1,000 Hours Outdoors
/What if solitude in nature isn’t calming for you?
Amber Von Schassen challenged herself to spend 1,000 hours outdoors in 2023 (Photo courtesy Amber Von Schassen)
Season 6 | Episode 4
Many of us go outside because the quiet is calming. But what if silence isn’t calming for you? What if it’s the opposite? Could you still find a way to love it?
In this episode, Florida-based producer Amber Von Schassen explores why silence in the outdoors is so unsettling for her, and shares what happened when she tried to get over her fear by spending 1,000 hours outdoors.
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Welcome to Out There Podcast. Our stories are written for the ear, so for those able, we recommend listening while reading along. Transcripts may contain minor errors; please check the audio before quoting.
WILLOW BELDEN: Support for Out There comes from PeakVisor. PeakVisor is a navigation app that helps you make the most of your time in the mountains.
They have 3-D trail maps to help you plan out hikes. They have photos of summits all over the world, to get you excited about upcoming adventures. And there’s even a peak-bagging feature, so you can keep track of your accomplishments.
If you’d like to be a superhero of outdoor navigation, check out PeakVisor in the app store. You just might love it.
VOICEOVER: Hub and Spoke audio collective.
WILLOW: Hi, I’m Willow Belden, and you’re listening to Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories outdoors.
This season is all about silence.
For some of us, silence is golden. It’s something we actively seek out. It’s why we go outside. Because that quiet — that stillness that you find in nature — is deeply calming.
But that’s not the case for everyone. Some people really struggle with silence. And today, we’re going to hear from one of those people.
This is a story about what happens when silence sparks panic. And it’s about going outdoors, in hopes of conquering your fears.
Amber Von Schassen has the story. And just so you know, this episode describes a shooting and includes adult language.
AMBER VON SCHASSEN: I love a challenge. Not a hard, strenuous challenge. More like, what if I woke up every day at sunrise?
APRIL: So it would go like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
AMBER: That’s my mom, describing the oven timer I used as an alarm clock that year.
APRIL: And so even though my door would be closed and I was across the house, I would hear it. And my little Amber was fast asleep in her room, ignoring the timer.
AMBER: And then there was the challenge where I ate every meal with another person for a month. Here’s my old housemate, Robby.
ROBBY: I think the best moment of the entire thing for me was when you asked me if I would still be sitting at the table eating food in like 15 minutes because you wanted to run to Popeye's and get a sandwich.
AMBER: I’ve done about a dozen of these challenges. No meat Mondays. Read a book from every European Union country. 100-day Duolingo streak. You get the point. Arbitrary. Fun. A little challenging. Those are my go-tos.
And then, in December of 2022, I saw a video on TikTok.
TIKTOCK VIDEO: It's officially our third year attempting the 1,000 Hours Outside Challenge, and boy, has it been one of my favorite.
TIKTOK VIDEO 2: Month two of our thousand hours outdoors challenge is wrapped and this is just really the best resolution I have ever made.
TIKTOK VIDEO 3: So our one big goal for 2022 was to try and attempt 1,000 hours outside.
AMBER: One thousand hours outside? I mean, how could I not do this?
Imagining myself at the end of 2023 was exciting, thrilling even. I’d be a different person. No longer anchored to the AC, I’d be an experienced solo camper, who talks about composting toilets.
Instead of spending my nights watching garbage TV, I’d use that precious time after work to go on nightly walks around my neighborhood. I’d discover a little slice of the beach where I’d go a few times a week just to catch the sunset by myself.
But almost as soon as I’d downloaded the 1000 Hours app — yes, there’s an app — I realized this was actually gonna be kinda hard to pull off.
First, if you break down 1,000 hours over the course of the year, that’s 2.74 hours a day. That’s a lot more than I thought it would be.
And second, because I work during the day, I’d have to do a lot of this challenge at night.
My first evening walk proved just how difficult this whole nighttime aspect of the challenge would be. I start my walk around my neighborhood. I live in Florida. Old live oaks with Spanish moss hang down over the brick roads. The front lawns are covered in tropical plants and native shrubs. It’s really dreamy.
But someone’s up ahead.
My breath feels shallow now. What if this person has bad intentions? What if they attack me?
The spiral starts. If I walk in the center of the street, I have a better vantage point to see if anyone is running up to me. And plus, that way, if someone does come up, I would be equidistant from both houses lining the street. Someone will hear my scream, right?
Shocker — it turned out fine. Yes, my residential neighborhood where people leave their doors unlocked and host porch parties was absolutely safe. The person in the street, they were a neighbor.
But that doesn’t change how I felt. And how I almost always feel. My brain does this. Almost every day, and in just about any situation where I’m alone and it’s dark outside, I start to panic.
It hasn’t always been like this. In fact, I know exactly when everything shifted. It was the summer between high school and college.
MATT: It was the World Cup, Germany versus Brazil.
AMBER: That’s my friend, Matt. He’s tall, almost over-sized. Like he’s still growing into his full, man-sized body.
MATT: And we were drinking a shitload.
AMBER: I paint myself in Germany’s colors, Matt trounces around wearing nothing but denim cutoffs and a German flag, wrapped around his neck like a cape.
MATT: I remember we were playing a game where we would like do a shot every time there was a goal scored, which ended up being crazy because Germany scored like eight goals or something like that in that game.
AMBER: We smoke cigarettes until our teeth feel hollow, and by 2:30 in the morning, Matt and I are the only ones still up and we’re out of cigarettes. So we start walking to the convenience store, five dollars cash in hand, and totally barefoot.
In Florida, that summer heat can feel oppressive. Your skin feels slick, not with sweat but just from the wetness of the air on your body. And growing up, I loved this air. It meant I could stay out late with friends, taking turns staying at each other’s houses and jumping in the pool with all our clothes on.
This night, it feels joyful in the same way.
MATT: I remember walking down Ostley. We crossed the cul-de-sac. I walked down that street a million times, still do…
AMBER: And walking together, it’s perfectly quiet. I feel so wholly myself around Matt. My footsteps are loud and brave.
But a few minutes into the walk, the air changes.
A guy jumps out of a car. His footsteps are much louder than ours. He’s running with purpose until he’s in front of us.
My skin feels like it's on fire now.
Staring at us, his eyes become big, almost bursting out of his face.
MATT: And I think he pushed you, you tripped, I'm not sure what happened. But I remember you falling over first. And then I turned to you, because you were on the ground.
AMBER: Matt’s staring at me. I’m staring at the guy with the big eyes. And he’s staring at Matt. And that’s when I realize, the guy with the big eyes, he has a gun.
MATT: And then, that's when he shot me.
AMBER The guy shoots Matt, through his elbow, and into his spine. Then, he runs.
MATT: And then he got into a car that was waiting that had come out from the cul-de-sac where he had been and got into the car and drove off.
AMBER: I think about this a lot. About why he came after us. About why he never asked us for our money. Why he didn’t even try to take the five dollars. Neither of us know.
MATT: And I remember crouching down because you were still on the ground at that point and I noticed all the blood coming down the side of my leg.
AMBER: It’s somehow so much worse than the movies. Blood pools on the sidewalk, on the road. It’s all over his body, and then somehow my arms are just covered in Matt’s blood.
Matt takes off his shirt. We wrap it around his arm, not realizing that it’s actually his back that’s bleeding out. We don’t even have our phones on us, so we have to walk back to the house like this. Both of us, barefoot. Matt shirtless. His blood all over us.
Now, I feel like I’m suffocating from the humidity. That comfort of the quiet is gone. I just want it all to end.
We take Matt to the hospital. The bullet was only a centimeter from his spinal cord.
He spends a few days there and the police say they’re investigating it as a homicide.
MATT: The cops came by and rolled their eyes at us for about 30 minutes and we never heard from them again.
AMBER: A few days later, Matt’s released from the hospital and everything slides back into place. We throw another party at the house.
Everyone’s drinking themselves into oblivion in celebration of Matt’s heroic return to the shitty college house.
MATT: We had completely different experiences, and I'm really sorry about that.
AMBER: For Matt, it was a miracle.
MATT: There's no, there's no doubt about it. The bullet passed through my elbow, and I have full use. I have full mobility. That's insane.
Not to mention the fact that it's in my spine, which is not a great place to get shot. And I walked home. That's crazy. That is crazy.
AMBER: For me, it wasn’t a crazy miracle. It was a loud, blaring, and shocking alarm: the world isn’t safe. A terrible thing happened to me. And more terrible things could happen at any moment.
Later that summer, I have my first panic attack. I’m with a few friends in New Orleans. It’s night time and a friend wants to walk through the French Quarter together.
We’re in the road, wandering, and then the air turns. I’m no longer in my body.
Everything’s hot; the sounds around me couldn’t possibly be any louder. I cry and I start yelling, “Why are we even here?”
A day or two after that, I have another panic attack. Then, I leave for college. The panic attacks continue.
One semester, I carried an umbrella around at night, just in case someone attacked me on the street again. It didn’t make much sense, but it made me feel safer.
It’s been like that ever since the shooting. If I think about it hard enough, I get sad about how irreversibly changed my life was by the shooting.
Like it stripped me of the fearlessness that was so embedded in my identity up until that moment. And it made me terrified: of the silence, of being alone, of being outdoors at night.
Which is all to say: I didn’t realize it when I made up this challenge for myself, but spending a thousand hours outside isn’t just about getting out into nature, it’s about me pushing past this. About not panicking every time I’m outside and alone, and most of all, it’s about regaining some of what was taken away from me.
But that was a lot harder than I expected. Throughout the year, instead of trying to muscle through my fear, I shrank back. I did everything I could to avoid being alone, to avoid putting myself in situations that would trigger panic for me. Which meant convincing a lot of friends to spend a lot of time outside with me.
And this wasn’t a bad thing. I made a lot of new friends.I got to know people who would go camping and paddle boarding and do sunrise walks with me. We'd spend long, lazy Saturdays at the state park. And on weekdays, I made sure there was always someone to join me for beach yoga or sunset walks.
It was working — I was getting in my hours. And I loved meeting all these new people and expanding my community. But at some point, I started to worry. These activities were fun, but they weren’t actually addressing the foundation of the challenge. I wanted to spend time alone outside, in the quiet, the dark, looking at the stars totally solo. I wanted to push past my fears.
And with only 159 hours to go, it feels like I kind of have to do something that really pushes me toward that goal. So, I decide to go camping — by myself, for an entire weekend.
[Car door closes, car starts]
AMBER: I should not feel nervous about going car camping by myself. Like, I'm sure there's a Walmart within 15 minutes of where I'm going. [laughs] Like, how scared can she be if there's a Walmart? [laughs]
Apparently, really scared.
When I arrive at Rainbow River State Park, I realize I’m very much not by myself. The campground is full. Crowded, even.
I start to wonder if this even counts as solo camping.
But even with other people around me, I still feel really alone.
The sky is like that, almost gray blue, like, before it's dark, there's not reds or oranges or pinks in the sky. And I get so much more scared in this light, and I really wish that wasn't the case. But like, right now, I'm safe, I'm at a state park.
I start trying to rationalize the situation in my head.
In theory, it doesn't make any sense for someone to give the state park person their ID, to get a camping site that you have to fight for, literally wake up at the ass crack of dawn to get a camping site. And then for that person to want to come and hurt me, and yet, all I find myself doing is looking behind my back.
And it's so weird, because I see all these people here who aren't doing that. And so much of my adulthood has been consumed by doing that.
What gets me about all this isn’t just the fear. It all makes me really sad. Like, why does this happen? Why does this always happen?
It feels like a lot of other people can enjoy something, and it's like I keep turning around and I don't feel safe no matter how many times I do it.
It’s not long after this that I discover my saving grace: the other campers around me are loud. Like, really really loud.
I'm whispering because my mouth is so close to the microphone and it would be so loud if I was speaking at a full volume. But I just want to say, I'm, I'm grinning. Like, I am literally ear to ear, grinning, smiling, listening to other people's conversations. It’s crazy!
So, another shocker: I survived a single night at a state park campground, surrounded by families and RVers. But it wasn’t fun. I was scared, until I finally exhausted myself with my anxiety and fell asleep.
When the sun rises, I’m back in my element. My plan is to go paddleboarding down Rainbow River. And that means people time. For me, paddleboarding is a social sport.
I head off to Rainbow Spring, where the river starts. A lot of people will tell you about the springs in Florida. There’s thousands of them dotting the state, from the northern Florida-Georgia border, all the way down to the Everglades.
Some are huge, some are tiny. Little sinkholes in the ground where teenagers go to get drunk and jump from rope swings.
People will tell you about how crystal clear the water is; about how Wakulla Springs, the Spring I grew up going to, looks to be about 10 feet deep. You can see every small rock, every piece of seagrass, every little gar. But in reality, Wakulla Springs is 185 feet deep. It connects to one of the largest underwater cave systems in the world.
They’re genuinely breathtaking. And it’s this wonderful sense of awe that’s drawn me to them over the course of this year. I’ve developed a real love for the interior of Florida, where springs are overflowing with manatees, gators, birds, and other wildlife.
But what I love most about the springs is the community they bring.
Like, on the day I visit, there’s a couple setting up a breakfast picnic on the hill overlooking the headspring, a family arguing about who can stay in the longest, and a woman with a giant mermaid tail is just shimmying out of the water.
The water is cold. I jump in anyway.
And then, I get on my paddleboard and take off down the river.
A few minutes in, I see a line of three kayakers. The first kayak fits two people, and the woman in the front is laying back. Behind her, a man is paddling and they’re propelled by a motor that they’ve jerry-rigged to the kayak. And behind them, they’re towing two other kayakers, who are also laying down.
That's really quite the setup. Honestly, you've got a propeller there.
KAYAKER: You want a ride? Hop on the back if you wanna…
AMBER: [laughs] I love that.
As I float down the river, I talk to everyone I see. I can’t help myself. I love a river chat.
Are y'all staying at Chimera?
OTHER PERSON: Yeah.
AMBER: It's so great, my book club rented it out a couple weeks ago. Other than the 5,000 page manual, it's amazing.
OTHER PEOPLE: Yes, yes. We just met Hal in person.
AMBER: Shut up!
OTHER PEOPLE: Yes, yes. [laughter] He was at the other place.
AMBER: Which is all to say: Maybe I actually love being out on the river because I love these interactions. I often joke that the only thing better than offering to take a group of people’s picture for them is river chatter.
Eventually I arrive at my destination, Swampy’s. A riverside restaurant where you can deboard and pick up a cold beer and a burger. It’s small talk heaven.
I get to chatting at the bar. This time I’m not confined to the current of the river, and we can talk for as long as we want.
I love this, but I feel a little disappointed in myself. Like, this whole trip is supposed to be totally focused on myself and being in solitude, and here I am talking to a group of 70-year-olds about what a podcast is.
It feels like I’m not actually getting over my fears, but instead just leaning into my coping mechanisms of filling the quiet with noise.
So I decide to head back to my campsite, adamant that the solitude tonight will be joyful and restful.
And honestly, it’s not. I get spooked at any sound. I don’t like being by myself.
The only thing that calms me down is knowing that this will be over tomorrow. I’ll pack up, and return to my very, very noisy life.
And that’s what I did. I got back to St. Pete, an unchanged woman.
Except for an hour-long nap in a hammock, I spent the remaining hours of the challenge with other people. I finished the year at 1,013 hours.
As I get older, I start to notice things about myself that don’t change. That won’t change. Like, I’m bad at laundry, bad at keeping my socks together, and even worse at separating my whites from my colors.
It’s easy to accept that. After all, who proudly says that they’re good — maybe even great — at laundry?
But being afraid of the dark? Of the quiet? That’s fucking pathetic.
Or maybe, and bear with me because I’m still working on accepting this part of myself, maybe that’s just a part of me too. And that’s okay.
At least in the outdoor community, we put silence on a pedestal. And so when you don’t like that, when that silence scares you, it’s easy to feel inadequate, like you don’t really belong in that community.
But maybe in all of this, there’s also something special, that I’ve found and that others maybe see past: the noise can be fun. Really fun.
Like, the clitter clatter of glasses clinking together at a garden party, of deep belly laughs around a fire, and big loud footsteps stomping into our next adventure together.
Almost 1,000 of my 1,000 hours outside have been spent with my dearest community, people who make me, me.
This year, instead of trying to embrace the quiet, I'm leaning into my love of loudness. My resolution is to host 56 gatherings at my house. Big dinners, small get-togethers, maybe a few parties. But mostly, I just want to make a shit ton of noise with the people I love.
WILLOW: That was Amber Von Schassen. She’s a writer and producer living in St. Pete, Florida. You can see more of her work at ambervonschassen.com. And if you want to see how she’s doing with her 2024 resolution, you can follow her on Instagram at @AmberGlamber.
Coming up next time on Out There, we’ll have a special guest episode from a podcast called Points North.
ALISON VILÁG: There’s some black-bellied plover calling, distantly. [Whistles]. Sometimes you can whistle them in. [Whistles]. They’re going to the Arctic too.
WILLOW: How birds helped one woman break free from other people’s expectations.
Tune in on May 30th to hear that story.
If you’ve ever gone on a trip with me, you know how much I love maps. City maps, trail maps, maps of lakes — I love them all. So much.
But there’s a problem. Oftentimes, when you’re out in the backcountry, your map only shows you the immediate vicinity. And that makes it hard to know what you’re looking at. Let’s say you’re out on a hike. You stop at a viewpoint. You see mountains off in the distance, and you want to know what they are. But your map doesn’t go that far.
This is where an app called PeakVisor comes in handy.
PeakVisor is our presenting sponsor this season. When you open up their app, it determines where you are, and then it shows you a panorama of everything you’re looking at, with all the mountains labeled.
They also have 3-D maps to help you plan out your trips, and a peak-bagging feature to keep track of your accomplishments.
If you’d like to be a superhero of outdoor navigation, check out PeakVisor in the app store. You just might love it.
Today’s story was written and narrated by Amber Von Schassen. Story editing and sound design by me, Willow Belden.
Out There’s audience growth director is Sheeba Joseph. Our interns are Katie Reuther and Maria Ordovas-Montanes. Our ambassadors are Tiffany Duong, Ashley White, and Stacia Bennet. And our theme music was written by Jared Arnold.
Special thanks to all our listeners who are supporting Out There with financial contributions, including Amy Strieter, Eric Biederman, Doug Frick, Tara Joslin, Sue and Gary Peters, and Deb and Vince Garcia. Gifts from listeners make this podcast possible. If you’d like to get in on the fun, go to patreon.com/outtherepodcast. Patreon is a crowd-funding platform that lets you make monthly contributions to projects you care about. Like this podcast.
That’s it for this episode. We’ll see you in two weeks. And in the meantime, have a beautiful day, be bold, go outside, and find your dreams.
Credits
Story by Amber Von Schassen
Story editing and sound design by Willow Belden
Music includes works from Blue Dot Sessions and Storyblocks
Links
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This episode sponsored by PeakVisor
