I married a man who grew up on a 100 acre farm, whose days were filled with the magic of the woods.  As a 10 year old it wasn't uncommon for him to take off to the woods with a hatchet, to spend the day and night in the wonder of wild. I think that’s why he can fix almost anything, has common sense and an alerted intuition of surviving in dangerous situations. However, his hunger for the wild seems to have been satisfied early on.

Though I am a child of the 50’s and 60’s my “wild” moments didn’t come about until my college years when I discovered backpacking and caving in West Virginia and much of the Appalachians became my bi-monthly playground between work and 18 credit hours each semester.  It was also my undoing.  I fell head-over-heels in love with the outdoors spending most of my second decade in the western mountains of North America and Mexico. I never gave my career a second thought when I left the East Coast with a backpack, a pair of hiking boots that I eventually re-soled twice and the best sleeping bag available in those days, re-stuffed twice (Camp 7).  I had my Svea camp stove, a light-weigh tent, my Winnie the Pooh Bear, and my enamel coffee cup, aka bowl, wash basin and drinking glass. I hitchhiked out west to Yosemite to accomplish every trail in the park and a few that were off the map, taking overnight trips with only the clothes on my back and a box of sturdy matches. Sometimes Winnie came with me strapped to the pack, keeping me company, watching my back.  I fell in love with the trees, the flowers, creeks, snowy peaks and granite cliffs, memorizing the names of flora and fauna.

In time, I hiked in bits and pieces most of the Pacific Crest Trail, some of it pretty boring, some of it back-and-knee-creakingly grueling, all of it worthwhile.  Skipping over to my late 20’s landed me in Montana where hiking was different, less traversed, populated with bears and large game.  I hiked, stayed a while, fell in love and then came the next 30 years of family-raising, growing up, and being tame.  I loved all of that too but hungered always for a return to the unsettled regions of my soul found only in the wild places, perfect quiet and the earth the way it once was, pre-craziness of humanity.  Absolute quiet is rare and I relish it.

I am grateful for this Allusion Journey, to get a chance to revisit wild places, though the revisiting is not so grueling, not so knee creaking.  Tim by my side, Allusion taking me through safe and dangerous waters, it’s going to be difficult to go home again.