They say, “You can’t go back.” Which is of course false, because you can go back, it just might not feel the same way. Yet, what makes it different? I often look back at even recent times in my life and marvel over how much has changed in just a couple of years, but things can become dissimilar for us in just a few months as well.
Sometimes situations change for the worse, but as darker fluctuations occur, at times they can also force us out of stagnation. Although many of us like to feel cozy and warm in a predicable life, one also runs the risk of trading the unknown for the known and lack of variety and adventure can often be the price you pay.
As the sun begins to set on this mystic Baccanaught, I look back at where I was when I started WildernessPunk 18 months ago. I lived much of my time in camp 1 between Flagstaff and Walnut Canyon. I spent the days and nights alone with only the minimal equipment I could transport to the forest by bike. No fires, simple foods, mostly reading and writing until the battery on my loaned laptop died.
Now, not too long after, I’m living in a home with heat and water, dating a lovely goddess of a woman, seeing friends every week, and most importantly getting to have my boys stay with me.
Yes, much can change quickly, but this only made it more exciting when I had a chance to return to Camp 1 recently. It felt fitting I hiked up into the forest alone. Within are pictures of Camp 1 taken in 2018, 15 months after the last night I slept there.
In theory, I had returned to clean up and perhaps salvage anything worth grabbing, but as I followed the old trail, which hid my homeless refuge, other more complex thoughts moved through my mind.
I felt grateful. Where so much had turned against me, now so many things have fallen into place. Yet as the readers of WildernessPunk might appreciate, with this turning of the tide, something was also lost.
One feels a pride persevering through obstacles and living low to the ground with limited resources. Nature is the great equalizer. Rich or poor, members of every race and belief are all treated the same. Only your ability to prepare and work to improve your state changes things in the real world.
Was this the Real World or is my normal house more real? Hard to say. I felt alive in a different fashion then. Am I more of a winner now or less? I’d get different answers from each person I could ask. Yet, the bottom line for many of us becomes our children, family, lover, and friends. Are you going to live for yourself and ideals, or jump into the mainstream so your can uphold different goals and ideals?
Perhaps one can do both. Wish me luck.
WildernessPunk 