I recently took a 2-night / 3-day solo backpacking trip to a local State Park here in South Carolina. I usually try to escape to the woods once every year in the fall.
The woods were quiet—the kind that doesn’t come from stillness but from absence. No notifications. No schedules. No algorithm deciding what you should care about next. Just me, a tent, and a world that wasn’t man-made.
There’s something about being outside long enough that the pace of nature starts to sync with your own heartbeat. You stop rushing. You stop needing. You stop checking the time. Somewhere between the crackle of the fire and the chill of the morning air, the noise fades, and what’s left actually feels like you.
But being alone in the wild isn’t all peace and tranquility. It stirs something deeper—a kind of hypervigilance that lives in your bones. Every rustle in the brush, every shift in the wind, pulls your attention. The trees don’t rush you, but they also don’t coddle you. They just exist. And somehow, I remember how to do the same.
You stay alert because the wild demands it. It’s instinct, not anxiety. Out there, awareness isn’t overthinking—it’s survival. Maybe that’s what makes it strangely healing. The same sensitivity that exhausts you in society finally has a purpose.
In a world that constantly overstimulates, the wilderness recalibrates. I’ve taken the last 2 weeks to focus on the practice of mindfulness. It feels less like a meditation exercise and more like re-wiring your nervous system to operate in rhythm with nature.
In other news… my back doesn’t like sleeping on the cold, hard ground as much as it used to. Apparently, enlightenment comes with a side of lower lumbar pain.
But I’ll take the ache. Because every time I return to the wild, I come back a little more human. Maybe that’s the point. The wild doesn’t make you comfortable. It awakens you.
