What the Mountains Taught Me About Solitude, Brotherhood, and Being a Man

I had a few days to kill in Denver between The Divine Masculine and Feminine Retreat and the Goose concert at Red Rocks.

One of my oldest, dearest friends lives way up in the mountains of Northern California, in the Trinity Alps.

He has been there for 7 years and because it’s so far from everything, he doesn’t get many visitors.

So I booked a flight to Redding.

Sometimes the best adventures begin without much of a plan.

I flew out, my friend picked me up from the airport, and we headed into a part of California that felt completely removed from the world most of us inhabit.

No traffic, no consumerism, and no flashing lights.

Just ancient mountains, massive conifer trees, rivers, and people who have learned that nature doesn’t particularly care about your schedule.

I told my friend I wanted to see his backyard and so he showed me.

He said that although the online guides say very strenuous hike, he considered it of medium difficulty.

Knowing that my left knee had been painful on my last high mountain hike, I braced for pain and let him lead me up.

The Journey Up

We headed into the Trinity Alps Wilderness for a hike that would eventually cover more than nine miles and climb roughly 1,200 meters.

Up and up we went.

“We gotta go up to go down,” Zach kept saying.

It was one of the most diverse conifer forests I have ever seen and a mind blowingly beautiful hike.

Then we went off trail, up a couloir and over to an breathtaking alpine lake tucked away from almost everything.

There were no crowds waiting for us.

No restaurant, no Wi-Fi, nothing to buy and nothing to accomplish.

Just glacier water, granite stone, gigantic trees, blue skies…and silence.

I sat beside that lake for a while, and it felt as though she had something to say.

Not in words, of course.

Nature rarely speaks that way.

But if you spend enough time away from the noise, you begin to realize that silence isn't empty.

Silence is full of information.

And that lake seemed to be teaching me something about solitude.

Solitude Is Different From Isolation

I have been thinking a lot lately about the role of solitude in a man's life (every since my last blog post from the airport).

Modern men rarely experience true solitude.

We experience distraction disguised as solitude.

We sit alone scrolling through our phones.

We watch Netflix alone.

We drive while listening to podcasts.

We go to the gym with headphones in our ears.

Even when nobody else is around, there is almost always another voice entering our minds.

But sitting beside an alpine lake eating peanut butter sandwiches after climbing thousands of feet is different.

There is nowhere else to go.

Nothing else demanding your attention.

Eventually, you meet yourself.

And I think men desperately need places like this.

Because when the noise disappears, something underneath it begins to emerge.

You start remembering what matters.

You start noticing what you have been avoiding.

You start hearing questions that have been drowned out by responsibilities, deadlines, notifications, mortgages, businesses, marriages, and children.

Who am I becoming?

What actually matters to me?

What am I carrying that I no longer need?

Where am I going?

How am I going to descend this mountain with a bum knee?

These aren't questions that necessarily need immediate answers.

Sometimes we simply need enough silence to finally hear them.

But the Mountains Taught Me Something Else

Over the next couple of days, I met some of the people who live around my friend.

And almost everyone told me some version of the same thing,

Winter up there is no joke.

The snow comes and roads become difficult or impossible.

Temperatures plummet, numerous feet of snow fall, people get stuck, things break.

And suddenly your relationship with the guy living down the road becomes much more important.

Because someday you might need him.

And someday he might need you.

These people have learned something that much of modern society has forgotten:

Independence has limits.

When you live close to nature, this becomes obvious.

You can be strong and capable.

You can prepare.

You can have tools, food, firewood, experience, and a four-wheel-drive truck.

But eventually something happens that you cannot handle alone.

And then you need your neighbor.

What struck me was how naturally this showed up in the conversations.

There seemed to be an understanding that community isn't some abstract idea.

It is survival.

The Paradox of the Rooted Man

And this is where the mountains revealed something deeper to me.

A healthy man needs both.

Solitude and brotherhood.

He needs to know how to walk into the wilderness alone with his thoughts.

But he also needs to know how to knock on his neighbor's door and ask for help.

He needs independence.

But he also needs interdependence.

He needs the strength to stand on his own two feet.

But he also needs the humility to admit when two feet aren't enough.

I think modern masculinity has confused independence with strength.

We celebrate the fallacy of the lone wolf.

We worship the self-made man.

The guy who doesn't need anyone.

But spend one serious winter in the mountains and that philosophy starts falling apart pretty quickly.

Nature doesn't reward ideology, it rewards relationship.

Relationship with the land, the seasons, the body, your neighbors.

And relationship with yourself.

What We've Lost

For most of human history, men lived much closer to these realities.

We knew where our food came from.

We understood weather because weather mattered.

We depended on other men because survival often required cooperation.

We had fathers, brothers, uncles, elders, neighbors, and other men woven into everyday life.

Modern life has given us extraordinary comfort.

But I wonder what that comfort has quietly taken away.

Many men today can go weeks without a meaningful conversation with another man.

We can order food without speaking to anyone or even getting out of our car.

We now work from home and have entertainment delivered directly into our hands.

Ask an app for directions instead of asking another human being.

We have become incredibly connected technologically while becoming increasingly disconnected relationally.

And furthermore disconnected from ourselves.

That alpine lake reminded me that we need solitude.

The mountain community reminded me that we need each other.

Both are true.

Coming Back Down

Eventually, we had to leave the lake.

There is always a return journey.

We climbed back out, crossed the meadows, descended through the forests, and slowly made our way toward civilization again.

My body was beyond tired.

My body was dirty.

But something inside me felt clearer.

This is one of the reasons I keep returning to wilderness.

Nature has a way of stripping away the unnecessary.

The mountain doesn't care about your resume.

The lake doesn't care how much money you make.

The trees aren't impressed by your followers.

And winter doesn't care how independent you believe yourself to be.

Out there, things become simpler.

Walk. Breathe. Grow food, pay attention, be there for each other.

Know when to be alone and know when to come back to the fire.

Maybe healthy masculinity isn't about becoming harder, tougher, or more independent.

Maybe it's about becoming more rooted.

Rooted enough to stand alone.

Humble enough to belong.

And wise enough to know the difference.