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For episode five of the Deep in the Woods podcast, I decide to take a hike alone and discuss the word, "Solitude." I started the journey at the Cooper Day Use area on the banks of the Allatoona Lake then made my way past down on the Cooper's Furnace Trail which leads to the edge of the Etowah River at the base of Allatoona Dam located in Cartersville, GA.

In this episode, I explore the word "solitude" by contemplating why people seek alone time in general, the fears and anxieties related to being by oneself, and my own personal needs and desires related to spending time away in nature. This journey allowed me to gain greater insight into how "solitude" requires a balance in our lives while understanding there is always a pull in both directions between fear and freedom.

I do hope you enjoy this episode as I walked around Cooper's Furnace and found connections with the word, "Solitude."

Some Key References and Quotes:

Both the movie and the book, "Into the Wild" were referenced during this episode. The movie was directed by Sean Penn in 2007. The book was written by Jon Krakauer in 1997 about Christopher McCandless.

Quote from the Golden Compass, "That's the duty of the old...to be anxious on the behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old."

Quote referenced from Michael Singer from "The Untethered Soul:" To get some distance from this, you first need to get some perspective. Walk outside on a clear night and just look up into the sky. You are sitting on a planet spinning around in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Though you can only see a few thousand stars, there are hundreds of billions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy alone. In fact, it is estimated that there are over a trillion stars in the Spiral Galaxy. And that galaxy would look like one star to us, if we could even see it. You're just standing on one little ball of dirt and spinning around one of the stars. From that perspective, do you really care what people think about your clothes or your car? Do you really need to feel embarrassed if you forget someone's name? How can you less these meaningless things cause pain? If you want out, if you want a decent life, you had better not devote your life to avoiding psychological pain. You better not spend your life worrying about whether people like you or whether your car impresses people. What kind of life is that? It is a life of pain. You may not think that you feel pain that often, but you really do. To spend life avoiding pain means it's always right behind you."

Quotes from Henry David Thoreau, "By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude." Also, " I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next."