Words From The Wild

On the road again

by Lauren Eaton

Part 3 - The journey to yourself

Welcome back to the third and final part in the trilogy of preparing yourself for a long term remote adventure!

We’ve covered the basics - food, shelter, warmth, where to relieve yourself in the woods - we’ve covered security, the social aspects, communication while in remote destinations or travelling solo, and now we come to the stuff only you can provide - the internal stuff, your esteem and self-actualisation needs; in other words self-confidence, independence, freedom, self-fulfilment, and living your best life on the road.

Anyone who says they are not at least a little apprehensive about setting out on a self-sufficient journey is a liar or an idiot. Without recognising risk, we are doomed to meet it, because we’re doomed to failure if we ever become so big-headed that we think we know it all.

We are always learning, even if we are travelling in places we’ve been to before, and/or we have been doing this for decades. Life is full of variables: the weather, the frailty of the human body –illness, tiredness, injury, the risk of the actions of other people, our rigs experiencing problems, changes in local infrastructure, and much more.

Being self-aware and self-confident are very different from being arrogant, and these things grow as we travel, as we experience new places, situations, and challenges.

One of the greatest joys, but also sometimes the biggest risks, of overlanding is not knowing what is around the next corner or what tomorrow may bring. What's certain is that having met the unknown and dealt with it, that we are certain to learn, grow and benefit from every experience, whether it appears to be positive or negative at the time.

There is no such thing in life as good or bad, only lessons.

It’s how you react to a situation that dictates whether it is positive or negative. Mind set is everything!

Be proud of what you know, but also be willing to change your mind and opinion if you find evidence to the contrary. Always be the first to admit what you don’t know, and make the latter the focus of your research, learning, and practice. I’m a firm believer that every trip should challenge us, but we need to balance this and not put ourselves into known danger.

Conversely, not being confident enough is just as potentially problematic as thinking we know it all. Both ends of the spectrum can lead to fear, indecisiveness, or the inability to handle what is thrown at us and that can lead to problems.

If we look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs again, he breaks down esteem into two parts:

1. The esteem that comes from receiving respect and acknowledgement from others

2. The esteem based on your own self-assessment, selfconfidence, and independence

In a world of social media influencers, point 1 is king, but no amount of followers are going to help when you are miles away from anywhere, without a phone signal, and axel deep in the sh*t. Point 2 is supremely important. Point 1 might feel nice, but think about it, does it really matter?

On a trip, it really does not, other than to maybe provide a pleasant sense of belonging and social interaction to while away the lonely nights (and this is important as I mentioned last month), but it cannot help you where you might need it most - this is all on you now!

While it might feel nice to have people to chat to, or just to have several hundred notifications every time you open an app (although, honestly, I would rather not have that to deal with!) the best way to learn from our experiences is to immerse ourselves in them. Distracting ourselves with what others think takes us away from the experience of our present situation, and in order to learn we need to be present, fully.

You have to put yourself first, and in doing so you will earn a lot more than a few followers. The road and the wild are the greatest teachers, as is solitude. We’re so used to being reliant on others in our daily lives - to do things for us or to instruct us, that we don’t (or many don’t) bother to learn even some of the most basic life skills.

When we begin a self-sufficient journey, all of a sudden we’re going to need these skills and the ability to use them in locations where we don’t have the option of calling someone to help or do it for us.

Nothing has more strength than dire necessity.

- Euripides.

This is how I learned to do many things I had no previous experience of. While I might get a fair bit of flack from my non-Land Rover owning friends about reliability, it is only because I’ve needed to fix trucks myself due to location, lack of funds, or available help, that I am now pretty confident with a spanner.

The same goes for all sorts of skills I’ve needed on the road. If I identified that I was bad at something, or had little to no ability, I admitted it and learned. There can be no hiding what you cannot do when you’re reliant on yourself!

It’s something I focus on before going, identifying what I can and cannot control, repair, endure, or handle while solo. It helps me design my rig, as well as build it. It assists me to plan my routes, and insists that I keep an eye on the weather, identify where the nearest help might be, as well as dictating what I’m carrying in regards to supplies and gear.

It’s a mental risk assessment without the boring paperwork, and it is the key to freedom.

It may mean that you cannot, or at least should not, try a particular route alone, or even mean not going on a particular trip at all, at least not yet. While missing out can suck, it also means that you’re not going to end a trip early or come a cropper because you’re in over your head.

In reality, you’re not missing out, you’re learning and focusing on self-improvement. Admitting what you cannot do or may find difficult and then improving upon this, it is the key to bigger, better, and longer adventures. Being faced with seemingly insurmountable challenge identifies something you need to change, and once you have, you’ll be able to take it on the next time with confidence.

This isn’t just about the driving or mechanical issues either. You may discover that you liked the idea of a place or experience more than the reality, and that’s ok, at least it can be depending on how you deal with that realisation.

You’ll learn so much about yourself without the noise of the rat race - listen to it. It may be that you realise overlanding isn’t for you once you try it. You’re miserable in bad weather, apprehensive all the time in remote locations, or would just prefer to be in a hotel on the Costa del Sol or at home in your pyjamas. There’s nothing wrong with that, you do you.

Long journeys are inevitably life-changing. Sometimes in a big, obvious way, other times in the more subtle realisations that come to the fore without the background noise of civilisation.

For me it was the realisation that I am never more happy than in remote wild places. Everything is better for me, my health both physically and mentally, my motivation, levels of inspiration and creativity. Being nowhere in solitude brings me true joy to the point that I have reorganised my life to spend as much of my time in that situation as I possibly can.

For you, time out may make you realise how much you want that job you’ve been thinking about, or that you need to be surrounded by people or in a city. There is no right or wrong here, listen to and choose what fits, thank the road for what it has taught you, then go forth and make it happen.

It can also change your view on your social connections. I’ve both ended and cemented relationships on the road, and both choices turned out to be excellent ones.

One major lesson travelling taught me is independence, selfconfidence, and the realisation that the fewer people you rely on the fewer you need, which in turn gives you the ultimate freedom to hit the road whenever the fancy takes you, but also more importantly, the strength to walk away from people and situations that no longer serve you. Rather than becoming antisocial, you become selective, and this is no bad thing.

There is nothing more real than nature and the wild, and there is nothing truer or more loyal than a genuine friendship. Once you have experienced either, you won’t want anything less than 100% real.

This is something I love about overlanding - going with the natural flow of things. The freedom from co-dependency, worrying about time or deadlines, what other people are doing or thinking, and only needing to do what needs to be done when the time is right, is liberating.

• When the weather is dry, wash, dry, and maintain your gear.

• When it is wet, too hot, or dark, rest.

• Wake with the sun.

• Carry out maintenance - fix things before they become a big problem.

• Always fill up with water, food and fuel when the opportunity arises.

• Eat when you’re hungry.

Be confident that if you open your eyes to the opportunities that come along, that you will always be ready with the things you absolutely need - food, dry shelter, clean clothes, water, fuel. The rest is gravy, and if you’ve done the former you will enjoy and have time for lashings of gravy. You will also get that sense of self-esteem based on your achievements.

Most of us only get to spend a couple of days or a couple of weeks camping somewhere. When you know you will be home soon and have 20 cans of beans and pairs of clean socks, you can spend your time on socials and worrying about what other people think of your rig as much as you like, but when you’re weeks/months in and are miserable and uncomfortable, hungry, have nothing dry to wear, and are not returning home for weeks to months, this is a different matter altogether.

To paraphrase Wim Hof - anyone can do this. Those influencers you follow are not, in any way, any more capable than you are, many aren’t even close to what they appear to be!

Even the true great adventurers paved their own way while being a human being just like the rest of us. The difference often comes down to confidence, a willingness to learn, often through trial and error, and a focus on their own needs rather than what others (who are likely to have never done the thing before themselves!) think.

Self-sufficient travel is true freedom, as least as close to it as is possible to attain in the modern world. It isn’t easy, if it was everyone would be doing it, but it is one of life’s greatest teachers.

True freedom isn’t an open space or an open road, unless you can survive there, and you can, as long as you listen to the lessons the wild places teach us.

You’ve got this!

Just remember that it is not a destination, it is an ever-evolving and fluctuating journey. You’ll never stop learning and you’ll never know everything, but every mile will bring you opportunity; so go out and take it.

That’s all from me this month folks. I’m off to prepare for full time life on the road, more on that another time.

Drive safe, Lauren and Celyn x