The Loneliest Places on Earth

The Loneliest Places on Earth

There are not many moments in this life where you truly feel like you are the only one on the planet. Not figuratively. Not in the poetic sense. But really alone.

In June of 2020, during the height of COVID, when the world had slowed to an eerie stillness, I found myself driving the Alaska Highway. Travel had nearly stopped. Borders were tight. Roads that once carried movement and life felt abandoned.

It was just me, my son, and our dog.

We pulled off near a place in Canada called Destruction Bay.

There were no cars for hours. No voices. No signal. No reassurance that anyone was nearby. Just an empty stretch of road and a vast, beautiful bay that felt as endless as the silence surrounding it. No one on the planet knew where we were.

In June, the sun never really sets. It just dips low along the horizon, lingering there… never fully leaving, never fully returning.

That light is soft, stretched, almost unnatural and it made everything feel suspended. Like time had paused. Like the world was holding its breath. And somehow, that made the loneliness even deeper. It was unsettling in a way I had never known.

Lonely, yes but also raw, powerful, and strangely alive.

Fear crept in quietly at first. The kind that sits in your chest when the world feels too big and you feel too small within it.

We tried to sleep in the pull-off that night, but real rest never came. Every sound mattered. Every shift in the wind felt amplified. The light never fully fading, never giving you the comfort of darkness or the clarity of day. 

Time stretched, and somewhere in those long, quiet hours, something inside me shifted too. Because when there is no one else around and no distractions, no safety net, you meet a different version of yourself. You find courage you didn’t know you had. Strength that doesn’t announce itself, but rises when it has no other choice.

Morning eventually came… or maybe it was just the light growing stronger. And with it, a quiet decision. To pull ourselves together. To move forward, even with the fear still sitting beside us. Because that’s what we do.

This world, as full as it is, can feel incredibly lonely at times. There are stretches of life that mirror that empty highway and they are long, uncertain, and silent. But those are also the places where we discover who we really are. Where we realize we are stronger than the fear. Braver than the silence. More capable than we ever imagined.

It is a lonely planet at times. But it is also where we become ourselves.

For the planet we imagine, even in the quietest places, we keep going.

Tanya, Planet Jalupa