How to Be Alone (and Why You Should Be)

Solitude is extremely underrated.

Solitude isn’t just silence. It’s not just being alone in a room or a house or an apartment. It’s something deeper, and rarer.

I’m talking about the kind of solitude you find outdoors. The kind you feel in your chest, not just your ears. It’s being alone with the wind in the trees, with birds calling to no one in particular, next to a stream or with your back against a sun-warmed rock. It’s not quiet like a library. It’s quiet like a clearing in the woods. And it does something to you.

We live in a world where true solitude is hard to come by. Most of us are never more than a few feet from a screen. Even when we’re technically “alone,” we’re tethered to the chatter. The newsfeeds, emails, messages, and updates. The noise never really stops. And over time, I think it wears us down in ways we don’t fully recognize.

But out there, out in the natural world, there’s a different rhythm, a different feeling. You don’t just get silence. You get space. Space to think. Space to feel. Space to let whatever’s been building up inside you, the stress, the grief, the guilt, the noise, slowly fall away.

It may not be in some grand, transformative way like a movie scene. It might come quietly. Gradually. On a solo hike. Sitting beside a creek. Watching fog move through the trees at dawn. It’s not about finding some epiphany. It’s about release. It’s about being in a place where the burdens you’ve been carrying suddenly don’t matter so much. Not because they’ve gone away, but because you remember how small they really are compared to everything else.

Solitude, when you find it, can heal you. Whether you’re grieving or overwhelmed or just numb from too many days in a row where everything felt like too much, it gives you a kind of peace that no app or algorithm can ever deliver.

It reminds you who you are without the noise.

And I’m not saying we should all go live in cabins at Walden Pond or starve ourselves on the TV show Alone. I love people. I love my family. I love good conversation and shared meals and time around a campfire.

But I also know how to be alone. It’s tool I can reach for, not something I fear or forget how to do. Because I’ve seen what it gives back.

And if you’ve ever experienced it – true, outdoor solitude – you know exactly what I mean. You know what it feels like to be the only one on the trail, or to sit with the sunrise and realize no one knows where you are in that moment. And how that doesn’t feel scary at all. It feels like freedom.

So here’s my pitch: seek it out. Make room for it. Not just once a year on a camping trip, but wherever and whenever you can. Even a half hour on a quiet path. Even a slow walk without headphones. Let nature speak to you, not in some mystical way, but in the real sounds of wind and water and rustling branches. The kind of language that doesn’t need words to be understood.

It will remind you of things you forgot. It will humble you, gently. It will bring you back to yourself.

There’s a quote I’ve always loved from Calvin Coolidge, (who I don’t think much of as a president), but clearly understood the value of solitude.

“There is new life in the soil for every man. There is healing in the trees for tired minds and for our overburdened spirits, there is strength in the hills, if only we will lift up our eyes. Remember that nature is your great restorer.”

Nature doesn’t just quiet the noise, it restores something. Something we don’t even realize we’ve lost until we feel it return.

And if we keep fighting to protect our public lands, the places that make that kind of solitude possible, it’ll always be there for us. Waiting, whenever we need it.

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