I too love to walk alone 90% of the time in the Caminos.
Yet...
I've often wondered myself, a

, venerable ancient peaceful man , as I've walked my Caminos alone in the middle of nowhere about this issue of safety.
I mean, anyone who may want anything I would carry could just pop up at any time, rob or kill me, and nobody may hear a thing or ever know what happened to me. All imaginable gory thoughts came to mind as I walked in solitude, and we know when you walk alone for days how disproportionate mental thoughts could get!
Historically, when you look into the history of the Camino-related "picaresque," crime and safety hundreds of years ago were serious problems. That is documented, fiction/non-fiction (please don't put me to work and provide titles, am on a well deserved couch potato binge!).
I do believe that things have changed for better through the ages for reasons mentioned in previous e-mails.
Still, would it be any different from the same thing happening in an urban setting, or close to home, place of work, and what not? Crime and violence are right there at our backyards, let alone Caminos. I may even venture to say that criminal statistics may be higher in most of our immediate or at-large communities, that in the Caminos.
I believe that fears, real or imagined, are an unfortunate part of every day living. We have to deal with them, not be obsessed and/or oppressed by them.
I would never be detered from doing something or going anywhere that my sense of intuition would tell me to do or not to, because of fear. Should I let fear rule my life I would never leave my home and get heavily into agorophobia. But then even at home, anything could happen, too.
Risks need to be taken in life if we want to grow, Camino settings or not.
In the end, when those thoughts assaulted my mind during my isolated Caminos, I would end them by concluding that when and if the worse might happen, I would know what to do.
Buen Camino :arrow:
xm