About

I remember when I first thought up the idea of Going Alone. My family and I were living then in Japan, and I was making YouTube videos for the Walking in Japan and Abandoned Japan series. I was active at that time on social media, and among the questions I answered from viewers were periodic requests from people who planned to visit Japan, and who asked if they could join me on an adventure in the mountains. Such arrangements only rarely worked out, as the logistics of visiting both Japan and my out of the way city proved more challenge than most Japan dreamers were willing to overcome, though I did escort at least one or two groups a year with me into the Japan Southern Alps. The guided trips were fun, as it was nice to meet new people, and to talk freely with native English speakers, and to see my favorite remote Japanese villages through the curious eyes of other foreigners who shared my appreciation for such rare and special places. But, the trips were not the same for me. Such trips were nothing like my adventures alone into the rugged mountains of central Japan; and I knew what was missing—it was the fact that I was not going alone. I did not understand why at the time, but I knew that solitude in the wild was the special ingredient which was the real draw and reason that I went to such places. Going alone was the very purpose of my going at all. Going Alone is not about living alone. It is about going forth and then returning, from places where there are none.And so, one day, while still living and adventuring in Japan, I dreamed up the title of a new video series—something to replace Walking in Japan. The new series would be called "Going Alone" and would be essentially identical to Walking in Japan. The sole purpose of the name change was to create a handy label to dissuade others from asking to join me in the mountains. For, who would venture to invite themselves along on an adventure called Going Alone? It was just a passing idea, something I thought up while strolling alone through a small village, smiling a little at the silliness of the idea before letting the notion go. I never even wrote the Going Alone idea down, as the thought seemed nonsense, and anti-social even, and was in no way related to what I was then doing and sharing from the mountains of Japan. In fact, I remember feeling a little embarrassed that I had even dreamed up the idea of Going Alone. After all, how selfish was it of me to consider a video series titled for the sole purpose of warding away potential companions. However, there was indeed something to the idea of Going Alone which I sensed was important—not the title, but the fact of Going Alone—and it was this relatively rare experience of being alone in the wild which was the true thing which I was trying to protect. Not my privacy...but my being alone. And then in 2014 I came home to America. I came back initially alone, to start a new job, and to get settled before bringing my family across the sea to join me. At first, I did not adventure at all from my new home in Southern California, life itself then being more than enough newness, challenge and change. But soon, I began to go back out again into the wild looking for new places to adventure and explore. And I found my way back into the Mojave Desert where I had once wandered as a younger man. I returned then to the wild—and I returned alone. But this time I did things differently. I chose not to seek places in particular, no famous national parks like Death Valley or Joshua Tree, no monuments like the East Mojave, and not even the ghost towns or natural sights which are everywhere out there in the desert lands. No. Instead, this time I only sought to go to places where nobody else might be, or where no one else has been for a very long time, or perhaps ever— I was after then the deep, penetrating solitude, and the experience of places unseen for ages by others, to be very far off the named and charted parts of the map, into the