Adventurous treks to the unknown can be mind-saving these days

Night came early, usually accompanied by rain or snow, and the wind ruffled the walls of our small tents. We were a long way from anywhere and if the situation was different we might have trouble falling asleep. But we were tired. I was tired. And with the morning would come more hiking. I fell asleep quickly.

We were in Alaska, about 100 air miles north of Fairbanks. This was a do-it-yourself caribou hunt, taken a few years back, and we were seeing animals, mostly at a distance.

We had killed one bull caribou and packed it a few miles on our backs to our campsite, where we hung the animal's quarters from a makeshift meat pole. But we weren't sure how the hunt would unfold. The low sky continually spat rain or sometimes sleet or snow. Hurled across the scrubby mountains by strong winds, the moisture arrived in sheets. We would camp and hunt for a week.

One by one, the four of us had been flown to our campsite in a bush plane that seats a pilot and one passenger. Bears were in the area, grizzlies, and we hoped not to see them. The idea was to hike about 6 miles a day, more or less, while glassing with binoculars or through spotting scopes, looking for caribou.

Sometimes caribou hunters, by luck or planning, intercept vast migrating herds of these animals and simply pick the one they want and pull a trigger or send an arrow flying. That wasn't us. We were seeing relatively few animals, and most were out of hiking range, and certainly out of rifle range.

I recall this adventure as the new year begins because it and undertakings like it have enriched my life considerably over the years, as they have, I believe, the lives of many others.

But forays into the unknown, which usually involve moving from the comfortable to the uncomfortable, don't happen by accident. They're planned. And planning provides at least half the fun of these escapades and much of the learning.

Sometimes traveling to the unknown means venturing to a faraway place, as in the caribou hunt. Other "unknown'' destinations can be closer to home, say to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, or to a state park, or even to a nearby river or lake.

Common to each are circumstances out of the ordinary and that promise to flex both mind and body in an outdoor setting.

Arguably, there's no better — or healthier — time than now to travel to the unknown, because too many of us have turned living inside our heads into a national pastime.

Consumed by social media and/or by political and cultural persuasions whose benefits accrue, ultimately, less to us than to the opinion and media lever-pullers who proselytize from Los Angeles or New York, or wherever they hide out, we, most of us, waste time as if it were endless. We scroll TikTok, Facebook and Snapchat, and surf channels, knowing the joke is on us. But we can't escape the barrage. Or don't know how.

Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, the outdoor clothier, has said that fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all. Yet it's also true, as Chouinard, the longtime mountaineer, can attest, that traveling to the unknown and back can provide mind-saving, and therefore life-saving, benefits.

The Alaska trip makes the point.

Preparations for the adventure were lengthy, in large part because the four of us — my older son, Trevor, his friend and fellow Montana resident Ken Juell, and Max Kelley, a schoolboy chum of Trevor's who grew up in Stillwater and now lives in California — wanted to hunt, unguided, meaning on our own.

To do so we needed credible advice and help from knowledgeable people in Alaska to ensure the person flying us knew what he was doing, and to ensure we would be camping in an area where caribou either reside or would migrate through.

Warm, waterproof clothing and boots were a must. Our tents had to keep us dry and stay upright in strong winds. And our sleeping bags had to be warm.

Food choices were tricky, too. We had to bring enough calories to keep us going day-to-day in case we didn't kill any caribou. But we were limited by the pilot to 80 pounds of gear and food apiece.

We also needed to be proficient enough with our rifles to make long shots, if necessary. And indeed, Ken, an expert marksman, dropped his bull at 405 yards.

Additionally, especially for me because I was more than twice the age of the others, physical conditioning was a must.

If we killed an animal, we also needed to arrange for the pilot to return about midway through our hunt to begin ferrying our bounty back to Fairbanks.

And bears? We could have rented a portable electric fence to keep them out of our camp or away from our quartered caribou. But we decided to chance it. We did, however, have a satellite phone to use in case of an emergency.

The hunt was successful in part because we each took bulls, with mine coming on the outing's last day.

More importantly, we had flexed our minds and bodies in an outdoor setting, allowing us to escape the opinion and media lever-pullers who beam to us from Los Angeles or New York or wherever they hang out, demanding our attention.

Enriched by our trek to the unknown, and confident in its rewards, we would do it again.

And again.