If you have kids under driving age you know your responsibilities & priorities.  This is, of course, mitigated by several factors.  Your skill at tripping.  How remote you'll be.  How much your family worries.

I suppose in any spouse relationship it's up to the spouses to find their own way.  My Mrs. is happy just hearing from me once I'm back at the car.

Lots of non-trippers have some crazy ideas about what can and what does happen out there.  Bears & wolves aren't going to get us.  Hypothermia is more likely.  In 20 years of tripping I've been late getting home once.  Mrs. can't make that same claim in a comparable number of nights out with friends.

I'm not a fan of giving in to unreasonable fears, even my own.  Our loved ones need to understand the reality.


Anyone who thinks that going out there connects us to those who lived out there is foolilng themselves.  Life back then was ugly, brutish, and short.  If you're over 40 odds are you would have been dead already.  If you wear shoes, bring food, have a canoe that weighs under 100lbs, have a backpack, etc... you're not connected to them.  We're hobbyists who take the factory-built modern world with us.  The solo-tripper being the most hobby-like of us (that means me).  Exile was the toughest punishment.  It was impossible for a single person to survive for long.  While one person goes out and gets food for everyone another person stays home and makes clothing for everyone someone else gathers nuts & berries yet another works on making the tools.  There aren't enough hours in the day for one person to survive the way they did.  When you're alone with no food, no canoe, no pack, no shelter, and no means other than walking to get out of there on a rainy November day - then you might understand as they did.
We do it to escape.  That's why everyone does everything they do when they have their own time to spend, not company time, not family time, not school time - MY TIME.  The 2 hours between me getting home and Mrs. getting home is MY TIME.  The Tahiti Syndrome runs deep in us, but the reality of actually doing it up here is pretty bleak.
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Great example Marten.