Valentine’s Day has passed, and with it the overwhelming pressure to swap chocolate, puppy cards and flowers with your girlfriend. Now that the money has been spent, the fancy dinners eaten, and the roses have begun their wilty, inevitable trip to the trash bin, here at MYOO, we are left with the question: is there anything wrong with being alone?

For some people, it brings a certain level of peace, and others find that it gives them a sense of freedom and independence. And for a few select individuals, the times they take alone are acts of courage and adventure. While most of us consider going to the movie theater a pretty brave trip to make alone, other set their sights much, much higher.

To celebrate the value of solitude, we tracked down some of our most adventurous Myoozes – those who have embarked on some jawdropping solo expeditions – to hear their thoughts  on what’s to be gained from going out and experiencing the planet all  by themselves.

Sarah Outen

Falling into solo adventuring wasn’t Sarah’s goal, initially, until a death in the family propelled her. “Solo had never occurred to me, and going with a team sounded more appealing,” said Sarah. “In June 2006 my father died very suddenly, and I decided at that point I would row solo across the Indian, because I wanted to make the journey in his memory and raise money for charity, and it didn’t seem particularly right somehow to make that really personal mission with a team.”

Sarah completed her goal of rowing across the Indian Ocean by herself in 2009, and is currently prepping to make a run from Japan to Canada as a leg in her human-powered trip around the world.

For Sarah, throwing herself out into the ocean alone is a challenge, but worth the risk. “I think – because you’re by yourself – everything comes down to you. You have to be everything on that boat. You have to be the doctor, the counselor, the manager, the kick to yourself who tells you to get on with things when you’re stuck in a rut. You have to make all the decisions. There’s no one else.

“There have been moments where I thought, oh, another person at this point would be really nice, I could have a hug and perhaps it wouldn’t be so scary. But you come out of this tough bit, and you think, Wow, I’ve gone a bit deeper that time, I wonder how much deeper I can dig into my reserves next time. I really enjoy that.”

Greg Hill

Solo adventuring isn’t always a personal calling; for some it is a choice of necessity. Greg Hill, who spent much of 2011 working towards his goal of climbing and skiing a cumulative vertical 2 million feet – and who ended up doing roughly half of that alone – felt that his solitary trips up the mountains were in large part a matter of not forcing his own personal aspirations onto other people. “The 2 million feet was an audacious feat,” said Greg, “And I’d got my partners and I wasn’t into pushing them – it was definitely my goal.”

At the same time, Greg draws a certain amount of pleasure in traveling the peaks alone. “It’s the best feeling of freedom that I’ve ever had,” he said. “There’s no boundaries, there’s nothing, there’s just what I want to do in that particular day. Obviously there’s boundaries in terms of avalanches and safety, but in terms of just being out and moving through the mountains, it was sort of like the ravens would be watching the mountains and I would get to float up and ski around all on my own – there’s nothing quite like it.”

The element of self-discovery involved in solo adventuring is not to be underestimated. “It’s about being self-reliant, and knowing my limits; pushing into the impossible to see what’s possible, and I kind of have to do that on my own. It’s just kind of a search for your own limits up there, and it’s pretty amazing to not have anybody else with you. It’s just find your limit, and not others’.”

But Greg also argues that solo adventuring isn’t simply a matter of working in a vacuum. For him, even when he’s climbing alone, doing the solo adventure isn’t necessarily just for his own benefit. “I like to know my limits so I know how much I bring into a team,” said Greg, “because, in the mountains when you’re going for a roof, it’s all about the teamwork and the partners. So you turn that around, you look at yourself, you want to make sure you’re the best possible partner for somebody out there. So learning self-reliance, and what your decisions are, and your risk-tolerance is key, and once you figure out your own then you can bring that much back to the team.”

Roz Savage

Using everything nature can throw at you as personal proving ground is something of a common theme among our solo adventurers. But rowing across three oceans? That takes the meaning of independence to a whole new level. “I think I was really just exploring what I could do when I was on my own,” said Roz Savage while discussing her first time out. “I’d spent so much of my life dependent on parents and schoolteachers, friends and boyfriends, I think I really just wanted to find out what I was capable of when I was on my own. So the best way to really, I suppose, make sure that you don’t wimp out and just fall back on relying on other people is to put yourself out into the middle of an ocean where you don’t have the option call anyone up for help.”

Roz, who left the life of an investment banker at age 34 and has since rowed across three oceans, explored ruins in South America, and become a strong environmental advocate, argues that spending some time alone is helpful in coming to terms with yourself. “The experience that you have out there is very much going to going to be a reflection of your own inner dialogue,” she said.

“The upside of that is you really are forced to confront yourself and confront those demons, and learn how to – I don’t think you have to eradicate them, but you just have to learn to coexist with them. And that’s certainly been one of the biggest pluses that I’ve got out of what I’ve done. It’s not always – in fact it’s never – easy at the time. It’s really difficult, because as well as all the difficult stuff going on like the injuries and the discomfort and the danger, you’ve also got this kind of psychological thing going on. So it’s really challenging. But like most things that are really challenging, it’s worthwhile in the end. What doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.”

Mike Libecki

For Mike Libecki,  no adventure is ever really solo. “I don’t think you can say there’s no support,” said Mike. “Part of the support comes from sponsors working really hard, grants, other things. I have an 8-year-old daughter, so when I go and I’m traveling all over the world, I have support from her mom and my entire family watching my daughter. I have 11 animals, if I don’t have a support crew taking care of all my animals I can’t go on these trips. If I get on an airplane and fly to South Africa, and then a Russian airplane to fly to Antarctica, and then another plane to fly to the middle of Antarctica, well then I’ve just been supported by a ton of Russian people and a whole industry of aviation. Without support, none of us do anything. If I solo a big wall and I’m out there for six weeks, yeah I might stand on the summit solo, but it took an entire group of support to get there.”

Mike has done over forty expeditions across all seven continents, many of them solo and with a personal preference for first ascents on rock formations in places so out of the way that many of his expeditions are reconnoiter and research, simply because there is so little information about them in the first place. For Mike, the solo adventures he puts himself on are not things to be taken lightly. “These are quite intense trips; these are first ascents and explorations. You have to make the right decisions or you will, quite simply, die. Solo is the ultimate responsibility in preparation and execution in the field. [Conditions are] definitely as intense with a partner, but I don’t think you carry as much of the world on your shoulders.”

Despite that, Mike seems to love his solitary adventures. “You’re just put in a situation that you feel – or I should say that I feel – very alive; very in touch with the appreciation that I even have the reality to think about. You know, whether it’s a polar bear following me for three days, or a snowy owl circling around while I’m climbing, or being offered an ox penis to eat by these local people, you’re put in situations that not only you would never be in, but most of society would never as well. So it’s really quite an incredible, fantastic situation,” said Mike.

And maybe that’s the real power of going out there solo: you get to have an experience that’s yours alone, just you and the world and all the possibilities that entails. “You don’t know what’s going to happen,” Mike added, “there’s mystery. And without mystery, there is no adventure.”

—Scott Baba is a researcher at MYOO.