Fresh from the woods

I recently returned from an annual backpacking trip I take. The point of this trip, for me, is restorative in nature. The adventure and beauty of being in a more remote wilderness is the inhalation the creative but somewhat asphyxiated mind needs. Yet, even beyond the respite (if one can call a 50 mile trek carrying 50 lbs on your back a respite) this provides lies something more primal I am convinced. It is a tired sentiment, yet no less true, to suggest that a man might need the wild. Risking the ridicule I probably deserve I can only nod in agreement and admit that I need the mud and rock and air and solitude and water that I find only in the quantity required when I seek the wilderness. This year that search was made in Algonquin, a park three hours north of Toronto. While it is no Denali or Glacier or Patagonia it is one of the closest things I can find in under a 12 hour drive. I walked each day in wonder of and infatuation with the world around me; to touch truck-sized boulders carpeted with moss, fallen pines made smooth by a running creek and midnight silence broken by the loon.

I asked to hike the last four miles of our trip alone. Those 90 minutes afforded me the opportunity to turn my mind back-forward; a week outside time displaced my need to consider any planning outside of water, dinner and shelter. I needed to take some time to consider real life before I left. To consider the future, yet within the context of this wilderness. So I walked and I attempted to put myself back inside of time asking what I might think about differently after yet another week in the woods.

This year the answer was joy. The gratitude which produces unreserved affection and laughter; the yearning attachment to my living blessings and the almost oblivious awareness of rewards yet to come. There is no greener grass, so to speak. I wanted more than anything to have only what I've already been given and to enjoy them as long as they were still mine to have.

However, there was a footnote to these last moments of solitude. A post script so that I'd not forget my own prayers during my time in the woods. To that footnote I will commit more time in my next entry, but in essence it was a particular personal trait I was able to articulate for the first time. I am always at war with the world around me and this needs to change. A truce of a kind must be made.