There’s a path you alone can walk, and solo travel is a perfect way to explore what that means to you.

I just returned from a four-day solo trip to the Wichita Wildlife Refuge.

My very first solo-ish journey was back in 2017, when I met a friend in Iceland for the weekend and then dropped her off at the airport, looping the rest of the island on my own in a rental car. I had no idea how liberating and soul-nourishing it could be to explore alone. There’s a kind of seamlessness that emerges when you’re not answering to anyone else, just listening to your own rhythms.

What I’ve learned through solo travel:

• You are safe.
• You become more open to meeting new people.
• Silence is valuable. Time without speaking is profoundly clarifying.
• You get to do whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it. Skip a few days of constant compromise and accommodating everyone’s needs.
• Moms, especially, need this kind of break.

This all might sound so selfish to the well-trained people pleaser, but this frictionless alone time is a critical way to fill an empty well when you are accustomed to pouring all of your time into work and family.

My recent trip to the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma became a seminal portal into something even deeper for me.

On one particular day, a solo hike turned into a living allegory:
a permission slip to follow my calling,
a conversation with my guides,
a reminder that the journey is the destination,
you are always exactly where you need to be.
Sometimes when you can’t find the path, it finds you.

The Trail Finds You

Just two weekends ago, I found myself on a sandstone mountain in the Wichita wilderness, answering a quiet call to climb.

The rock formations, known as Apple and Pear, stood like ancient sentinels, and behind them, an unmarked ascent whispered my name. It wasn’t a planned hike. It was more like a soul summons. The climb itself was steep, almost vertical in places. My feet slipped on the slick granite, and I often found myself scrambling upward on all fours, moving instinctively, following guidance not from a trail map but from within.

Near the top, I paused to rest in a shaded nook of stone, feeling the ache in my hips and deciding to take a load off. I had intended to so some journaling and a few ceremonies while on this trip and this was as good a time and place as any.  In the sheltered corner of towering granite, I took a moment to go inward, to look with intention at some of the things that had been arising for me in the past week, and to write a letter to myself (my hips in particular) in this secluded space.

When my ceremony felt complete, I journeyed further upward. At the top, the view swept wide across crumbling mountains and into desert gorges rimmed by vast prairie lands. My heart pounded from exertion, my breath ragged with altitude and awe. But what called me next was descent. Rather than retrace my steps, I wanted to find a different path down the other side—in the direction of my vehicle.  I’ve done enough boulder hopping to know that so clear a passage was entirely uncertain. The other side of this peak could be fraught with sheer faces and craggy impasses, but the same urging I’d felt when I’d decided to ascend was now calling me down from the mountain top.

That’s when I heard the a familiar voice of a spirit guide. John Muir. Yes, that John Muir—the naturalist, the wanderer, the wild sage. He has been a quiet, valuable presence in my life for a long time. I’ve often had stories of his contemplative life and reckless adventures on my mind while I’ve wandered through wild places in solitude. Only recently have I begun to recognize the voice of his spirit, speaking to my heart as I learn to attune to the various personalities that exist in non-physical, who seem to enjoy aiding their earth-bound friends when called upon.

Though it’s not a common practice, many people find comfort and clarity in connecting with spirit guides. I’ve experienced them as benevolent presences in the non-physical who offer companionship, wisdom, and a subtle but steady hand when invited. These guides are always near, and they delight in our adventures, often nudging us toward growth with both humor and grace. It’s a telepathic attunement that can be easy to dismiss as your own imagination at first. But trust builds over time as their voice gently challenges your thinking, surprises you with unexpected insight, and leads you to outcomes you wouldn’t have predicted. Through experience and dialogue, you begin to realize that you’re not just talking to yourself, you’re actually being guided by something real, present, and profoundly loving.

As I stood on the peak, debating whether to return the way I’d come or to risk the unknown and try to find a clear line down the other side, I could hear John Muir’s voice beckoning me to take the adventurous path and assuring me we could do this together. He became my companionate guide as I descended the lonely, rock-strewn faces. I could hear his voice urging me forward, directing or guiding as I picked my way down steep descents and threaded my way through treacherous boulder fields, back-tracking to find a more suitable line only once or twice.  Sometimes He would joke with me, calling me “sassy lassy,” when I expressed doubt only to find I could trust the voice guiding me time and again.

The descent, however, was no small feat. Hours passed. My legs trembled. My knee ached. I grew concerned about daylight, about the looming possibility of yet reaching an impasse and the endless backtracking that would entail, about whether I’d made a mistake. We continued, Muir and I, in unspoken dialogue, trust waxing and waning. But his voice of encouragement in my mind continued to bolster my resolve, even when zeal was flagging.

Eventually, I left the boulder field behind and picked my way through dense and thorny underbrush. [Sidenote: During westward expansion, the eager settlers compared crossing this tangle of vegetation to struggling through forests of cast iron]. Once I broke through the iron growth, I entered a dark, wooded area that had a foreign, otherworldly energy to it.  Though my feet were now finally on more horizontal ground, free of ankle-breaking flag stone, I felt oddly hypervigilant. The forest felt strange and unfamiliar, but not exactly malevolent, like a place invisible yetis might creep (yeti energy is a thing). I quickened my pace, expecting to find the trail soon. But I began to doubt myself again, fearing that now that I was deep in the trees I’d lost my line, lost my sense of direction. Each ridge I descended seemed like it should reveal the trail, and yet… nothing. I was feeling hungry and my water was running low. I knew I could probably continue on in the full moonlight, if necessary, so I began to resign myself to a more protracted process than I’d anticipated.

It was as I was bracing for this disappointing reality that I saw them.

Four white oaks, growing from a single trunk, forming a natural circle with a hollowed center. Even when I’m exhausted I still pause in awe at nature’s wonders.  I asked the trees if I could step into their sacred space. I always ask. The answer was yes. Standing in the middle of that arboreal portal, I felt relief and gratitude. I didn’t stay for long, I hugged one of the beautiful oak sisters, feeling renewed and present and joyfully reconnected to nature.

When I stepped out I—just a few paces beyond—I found the trail.

Not just a trail. The trail. The one I’d hoped for, searched for, doubted I’d find. And it led my tuckered little feet, effortlessly, less than a mile back to my car from there.

As I finally stepped back onto the well worn path, my heart swelled with relief and reverence and the corners of my eyes moistened with tears of gratitude.  I tipped my hat and thanked Mr. Muir with a knowing smile.

The long day felt like a microcosm of the macrocosm:  That this is how life unfolds, if we open up to it fully. It becomes a dance between doubt and deliberation, trust and risk, intuition and guidance, missteps and mysterious portals.

The trail doesn’t appear when you doubt it or demand it. It appears when you’ve surrendered to it.

And sometimes when you can’t find the path, the path finds you.

This is why I continue to say: solo time matters. Not just for rest, not just for silence, but for rediscovering the ancient ways of knowing. The ways that surface only when we’re uninterrupted, untethered, and wholly present.

As women, and especially as mothers, we so often put our own becoming on hold for the needs of others. But out there, in the wild unknown, you can remember who you are. You learn to listen again: to the land, to your body, to the ever-present guides who walk with you. You find that, even without a map, something deeper has always been leading you home.