What happened to that guy, that guy up there in the picture? I seem to have lost track of him these last years. I miss him, and I need to find him again. I've been feeling it a lot lately. I need to find him. For sanity, survival, sustenance.
On the first official day of spring in my hemisphere, I walked out in to the night chill in the wee hours. The deep freeze of winter having been broken, the shrinking piles of snow, now mostly filthy and ugly by daylight, continued melting in the new mild air. The moon being just one night from full was bright and reflected off the whiteness of the still frozen lake as I made my way down to the shore to just sit awhile in the silent dark.
A bit later, rummaging through boxes in a storage closet, I found the maps. And with them found the journals. I traced old routes past marked campsites, memories of each trip, a storm here, a near disaster there, a sunset beyond words, a muddy portage from hell and cursing, coming around a bend and finding a companion entranced by a wildflower on the path, thunderstorms to shake earth and sky, days of rain until every pore and every piece of gear is soaked, and a chill going to the bone. And then a brilliant sunny morning and the whole world is sublime. Ice cold skinny dips, glassy still lakes in the morning mist, and fear in heavy seas and wind on a big lake one afternoon. Heaven in the taste of a fish gone from lake to frying pan in minutes, and another kind of heaven in clean socks and dry feet after a record paddling day. Visions of fellow travelers airborne in a rapid. The thrill of it, and the feeling that every day out, a little more of the wild reclaims the spirit, and the concrete and the steel, the constant din of civilization begins to fade. Life reduced to the very basics: stay warm, stay dry, stay fed, get from point A to point B. And in the very basics...all things merge into one, and there is a lake in the middle of it...a forest in the middle of it, a wildflower in the middle of it....
What happened to that guy, that guy up there in the picture? I seem to have lost track of him these last years. I miss him, and I need to find him again. I've been feeling it a lot lately. I need to find him. For sanity, survival, sustenance.
I will. I will find him again.
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