I was disoriented by the idea that men should ever leave the forest.
We smoked fat cigars by the campfire and they tasted like wood and ash. The inhale and exhale was exciting. Blowing smoke rings in the calm forest air was followed by a deep swallow of cheap beer, and this too was exciting. There was no judgment in t...
It occurred to me that no words by the tongue of man can express the simplicities of a quiet land, so I returned to the river.
I walked slowly to enjoy this freedom, and when I came out of the mountains, I saw the sky over the prairie, and I thought that if heaven was real, I hoped it was a place I never had to go, for this earth was greater than any paradise.
...returning to nature has been a dream present in the minds of every generation since mankind first left nature.
The contemplative man always lives alone. Regardless of who may reside in his home, his is a solitary world.
When I returned to camp, they walked behind me on the trail, and we spoke not a word about getting skunked today, but rather talked about the days we returned with a stringer full of fish, and how we filleted them and the left the guts out for bears ...
Today I am an unemployed writer living as a recluse in the great Northwoods.
There was a wildness inside him; someday he would capture it. Not to be tamed, but to be released. For only by understanding his mind could it be freed.
