knew that was equally probable.
The next three hours were an endless cycle of writing, crossing out, re-wording, piecing together, and scrapping entire pages. All the while, I never left my hammock. When the temperature started to drop, I stayed where I was and reached toward my backpack. I pulled out all of my layers and struggled without getting up to transform myself into a puffy human caterpillar. I put on endless layers of fleece and down and wrapped myself up in my zero-degree sleeping bag inside the fabric of my hammock. I couldn’t see the sun setting from under my tarp, but I imagined it dipping below the mountains behind the woods as I felt the temperatures drop. I went back to staring at my notebook, which was now covered in words written in nine different colors differentiating the drafts and edits I had done over the past few hours. In the dark, I struggled to get the words out of me. My headlamp slowly faded as the worn-out battery drained inside. I was distracted by the swooshing sounds of the wind, and by my frustration at my expectation that being alone in the woods would allow the words to flow out of me effortlessly. Nothing was going as planned, so I decided to save my headlamp’s battery in case someone wandered the woods in the middle of the night and I had to run for my life.
In the middle of the night, I woke up so thirsty that I felt like I could drink an entire river. Without opening my eyes, I stretched my arm out of my hammock to grab my water bottle. When my fingers hooked through the plastic loop, I unscrewed the top and drank so fast that I nearly spilled the entire liter all over myself. Shivering, I rubbed my eyes and peeled them open to look at my watch. It was 12:56 a.m., and I thought I might freeze to death. I should have gotten up to run around and warm myself up, but instead I just remained in my cocoon and shook my arms around to try and get some blood flowing.
For about the thousandth time, I started to think about how insane it was that I was surviving in the middle of the woods by myself. In extreme conditions, there’s a line between completely miserable and absolutely epic and I thought I was crossing it.
When I woke up in the morning, I was disappointed that I only had seven hours left in my solitude because I had convinced myself that I was having a revelation and I didn’t want it to end. But really, I was just stressed. By hour twenty-two, all I had done was sit in my hammock under my tarp and stare at my notebook, trying and failing to get inspired. I knew I was wasting my time and I didn’t know what to do about it, so I just kept writing.
When my twenty-four hours were up, I took down my tarp. I packed up my bag, stuffed my hammock back into its sack, and took off most of my layers. I didn’t want to leave the woods because I knew I had wasted my time. I wanted to turn back the clock and have a re-do. But I had no choice; the opportunity had passed. I put on my backpack and attached my water bottle with the carabiner back to my hip strap. The apple in my hand was gone, and I started to look for the stump with the arms, and the tree with the column of branches, and the rock with the moss and the pine tree.
Two days later I read my final reflection to the sixty people who had become my extended family during the short four months we spent together in Colorado. I spoke about my desire to leave an impact.
“When we go into the Wilderness, we practice the seven principles of Leave No Trace. But I think if I were to apply this practice to my experience here, I would be cheating myself out of the whole thing. So instead, here are my seven principles…of how I will leave my trace.”
Now I realize how wrong I was.
I wanted to leave an impact for my own benefit because I had met people who had left such a mark on my heart that I put pressure on myself to be exactly that for them. I wanted them to think as highly of me as I did of them. And when this idea consumed my thoughts, I started wasting my time.
The next day someone told me that she noticed a change in me. She told me I had given up my desire to leave an impact and it drove me crazy because I knew it wasn’t true yet.
I did not have an emotional breakthrough in the woods because I was so busy focusing on the past: on ways I had changed, and on the false personality that I created for myself, believing that was truly who I wanted to be. I spent my twenty-four hours pretending this place was significant in ways that it wasn’t, and I told myself that it was everything I expected it to be: emotional breakthroughs and moments of self-discovery. In fact, I didn’t even realize the importance of my spot in the woods until I was assigned to write about a significant place for English class. And I didn’t even know why I chose to write about it until my second draft: the honest account.
In the months following my solo experience, I thought about my twenty-four hours wishing I had lived them. I wished I had gotten out of my hammock in the middle of the night to run around. I wished I had climbed all the trees I could. I wished I had sung to myself. I wished I had danced. I wished I had stayed up late. I wished I had done anything but sit in my hammock thinking about the past and trying to be who I thought I wanted to be, putting all this pressure on myself that this was it. My only chance to be alone in the woods.
But there will be many more days to spend alone in the woods.
Almost one year later, I no longer feel the need to force my legacy.
Instead, I do the things I love to do, surrounded by the people I love and who love me. We go to the Hudson to watch the sunset. We spend Friday nights sharing pints of ice cream and watching movies that we rant about for hours. We go camping and apple picking and we put ourselves in the way of beauty because it surrounds us constantly. We live every day like it’s our only chance to be alone in the woods, but instead we look up from our notebooks, take down the tarps over our heads, and step out of our hammocks.
I’m glad I didn’t live during those twenty-four hours because a wasted day is far better than a wasted life. That spot in the woods with the trees towering overhead is the place where I found a piece of myself. It only took months to realize it.