Do you have a desire to write in the wilderness? Away from home and all daily distractions? I carry with me this postcard picture of a solitary person, surrounded by evergreens, sitting on a rock overlooking a sunlit lake – maybe a loon calling from the water – and writing my next novel. Then the ipad or laptop runs out of battery, completely ruining my postcard picture!
The technical difficulties of writing in the wilderness.
The problem with writing on a rock near a lake, away from phones and the internet, is that I’ve become addicted to writing on my ipad. A spiral bound notebook with fountain pen would make a more romantic image; however in practice I rarely return to read my scrawling handwriting. With my ipad, I can work away on my novel where ever I go… as long as I don’t run out of battery power.
The Challenge
I decided I would experiment this year on my kayak adventure to northern Quebec to see if I could travel and write successfully with my ipad in the remote wilderness. The challenge would be keeping the ipad free from accidental water damage and recharging the battery since the trip would take 16 days without access to electricity.
I solved the first problem by using a water proof pelican case. With a jigsaw arrangement I was able to fit the ipad, the keyboard, the emergency satellite phone, the GPSA, the battery pack and all associated cords into the case. The case was strapped to the back deck of my kayak and through more than 2 weeks on the water, everything stayed dry and free from sand.
The second challenge of recharging the battery was more difficult. As we were camping in the wilderness, there was obviously no access to electricity. After doing some research I settled on using the power monkey solar recharger. This works by a small folding solar panel that charges a battery. The battery can then be used to charge other batteries, like the ipad, cameras, GPS, etc. It turns out that the ipad is a power hungry beast and needs a substantial battery pack to recharge so using the biolite fuel stove (that can recharge a cell phone) did not have enough juice to do the ipad.
The good news is that the ipad battery lasts a long time if you are only using it for writing and are careful about powering it off every time to avoid accidental turn on.
But how good is it?
It takes about a full day in sunshine to charge up the power monkey to 100%. You can be using the ipad at the same time as the battery is charging. From my experiments, connecting the ipad to the power monkey for 1 hour, drained the power monkey by 40% and gave the ipad a 14% boast. That is how much power an ipad uses! What this means is that it’s possible to write away on an ipad remotely as long as you are careful with battery use especially on cloudy days. Also charge that power monkey to full before leaving on the trip!
Taking my ipad with me on a remote wilderness trip allowed me to combine two of my passions, both for writing and kayaking. In the evenings, I journaled about our day’s adventures. On one of our rest days, I sat in the sun on a rocky beach and wrote another chapter for my novel while listening to the loons call from the water. How perfect!
