Ticking Away the Moments that Make Up a Dull Day

"Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day

Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.

Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town

Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain. You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today. And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking Racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older, Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.”

Time – Pink Floyd

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Solo Timeline:

1:40pm: Set up hammock.

2:10-2:30pm: Sat in hammock and admired my surroundings.

2:30-6:00pm: Read 140 pages of Into the Wild (read some in hammock and then moved a little bit away to read in a crazy creek).

6:00-8:45pm: Cooked Annie’s Mac and Cheese alternating between fire and bio stove. Took a long time. Cleaned dishes in the creek.

8:45-9:40pm: Night hike to nearby field. Stood in the field observing for 20 minutes. Saw some bats. Walked back with flashlight.

10:00pm: Got settled in bed. Neighbors were shooting guns, riding dirt bikes, and launching fireworks (the explosions made the ground shaking). In addition, there were barking dogs and what I think were howling coyotes. It sounded like a war was going on in the distance.

11:30pm: Could not fall asleep. Had a migraine. Took an Excedrin, which resolved it.

5:00am: Woke up and went to the bathroom.

5:00-9:40an: Struggled to fall back asleep. Animals and bugs were extraordinarily animated and very loud. Forced myself to stay in bed until 9:40.

9:40-11:30am: Tore down camp (took down tarp). Boiled water for oatmeal for breakfast. Discovered I had lost my spork. Cleaned dishes in the creek.

11:30-12:40pm: Finished the last 70 pages of Into the Wild.

12:40-1:40pm: Wrote journal entry.

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Journal Entry:

I lay in my warm bed, in the protection of my household. I recall the clear steps of the day that had passed. My solo concluded, I photographed my site, I made breakfast, I took the turn on the trail to exit the woods, and I finally left Sugar Pines Farm in my car. But there was a problem. Something did not feel right to me. I had not made my breakfast yet… I had no idea what the woods on the other side of the bend in the trail looked like… I woke up abruptly! The sun had begun to shine through the green walls of my tarp and cascade into my red hammock. The birds chirped. I was still in the woods of Sugar Pines Farm, where my friend had kindly allowed me to stay for my 24 hour solo. There is no other human within a mile in any given direction. I checked my watch: it was 6:45am. I had finally dosed off for a few minutes since I woke up at 5:00 to go to the bathroom and could not fall back to asleep. I still had 7 hours left of my solo…

I sit here now in the final hour of my solo. This was not a new experience for me; I have done two solos in the past on fall OL trips. Nonetheless, it is still remarkably challenging. Unlike the OL trips, this solo was much shorter, a brief 24 hours rather than 42. Additionally, this solo is during the spring, which has both its merits and disadvantages. On the bright side, it is extremely hot outside and the scenery is remarkable. I feel as if I have intruded upon a world of animals living their daily life and gained a rare insight into the natural harmony of their world. In the fall, winter is on the forefront. There are few animals and no green plants. I found myself enjoying this unique encounter with nature.

However, solo in the spring also has its difficulties. There are bugs practically everywhere. I have learned to embrace them, but some insects (like flies endlessly buzzing in your ear) will always continue to frustrate me. And then there are the noises. It is difficult for one to comprehend how freakishly loud a territorial squirrel is when it screams at you, or the call of a Pileated Woodpecker, or the collective sound of all daytime creatures awaking at sunrise (which I discovered the hard way…). However, the aspect that makes a spring solo substantially more difficult is the extended hours of daylight. By my rough calculations, the total daytime on this solo is only a few hours less than the 42-hour ones. The daytime is challenging because that is when one has to occupy himself.

Most people who know Andy Solganik think of the student. A strong worker, loves to learn, has steadfast determination, a natural leader, and a general wilderness badass. He is also extremely blunt and straightforward. Some even tease him for being nearly emotionless or walking with so much intent that he does not turn his head. I am not going to dispute this persona of me, but it certainly fails to paint a full picture.

I am actually more guided emotionally than I am by logic. This may come as a surprise to most people (and even a surprise to myself sometimes), because I come off as the stereotypical logic minded person. I put on a tough guy persona, but in a situation like a solo, I am actually fragile as a twig. There were multiple moments on my solo where I almost lost it. I even had trouble sleeping because there was so much running through my head. It is not the wilderness that brings me to a breaking point on solo, but rather the loneliness. I think the reason I act so logically minded is because I find emotions confusing. In this respect, I am like Spock, and it certainly is not something I am proud of. I like the straightforwardness of math and try to apply it in every situation because it keeps my emotions intact. Otherwise, my mind tends to wander into deep reflection where I can be extremely rough on myself. Normally, I try to complete tasks in the most efficient manner possible. But on solo, in order to kill time, I had to use the exact opposite principle: complete every task as inefficiently as possible. This is unnatural for me, and forces me out of my comfort zone. I also had to quantify every bit of time with numbers. I had to pass time logically, because if I spent too much time thinking to myself, my boredom and reflection would drive me insane. Last night I forced myself to stand in a field for 20 minutes to just appreciate nature. This morning I refused to let myself get out of bed until exactly 9:40, when I had exactly four hours remaining of my solo. Without setting these concrete goals in place, I would have submerged myself into my emotions; and there was no chance I would have made it 24 hours.

I am truly dependent on other people. In Into the Wild, among McCandless’ final statements is, “Happiness is only real when shared”. I wholeheartedly agree with this quote. I believe the purpose of life is to build relationships with others. However, I do not believe I would have agreed with this quote on my freshman solo. On that solo, I physically had conversations with myself, aloud. I managed to keep myself occupied throughout the 42 hours. That was a different Andy: one that had a solely logic-based persona and was yet to discover his reliance on emotions and others. That first solo served as the catalyst for this discovery. This solo, I hardly ever spoke to myself, I just trusted myself to contain my emotions silently and with minimal distraction rather than having to verbally reassure myself I could make it. It still proved difficult to kill my seemingly meaningless time by myself, but all the while, my self-confidence and love of my peers grew. I think freshman Andy would have been proud of the person I have become.