I spent the summer after I turned 20 sleeping with a can of bear spray. I took off for Alaska alone with a tent, a sleeping bag, a corncob pipe, a banjolin and enough matches to burn down every wooded corner of the state. I am not kidding you—I was Alaska’s biggest cliché that summer (see also: shameless responses to reading Into The Wild).

I ran the emotional gamut over those three months, and not just because I went to bed each night fearing any crumb in my tent would set off a bear feast. I was lonely, confused, stuck, exhausted, inspired, humbled and emboldened.

I have a romantic affliction with traveling alone and the types of experiences you come up against with only yourself to rely on. Don’t get me wrong, I have been on some blood-brothering, coming-of-age road trips with friends that I loved, but they didn’t involve truly stepping outside of the hum and familiarity of my life. They didn’t involve exploring sadness or confusion or depravity.

Since I’ve taken off on another sojourn by myself, a popular question has resurfaced that I often ask or am asked by others in transit: Is it preferable to travel solo or with company/? It’s a tough question and it always reminds me of the first time I saw Denali, the mountain, during that summer in Alaska.

I had hitched a ride with a young woman en route to Fairbanks. We rounded a corner on the George Parks Highway and Denali, “the great one” itself, came into close view. My eyes exploded trying to take it all in. I turned to the young woman and vaguely remember blurting out some expletive along with “That. Is. A. MOUNTAIN!” to which she responded with a wry smile, like it was 2011 and I had just discovered the Internet. I wanted to grab my best friend’s arm; I wanted to laugh with my brother about how we’d never seen anything like it. It was extraordinary, and to see it with them would have inextricably bound us in that memory. But because they weren’t there to lend their significance to the significant moment, I was forced to construct my own meaning from the experience.

Seeing Denali represented my ability to set off on an adventure and discover something awe-inspiring. I was proud of myself; I had learned to trust myself. When I saw Denali, I saw the worth of the range of emotions I had been experiencing. I’d embraced the failures, the poor decisions, the uncertainty of making it there and it paid off: I experienced something I may otherwise have never seen if I’d waited, if I’d been too scared to go it alone.

So, for the sake of these moments, of learning to trust yourself and construct your own meaning, I advocate a solo journey at least once in your life.

You’ll set out alone, but you will invariably meet people along the way that you will stay with or travel with for a bit, share meals, get to know on any number of levels. Being alone will be the impetus to meeting others and because you’re on limited time, you spare the conventional nuances of first-encounters. You don’t talk about the weather or traffic.

The ability to forge fast friendships and engage in conversations with complete strangers is invaluable. How often do you find yourself doing this when you have a familiar person nearby to crutch on? Will you learn a new language if you spend the larger part of the day with your companion from your mother country speaking in your mother tongue?

When a new acquaintance spontaneously asks if I want to hitch somewhere or go to a rural village to meet their family or trek into an off-the–map place, I never have to negotiate my desire to take unplanned risks with my friend. Better yet, I don’t have to be consumed with worry about anything bad happening to my friend because they’ve conceded to my recklessness.

You’ll also spend a lot of time alone, which for some, is even more frightening than the prospect of having to meet new people. There will be moments where you come head on with the symphonies, thunderstorms and loose ends within you. Because we define so much of whom we are by who and what we’re surrounded with, being alone in a new place forces you to create a portrait of yourself using a totally different palette.

I’ve come to need those moments where I’m out of my element and alone: periods when I’m sitting on a bus for 20 hours or toiling on a foreign farm somewhere pulling weeds or harvesting vegetables. I make sense of how I feel by writing; I have unencumbered thoughts where I get to evaluate decisions I’ve made and revisit old memories. It’s not always fun day trips and wild nights, but that’s the distinction between going on a vacation and going off to really travel. I’d be interested to hear about the profundities of a weeklong trip to Cancun.

The truth about traveling solo is that sometimes it isn’t as fun as going with a companion or a group. Of course you laugh harder when you’re around other people, you stand to see a place or people in a much different light, the ease of being with someone familiar may take the stress or shock off of experiencing a different culture, but I firmly believe that these are things that you should also be able to provoke within yourself.  Make yourself laugh (especially at yourself), challenge yourself to see things differently, try new things of your own volition and curiosity. Your potential to experience anything shouldn’t hinge on the provocation of someone else. Sometimes traveling solo means coming out of it with experience that simply endears you to yourself.

You might feel lonely at times, confused, exhausted, the range of low emotions. There will certainly be a moment when you want to turn to a loved one and beg them to tell you what they think of that mountain. In the absence of anyone else, I hope you ask yourself what it meant to make it to the mountain.

Alex Baumhardt is a freelance writer currently based in Iceland, where she is writing for The Reykjavik Grapevine. She has worked for the Land Stewardship Project, and her writing has appeared on lostgirlsworld.com, the Matador Network, Global Journalist and German-based Retomag and has been recognized by the Missouri Press Association and her grandma. Follow her adventures @AlexBaumhardt.