Member-only story
A Lost Affinity Regained
Love, being human, and our relationship to the natural world
On a calm, overcast day thirty years ago, I emerged from the Alaskan wilderness happy to be alive yet apprehensive about going back to the developed places. I had only been in the bush a litte over two weeks. What of any real significance can happen to a person during such a brief span of time?
It had only been a solitary camping trip. No big deal, really. I was the same man I had always been, or so I kept telling myself as the bush plane transported me back to Juneau. But this assertion, no matter how many times I uttered it, didn’t change how I felt.
I went alone into the wild to confront my Maker or die trying. I had hoped for a dramatic, life-altering experience — for the kind of enlightenment that makes for good cinema. But that’s not what happened.
Once it became apparent that I would simply die trying, I abandoned my ridiculous quest and surrendered slowly, ever so slowly to the wild. In other words, a part of me did in fact die there. The self-important pilgrim in me perished the moment I realized that I was disappearing into the bush as so many other restless souls before me had. The Alaskan wilderness is littered with the bones of dreamers.
