Solo Adventure After Divorce: What If Something Happens to Me Out There and I Have Nobody?
By Bob Manthy
There’s a fear that almost never makes the cultural list of “post-divorce challenges,” and that I hear named in the room more often than people would guess.
It’s the fear that arrives when you start thinking about the trip again, the mountain you wanted to climb, the motorcycle ride down the coast, the solo backcountry hike, the road trip without a destination, and you realize you don’t know who you’d call if something went wrong out there.
The solo adventure fear isn’t really about adventure. It’s about the quiet collapse of the safety net that used to be invisible. Your partner used to know your route. Your partner used to be the one the ranger would call. Your partner used to be the named contact at the trailhead, the bottom of the climbing route, the front desk of the lodge. Now they aren’t, and the fear of what if something happens to me out there and I have nobody lands hard at 2 a.m. in a way it never did when you were married.
I want to walk through this one with you, because the fear is real and the answers are real, and the fear doesn’t have to be the thing that keeps you off the mountain.
The fear is reasonable. Don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t.
I’ve watched the cultural script try to dismiss this fear two ways.
The first way is the just go, you’ll figure it out response, usually delivered by people who’ve never gone alone, or who went solo at twenty-five when they were still inside a family system that would have noticed if they didn’t come home.
The second way is the don’t take the trip, it’s too dangerous now that you’re alone response, usually delivered by family members whose anxiety about your safety is also, secretly, anxiety about your independence.
Neither of those answers honors the question.
The question is reasonable. If I’m injured on a ridge, who knows where I am? If I’m in a motel parking lot in Wyoming and something goes wrong, who’s the second phone call after 911? If I’m in the backcountry for four days and don’t come home, who would notice on day five?
In a marriage, those questions had default answers. In divorce, they don’t anymore. Naming the gap is the first step to filling it.
The tools side of the answer: practical, specific, and not very expensive
I want to start with the tools because the tools are the easy part. The people-side answer is harder and more important, but the tools-side answer is what gets you back on the mountain in the meantime.
Satellite communicators: the single biggest upgrade
For any kind of backcountry, mountain, motorcycle, or rural travel beyond cell coverage, a satellite communicator is the most consequential piece of safety equipment you can carry. Three names worth knowing:
Garmin inReach Mini 2 / inReach Messenger. Two-way satellite messaging from anywhere on earth, GPS tracking, an SOS button connected to a 24/7 international emergency response coordination center. Subscription required. Roughly the size of a deck of cards. Most popular in the climbing, hiking, and overlanding communities for a reason.
SPOT satellite messengers (SPOT X, SPOT Gen4). Lower-cost alternative to the Garmin. One-way or two-way messaging depending on model. Same SOS-button-to-rescue-coordination concept.
ZOLEO Satellite Communicator. Another two-way messaging device, often cheaper monthly than Garmin. Pairs with your phone for messaging via app. Strong choice for motorcycle and overland travelers.
Any of the three solves the central problem: somebody knows where you are, in real time, and you can summon help even when there’s no cell signal.
Trip-tracking and beacon apps for cell-coverage adventures
For trips that stay in cell-signal territory, your phone can do a lot of the work.
Strava Beacon lets you share a live link with up to three people during a ride, run, or hike. They see your route in real time. If you don’t move for a while, they know.
Apple Find My / Google Find My Device, share location indefinitely or for a window with a designated person. Free, already on your phone, vastly under-used.
Life360, family-style location-sharing app, useful for ongoing visibility with adult kids or chosen family.
RescueMe / What3Words, both useful for communicating exact location to emergency responders if you can call out but can’t describe where you are.
Professional emergency-response services
For some kinds of solo travel, international trips, expedition climbing, long-distance motorcycle journeys, there are paid services that act as your emergency response infrastructure.
Global Rescue, medical and security evacuation services for international travel. Membership-based.
Medjet, medical transport membership for travelers, especially for those over 50.
International SOS, corporate-grade evacuation and medical support, available to individuals.
For most domestic solo adventures these are overkill. For international or expedition-grade trips, they’re the load-bearing layer.
Filing a trip plan
Before any solo trip, regardless of tools, file a trip plan with somebody you trust. Most experienced solo adventurers do this and most beginners don’t.
The trip plan is simple:
- Where you’re going (specific, trailhead, mile marker, lodge name)
- When you’re leaving and when you expect to return
- The route you’re taking
- The vehicle you’re driving and its description
- A “if I’m not back by X, here’s who to call” instruction line
Email it to one or two trusted contacts before you leave. Most people who get into trouble in the backcountry get rescued faster because somebody filed a trip plan than because of any high-tech gadget. The trip plan is the cheapest, oldest, most effective piece of solo-safety equipment in existence.
The people side of the answer: and this is the harder part
The tools tell somebody where you are. The tools don’t answer the deeper question, which is: who’s the somebody?
This is the post-divorce piece. In a marriage, the somebody was assumed. In divorce, the somebody has to be named. And many people walking out of a divorce realize, with a small jolt, that the list of people I’d entrust with my whereabouts is shorter than they thought.
Here’s what I’ve watched help.
Siblings. Even ones you’re not currently close to. The trip plan is a low-stakes, low-friction way to re-thread a sibling relationship. Hey, I’m doing a solo trip next weekend, can I send you my itinerary just in case? Most siblings say yes. Many of them say yes with surprising warmth. The act of being trusted with somebody’s safety does relational work in both directions.
Adult children. With careful framing. You don’t want to make them feel responsible for your survival, but you can make them part of the safety constellation. I’m doing a solo trip; I’d like you to be one of my contacts. Here’s what I need from you, here’s what I don’t need from you. Many adult kids feel honored to be asked.
Best friends, chosen family. A best friend of decades, the kind who’d pick you up at 3 a.m. without asking why, is often a better trip-plan contact than blood relations. They know you. They’re harder to alarm unnecessarily. They’re often the ideal first point of contact.
Cohort members. This one surprises people. In our Rebuilding cohorts, members start filing trip plans with each other. A woman climbing her first solo fourteener with a Garmin inReach and three cohort-member contacts. A man taking his first long motorcycle trip with two of his cohort women as the named SOS callers. The cohort becomes, for some Rebuilders, the practical answer to who do I list as emergency contact in a season when the marriage answer is gone and the family answers feel complicated.
A small constellation, not one person. The lesson many of our cohort members learn is that the post-divorce safety net works better as a constellation than as a single contact. Two siblings + one adult child + two friends + the cohort group chat is a much more robust safety net than any single name on an emergency-contact form.
The real question underneath the fear
I want to name what I think the fear is actually asking, beneath the practical layer.
The 2 a.m. version of what if something happens to me out there and I have nobody is rarely about the actual statistical risk of a backcountry injury or a motorcycle breakdown. It’s about something deeper.
It’s the fear that nobody would notice.
That you could be in trouble for two days, three days, four days, and the world would carry on without registering your absence. That the marriage was the thing that bound you to the world, and without it, you’ve become invisible.
The fear is real. The conclusion is wrong.
You haven’t become invisible. You’ve lost a default visibility, the one your spouse provided automatically, without conscious effort. What replaces it’s chosen visibility, the visibility you build by deliberately weaving yourself into a constellation of people who know your routes, your plans, your whereabouts.
That weaving is part of identity reconstruction. It’s part of becoming who you are now, on the other side of the marriage. The 19 Building Blocks include this work explicitly, relatedness, self-worth, freedom, all of which point toward a self that can be alone and visible at the same time.
The trip you want to take is part of that becoming. The tools to take it safely already exist and are largely affordable. The people to share the trip plan with already exist, even if you have to assemble them more deliberately than a married person would.
The mountain isn’t lost to you. It’s just yours to climb on different terms.
In our cohort, first solo adventures get celebrated
I want to name one more piece, because it matters.
In our Rebuilding cohorts, first solo adventures get celebrated. A woman returns from her first solo road trip and the room cheers. A man finishes his first cross-country motorcycle ride at sixty and brings photos to the next session. Somebody summits their first peak alone and the cohort meets it the way they’d meet any major life passage.
It isn’t ceremonial cheerleading. It’s the recognition that the solo adventure is, for many divorcing people, a particular kind of becoming, the kind where you prove to yourself, in your own bones, that you can be one person in a wide world and still be okay. Sometimes more than okay.
That proof has to be lived, not argued. The cohort is one of the places where lived proof gets witnessed.
A small thing you can do this week
Name the trip. Open a notebook or a notes app and write the trip you’ve been thinking about. Be specific. Where, when, how long, how far from a road. The trip you keep almost-planning and then putting away. Get it on the page.
Start the constellation. Send one text. To a sibling, an adult child, a best friend, or a cohort member if you’re already in one. The text says: I’m thinking about doing X. If I do, would you be willing to be one of my safety contacts? I’d send you my route and a check-in time. That one text starts the architecture of chosen visibility that this season of life is asking you to build.
If the solo-adventure fear is one of the things that’s been keeping you grounded in a life that’s smaller than you want it to be, the cohort is a good room to do this work in. Schedule a 15-minute video consult, Zoom or Google Meet, no cost, no commitment.
At the end of every intro workshop, I tell the room: if you want to come to the next 10-week class, great. If you don’t, I’m still glad you came. There’s no pressure here.
The mountain is still there. The motorcycle is still there. The road is still there. The version of you who takes the trip is becoming.
Frequently asked questions
What’s the single most useful piece of safety equipment for solo adventure after divorce?
A satellite communicator with two-way messaging and an SOS button, Garmin inReach, ZOLEO, or SPOT. It works beyond cell coverage, lets a designated contact track you in real time, and connects directly to a 24/7 international emergency response coordination center. Roughly $300 to $450 for the device, plus a monthly subscription. The single biggest upgrade you can make to solo-trip safety.
Who do I list as my emergency contact if I don’t have a spouse anymore?
A constellation of two to four people, ideally. A sibling, an adult child, a best friend, and a cohort member or chosen-family equivalent. The form usually only takes one name, but for trip plans and meaningful safety architecture, multiple contacts are stronger than any single one. Many people find the act of asking deepens the relationship in both directions.
Is solo travel really safer with these tools, or am I being optimistic?
The statistics are reassuring. The vast majority of solo backcountry incidents are resolved well when the person was carrying a satellite communicator and had filed a trip plan. The minority that go badly are usually attributable to the absence of one or both. The tools work. They don’t eliminate risk, but they reduce it dramatically.
Can I do international solo travel after divorce?
Many of our cohort members do. The same principles apply, satellite or cell communication, a filed trip plan, a constellation of contacts at home, plus, for international trips beyond easy infrastructure, a service like Global Rescue or Medjet for medical evacuation coverage. International solo travel is one of the most common identity-reconstruction passages in our cohorts.
What if my adult kids worry too much when I take solo trips?
A common dynamic. The conversation usually goes better when you frame the trip as already-decided, the safety architecture as already-built, and their role as one of several contacts rather than the sole responsible party. Adult kids handle a parent’s solo adventures better when the parent is clearly competent, prepared, and not asking permission. Their anxiety is real; it isn’t a veto.
Do I have to be young or fit to take up solo adventure after divorce?
No. The cohort I currently run includes people from thirty to seventy. Some of the most consequential first-solo-trips I’ve watched were taken by people in their sixties and seventies who’d never traveled alone in their lives. The body you have is the body you take. The trip you can take is the one you’re capable of, not the one a younger version of you imagined. Both count.