A smug-looking horse and its trailer had appropriated our favorite spot on Cumbres Pass when I arrived, so I had to find a new place to park. On a previous visit, Jen and I glanced a couple other possible sites up a ropey dirt road, which looked good but also tight for turning a 23-foot trailer. Artemis and I charged straight up that abraded path, a move that I knew Jen never would have agreed to make without first taking the bike up to scout. She is the voice of caution\u2014or reason, depending on perspective\u2014and we usually come out better for it. But after months of surgical planning and maneuvering, I was exultant to be in the driver\u2019s seat. Jen and I probably make the best decisions when we make them together, our personalities and impulses a solid counterbalance, but one of the great freedoms of going alone is the autonomy to act as you wish.<\/p>\n Camping a week by myself was, as always, an act of returning to the bachelor state. I am a fastidious person, perhaps to a fault, so rather than head out in search of elk that first night, I set up and double-checked my setup, downloaded emails and dealt with work, re-sighted my bow, and basked in the quiet of a long sunset and no commitments. This is one important difference of camping solo: there is no distraction, for better or worse, from where your mind moves. Want to sit and glass through the binoculars at those distant elk until it\u2019s too dark to see? That\u2019s precisely what you do. Want to skip dinner in favor of a bourbon? That\u2019s your prerogative.<\/p>\n But on a hunt, you still must wake at 4 a.m.<\/p>\n And so it went: rise in the dark, chase the faint bugling through the surge and fall of dusky mountains, get on elk and pass or fail because they\u2019re not right or you aren\u2019t, sleep in the middle of the day, which is a great luxury that we humans seldom afford, return to camp well after dark. Then repeat, day after blessed, restful day.<\/p>\n Artemis makes a perfect hunting lodge for one. While she has plenty of space for two, it can get tight when you add in unwieldy packs, bows, and muddy boots. The slop and wet is also easier to manage alone, and since I was in mountain Colorado during the monsoon, I spent several afternoons huddling from the storms over a good book and a coffee. This was a Zen mountain retreat, silent and simple.<\/p>\n While Colorado\u2019s mountains are stunning, thanks to the influx of immigrants come for the industry and the marijuana, as well as the ease of getting over the counter hunting tags, it does not offer the lonely isolation I\u2019m spoiled by in New Mexico. One morning, after leaving Artemis by headlamp two full hours before sunrise for a promising spot six miles back, I found another hunter sitting in the exact rocky crook from which I\u2019d intended to glass and call.<\/p>\n Creeping through dew-damp forests, listening for the whisper of a bugle for guidance, lying prone in a sun-swamped meadow of high-alpine wildflowers and feeling the mountain wind on your face\u2014alone it feels more visceral as you sink completely into the experience.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n That afternoon, I loaded provisions for three nights on my back, locked up Artemis, and grunted a dozen miles into the wilderness. I wouldn\u2019t see another human till I returned to the trailer. I set up my tent on a grassy, hoof-etched bench at 11,500 feet that made a bed more soft and silent than any high-end mattress. That night, I slept better than I had in months, waking only once to the eerie shrieks of a pack of nearby coyotes. I clambered out of the tent to hear better and, cuddled in my sleeping bag for warmth, eventually faded back to sleep in the wide open under the wan light of the sickle moon.<\/p>\n Jen and I have hunted elk and deer together for years. We have slaved over hauls and been fortunate enough to fill our freezer each season. Yet alone, it\u2019s a different experience. You move more like wildlife, where the wind and hoof tracks and energy take you, not where you collectively decide to do go. Creeping through dew-damp forests, listening for the whisper of a bugle for guidance, lying prone in a sun-swamped meadow of high-alpine wildflowers and feeling the mountain wind on your face\u2014I\u2019ve done all that with Jen in the past, but alone it feels more visceral as you sink completely into the experience without constantly checking in.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/12\/modern-nomad-camping-solo-artemis_h.jpg?width=800\")