Honeymooning in the British Virgin Isles aboard an old windjammer, we waited most of the trip to see a sea turtle (my bride was very into them). Toward the end of the trip we spent a day snorkeling in the cove of a small uninhabited island. Armed with the snorkel, swim fins, and a flotation device just buoyant enough to give me confidence without keeping me on the surface, I went in search of a turtle. Out over the reef and into the deep blue, where the bottom dropped out of sight.
I kept going. Eventually I raised my head up and saw the ship was waaaaaay the hell over there. Put my head down and proceeded in that direction…or so I thought. When I raised my head again, I was somehow farther from the ship.
Eventually I figured it out and navigated back, to find everyone else had returned and the captain was getting ready to send out an expedition.
Technically I suppose I wasn’t very far from civilization after all, but it certainly felt that way for a time. Far from the ship, farther from the uninhabited shore, out over the infinite blue below.
Thoughtful question. Come to think of it, I don’t know if I have ever been further than 2-3 miles away from the nearest human at any point in my life. That might be when I was wandering in a stretch of road in Virginia, and even then, cars were probably passing by every now and then.
Last year my dog had TPL surgery, meaning he had his knee re-constructed. He couldn’t do hardly anything at all for 2 weeks. I couldn’t leave him alone, as he wouldn’t use a cage or a cone. Basically we had to sit home together for two weeks, be still, and take our pills on time.
I sent his sister to stay with my parents (she ended up being gone for 4 weeks) and we hunkered down and got through it together. On top of being “quarantined” we also had to sleep together on a mat on the floor for 8 weeks, as he wasn’t allowed to jump and I wasn’t going to be able to stop him if I was asleep.
Actually, I was out of the house more in the first 2 weeks of this quarantine (going shopping for myself and parents) than I was during last year’s stint (no leaving at all). And of course now I can still walk the dogs, I couldn’t even do that last time.
It’s all kind of easier to do this knowing that everything in the outside world is canceled and I’m not missing anything.
Similar here, except it was with my wife and 8? and 10? year olds backpacking in Banff NP. We thought it was one of the best traveled tracks, but on the 3rd night having not seen anyone since we left the day hikers by noon the first day and being the only tent in the 6-site backcountry campgrounds, we thought we must have missed a message along the way. The huge rains a decade back had destroyed much of the trail making it even more fun- the maps and the GPS track did not line up with the most apparent trail during most of the critical traverses and passes. Very frustrating and sometimes scary. We saw more grizzly cubs(!) than humans on that trip. The only regret is that we saw hundreds to thousands of wolf and wolf pup tracks (and porcupine and moose and large weasels (wolverine?)) but only herd and not saw them.
So probably 10 miles max but 5 days that seemed an eternity. We listened to Harry Potter audiobooks to help the kids fall asleep (as it was often still light outside) and Harry almost become a member of the hiking party.
In the 90’s we hiked 14Km of the Inca Trail, ending for sunrise on site at Machu Picchu. The second day you go over a pass almost 14,000ft, after that, you never saw the hand of man anywhere. (Except for occasional remoter, less known, Inca ruins, of course!) There was no other group, road, wires, rooftops or even a distant light. It was profoundly dark, and the night sky was truly spectacular. While we weren’t alone, (3 couples, 4 porters and a guide!), we fell behind the much younger others and spent our days largely alone on the trail. Not quite sure exactly how far we were from a settlement but it had to be pretty far.
No so much any more, but years ago, the idea of living off the grid, miles from the nearest neighbor used to appeal to me. So I looked at a lot of real estate that fit the bill in places like northern Minnesota and eastern Maine. The most remote townships I visited don’t have any year-round residents, nor even real names, places like T19 MD BPP (Township 19, Middle Division, Bingham’s Penobscot Purchase). There is a certain amount of human activity in places like that throughout the year: logging, fishing, hunting, summer cabins, snowmobiling, and so on. But I think it’s entirely plausible that at some point in my wanderings through places like that I might have been, say, five miles from the nearest other human.
The most remote place I ever spent the night was along a very lightly traveled trail in the Great Gulf Wilderness in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. I camped probably about a mile from the nearest other person. On the same trip, I went about 24 hours without seeing another soul.
In terms of time, I’ve probably gone a week or so without seeing or interacting with other people, on several occasions. Every time though there were neighbors not far away.