Lost and Found

He no longer knew who he was. So he went looking for himself in the woods. Yet, he strayed off path and became more lost than he was to begin with. Now, he must find himself and his way back home.

How?

How did I get here, in the woods?

I went looking for myself.

I went looking for myself in the woods because I lost myself in suburbia. 

Since the day I emerged from my mother's womb, I did everything right, yet I forgot who I was so that my own name no longer meant anything to me. I was a stranger to myself, and now I am here, lost physically, but found in the sense I have abided by the great Delphic commandment, which is this: Know Thyself. 

Where did it all begin?

In suburbia, where I was lost, but did not know that I was lost.

I exited my house on the first day of autumn when the initial surge of frigid air gave me a taste of the coming winter. An overcast dulled the sunlight over the identical gray two-storied cottages that lined the street, each with its own black-and-white mailbox and navy-blue city trashcan, sitting in the two yards of grass between each two-car driveway, where the grass ended and the concrete curb began. Once this was the land of the Creeks, then the yeomanry. Now, it belongs to a residential property management firm with developments across the Sunbelt.  

I tucked my coffee into my armpit and held it against my chest with my arm as I dug in my pocket for my keys, so I could lock the door behind me. I felt a sting as a little of the scalding fluid leaked out from under the plastic lid and seeped into my white dress shirt, leaving a pale brown stain. I tried to rub it out with my thumb, but that only made it worse, so I stood clueless for a second, going back and forth about how noticeable it really was. It was noticeable, I determined, so I opened my door and went back inside. 

It was only five days into October, and our Halloween decorations had been up for a month. In November, our Christmas decorations would go up before Thanksgiving. We were what we were. We were suburbanites. And we did what suburbanites did. Year after year, we gave in to the pressure of so-called "holiday creep." Decorations went up earlier and earlier. Soon, we would have no holidays because we would have nothing but holidays. We'd lose the concept of a "holiday" in mundanity. Because every day would be a holiday, holidays would possess the quality of everydayness. The zeal of the unfamiliar would thus disintegrate into the drudgery of the familiar. Everything would become nothing and nothing everything. 

So, though we had 26 days until Halloween, the pumpkin-shaped candle on the kitchen island was already losing its form. The plastic autumn tree by the couch was barren. The dog had torn off its yellow, red, and orange leaves. Now, it was nothing more than a hollow plastic stick, like a dried-out trunk in the middle of a desert wasteland. 

I took off my shirt and climbed the stairs to the master bedroom. Cool air stung my bare back. I threw the shirt on our unmade queen bed. There would be no hope of washing it this morning. I didn't have the time, and my wife had already left for the hospital. She was the only one who knew how to remove stains from shirts. So, I dug the shirt I wore the day before out of the hamper and sprayed it down with wrinkle release.

As I finally closed the door behind me, I was still buttoning the top button of my shirt. Then, I realized I didn't have my bag. I didn't have my coffee either. My bag was on the couch where I'd left it. My coffee was on the kitchen island next to the deformed pumpkin candle. 

I checked my phone. It was 7:37. Work started at 8. And between me and my office were five minutes of residential neighborhoods with stop signs every 100 feet, another five minutes of standstill traffic, and 10 minutes of interstate. And after I would get to the office every day, I had to park, ride the elevator, and plop my stuff down on my desk before sprinting across the cubicle-laden workplace suite so I could make the morning meeting. If I left right then, I wouldn't have had a second to spare. That was, of course, if everything went according to plan.  

Would my boss say anything if I were a few minutes late? Probably not. It was not like I was ever late to begin with. Like I said, I did everything right. I even took on additional work when no one else wanted it, and sometimes stayed in the office for an extra hour without pay. It wasn't about sucking up. It was about the principle of the thing, the principle of holding myself to the highest standards possible because hard work pays off. But does it pay off if you're working hard for something that, to you, has the sole purpose of earning an income and gaining a reputation? I suppose it does, in money and status. Yet, I had neither, and labored day and night to fool myself into believing my prize would one day come my way. On some days, it actually worked. I had hope. On others, it didn't. Reality has a strange way of forcing itself into your life even when you don't want it to.

As I unlocked my door for a second time to run inside and grab my bag and the rest of my coffee, I was living in one of those moments in time when denial is impossible. In fact, that day became the death of my self-inflicted ignorance altogether, albeit in a way I would've least expected. 

There was a tension building up inside of me that got harder and harder to ignore the more I let it fester. But, at that time, I was only half-conscious of it, like one is when he first gets up in the morning and looks at his phone. He somewhat absorbs what he sees, but is he really seeing it? Is he not still half-asleep? That's how I was with this tension. I was aware of it because I felt it, but I was not fully conscious of it. My gut was telling me it was there, that something was wrong. But I was so stuck in my head, I couldn’t listen to my gut. As I tried to lie to myself, I tricked myself into believing my gut was the liar. 

That made the tension worse. If nothing was wrong, yet I felt something was wrong, what did that mean? That meant something was wrong.

I was unhappy but had no conceivable reason why I should be that way. At least I thought. I had a wife I loved, who also loved me. We had a roof over our heads and food on our table. Both of us had secure jobs. We could afford to save and were debt-free. We both had two sets of parents who lived close by and could help us out if we ever needed it. We were not at war. The economy was fine. Neither of us were sick. We were ordinary people in an ordinary world, living exactly as ordinary people ought to live: ordinarily.

And I had done everything right to get us there: I went to college on a scholarship. I got a degree I knew wouldn't be excessively challenging, but would also qualify me for a corporate job, where I could climb the ladder. I met my wife in college. We got married only when we were both out of school and receiving paychecks. I read books, the books I was supposed to read, books about habits and hard work and success and social skills. And I was kind, paid my taxes, and avoided controversial conversation topics (those forbidden by the unnamed legislators of the dinner table, which we know is forbidden because it is always said they are, but not always practiced: sex, religion, and politics namely, but also gossip and morals and anything that begs existential questions).

Yet, something was wrong as I drove to work that day in my used Honda, classical music on the radio because I read online it increases work performance by 120%. How they measured that, I don't know. I drove to work and repeated to myself under my breath: "I am happy. Little improvements every day make great leaps over long periods of time. Hard work works. I am happy. My gut is lying to me."

Then, my eyelids were pried open against my will, and reality wrapped it's cold, relentless fingers around my neck, strangling me. It shook me back and forth until I mustered two meager words through my collapsing windpipe: "You exist."

I was not accustomed to roundabouts. This one was new, completed only the week prior. I didn't think to look twice before merging. I should've yielded. And this was the grave mistake that permitted reality to catch up to me. I pressed the toe of my right foot down on the pedal and rolled forward before a split-second image of a gloss-black hood and headlights appeared in my periphery. By then, it was all too late. Glass shattered. Rubber squealed on concrete. The full force of an Escalade moving 45 miles per hour took me, and my little Honda with it. 

For a blip in time, I ceased to exist. At least, I ceased to exist to myself. I became unconscious, disappeared as if the hours after that awful crash had never occurred. One moment, I was sitting behind my steering wheel. The next moment, I opened my eyes and who did I see? I saw Jesus Christ. 

I was not in heaven. No, I was in a Catholic hospital. On one side of me was our Lord and Savior nailed to a cross on the wall. On the other was my tear-stained wife: sweet, sweet Mackenzie, still in her scrubs.

First, these objects were formless, not objects at all, but a blurred conglomeration of light and color. But in the following moments, they gained definition, distinguishing themselves from the other objects that surrounded them. And, there I was, face-to-face with the two people who had given themselves up for me.

I tried to move, but all I felt was pain. I jolted back into my lying position and clenched my teeth. Mackenzie's soft hand touched my flustered cheek. I realized one of my arms was in a cast. There were IVs attached to the other, and there was a tube stuck in a hole in my stomach. I heard beeping: fast, high-pitched beeping. Mackenzie pressed a button on my bed. "I think he's up," she said. "He's probably going to need another dose of the morphine."

"What's...?" was all I asked. It was all I could ask.

"It's okay, honey," Mackenzie said. "I'm just glad you're okay."

A concussion. A broken arm. A broken hip. Flesh wounds in my stomach, calf, and upper back. It could've been worse, the doctor said. When Mackenzie showed me the photo of my car, I knew he was right. It looked like an aluminum can of Diet Coke or Coors Light after you twist it and crush it between both palms. It was like looking death in the eyes. And that's what it took for reality to force me to take it seriously. And reality was this: I had no idea who I was. 

From that moment forward, nothing was the same. Nothing was the same because I was on a quest. I was on a quest to find what I had lost. 

So, I endured a grueling two-and-a-half weeks at the hospital. I pushed through the agony of forcing my body to move, of eating food when I didn't want to, of easing off the pain medicine, which was the only thing keeping my pain at bay. And, for two months, I cashed in short-term disability and allotted myself plenty of time to think.

Lying in bed after arriving home, I spent an entire day on my phone scrolling through the internet, scouring Google and YouTube for answers. But I found nothing but cheap advice. 

How is it, I thought, that we can have all the information in the world at our fingertips yet no one can tell me who I am, not even myself? How is it that I know my name, my social security number, my credit card information, my address, and my date of birth, yet I still feel like there is an essential part of my identity I do not understand? Had I always been this way? Had I just now been made aware? Or had I forgotten something I had known before? Why was now any different?

There had to be an answer, an analytical, logical, rational answer that I could understand. There had to be, because if there wasn’t, my entire understanding of what it meant to know at all had to be reconstructed from the ground up, like a condemned warehouse that has to be demolished to make way for an outlet mall. 

That is a terrifying thing to have to do.

So, I kept searching. When the internet failed to give me a satisfactory answer, I turned to books. I reread the same six or seven self-help books I'd read before. I finished about one every other day, devouring them like a hungry dog given food scraps after days of not eating. But those scraps lacked nutrition. They told me nothing about who I am. They only told me how to make money and how to make friends. 

I remained as clueless then as the moment I began my search.

Then I asked myself: Why am I looking to other people to tell me who I am?

I must look within. And to look within, I needed to get away. I needed to return to something more honest. I needed to escape the mundane, manufactured, tech-dictated environment for one that was simple, instinctive, out of the ordinary. Where could I find that? I could find it in the woods.

When I told Mackenzie about my plan, she was apprehensive.

"You're still recovering," she said. "I don't think camping is what you need right now."

"But it's exactly what I need," I said. "I need a break from all this. I need an escape, something new. Besides, I know what I'm doing. I was an Eagle Scout. I used to camp all the time."

"An escape from what? An escape from me? An escape from our life?"

By this time, I could stand and walk, but not well. My arm was out of its cast and I no longer had stitches. But my doctor placed limitations on physical activity. I was still attending physical therapy. 

Without saying another word, Mackenzie told me with her face: "Please just give me a break. Just love me and be happy you're still alive. Don't go chasing after death because he missed you the first time."

Oh, sweet, sweet, Mackenzie, my lovely wife. How? How am I to be happy if I don't know who I am? 

"It has nothing to do with you," I said.

"What does it have to do with, then?"

I had not the words to explain. How can one explain? Here I am, telling you about how lost I was, yet I cannot explain what it was like to be lost, how I knew I was lost, or why. I just knew. It was as if a voice was inside of me, whispering the truth in my ear, the truth that I knew very little about anything and even less about myself. And that voice of reality had been whispering since the moment of my conception, but it took being blindsided by an Escalade to quiet the noise that was drowning it out. Now, it was silent but for that voice, which I couldn't help but hear. And preceding that voice was fear, great inescapable dread bearing a black cloak of questions about my own significance, for if "I" meant nothing to me, how could I mean anything at all?

"You wouldn't understand," I said.

"Yea?"

"I'm serious."

Mackenzie shook her head. She was going to be silent. I knew she was going to be silent. I could see that was her intention when she refused to respond: silence me out of being an idiot. Silence me back into the illusion of satisfaction, of self-knowing. But she changed her mind. She had one more thing to say: "At least give it time. Wait until you've finished your therapy. Wait until the doctor gives you the go-ahead." 

"Fine," I agreed. She was my sweet wife. How could I put more of a burden on her shoulders when none of it was her fault to begin with? Waiting would be my price to pay.

When I returned to work, I hardly worked. I never made my quota. Instead, I blamed it on my injuries. My boss and coworkers were sympathetic. Really, I didn't make my quota because I was planning my trip and not making any calls.

I remembered camping as a child. I did not grow up in the country. My parents did not have large swaths of land. We did not live on a farm. But I loved our trips to the wilderness. When I was young, my dad would take me to the campgrounds by the lake. We would pitch a tent and roast marshmallows on the fire. In the morning, we'd take out the canoe and fish as the sun rose. As I grew older, I had my troop. We went on hiking trips and learned how to conserve our food and filter our own water. When I was a Senior, we flew to California and slept under the stars in the Yosemite for 11 nights. I remember knowing who I was then, and I remember being sure of it. Those trips, both with my dad and later my troop, were some of the few pure moments in my life, uncorrupted by deploring the past or anticipating the future. They were simply moments when I existed as I was, unchanged and without need of changing. And I thought that's what I needed.

I booked a primitive camping site at the closest state park. It would only be a thirty-minute drive from home. I would get there, hike for six miles, and pitch my tent. After that, I would hike for an average of ten miles a day. On the seventh day, I'd be back where I began, the whole 66-mile trail making a full loop. 

As I packed the night before my departure, Mackenzie asked me: "Are you sure you want to go?"

"Why wouldn't I be sure? I've spent all this time planning."

"What if you don't find what you're looking for?"

I hadn't fully explained what I was looking for. I wasn't sure she understood and didn't think she would understand had I explained. But she knew I was looking for something. 

"What makes you say that?" I asked. "I just need a change of scenery. And I need to be alone. That's all I need." 

She worried about me. Ever since my accident, she worried about me night and day. Perhaps some part of her blamed herself for my unhappiness. That's an easy thing to do in a relationship, assume it's yourself causing all the trouble. It's a kind of narcissistic sympathy, different from the self-lost-in-self narcissism that was drawing me into nature.

I kissed her goodbye the next morning before she left for work. She kissed me back and whispered, "Please be safe."

"I know what I'm doing," I said. "I'll be back next week. I promise."

"And then what?"

"That's what I'm going to find out," I said, smiling as if I were not serious, but I really was serious. I was extremely serious. I had to be.

And off to the wilderness I went.

I left the road at the trailhead and wondered what I would find.

At first, all I found was silence. The wilderness was still, quiet but for the crunch of the dirt and gravel under my boots, and the high-pitched chirping of robins and cardinals. I found a bit of peace in the fact that I had no obligation, no duty but to walk one foot behind the other down a path that had already been laid out for me; a path void of the burden of choice, as clear behind me as it was before me; illuminated by the sunlight that sporadically broke through the holes in the canopy of pine needles above my head.

Though I was at peace, I was also uneasy, for just as the path before me was undeniable, unmistakable, distinguishable from the indistinguishable mass - the forest of pines and oaks and dogwoods and brush - I was still walking into the unknown. With every step I took, the less I focused on the birds and the trees and the warm sunlight heating up my cold arms, and the more I faded away into thought.

And when the sun set, night came both inside of me and out. The trail was not as clear as it once was. I stopped when I found the campsite and pitched my tent under the dim dusk sky. When I was finished, I started a fire. And I sat by the fire alone, listening to the crickets chirp and observing the vast array of stars above my head. Again, I momentarily escaped myself and started to have hope again. 

That hope, of course, was interrupted by the growling of my stomach. 

I dragged my bag across the damp leaves that matted the ground. Reaching my hand inside, I searched for a can of chicken breast. There should’ve been six, one for each day, and a whole box of protein bars to keep me going until nightfall. But there was none.

None. How?

I dumped everything out of my bag in front of the fire.

No food. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have forgotten to pack my food after all this planning?

I got up. I was in a state of panic. What was I to do? Chase down a squirrel with my bare hands? At night? As if I were a primitive man and not a soft suburbanite who, quite literally, ate from a silver spoon?

Yet, the only alternative was to make it through the night without eating and walk back in the morning. It was possible, but it would not be pleasant. I was starving. I hadn't eaten since breakfast.

I found my flashlight in the pile of my things on the ground and stepped into the darkness, the firelight dancing on my back.

I searched and found nothing, nothing except two large mushrooms growing out of a decaying tree, white with light-brown caps. I sat on my heels and held the flashlight under my chin. I remember earning a foraging badge when I was a scout. I had to learn to identify mushrooms to tell which ones were toxic. As far as I could tell, these were blewits. They had purple gills under their hoods. I knew if I deliberated any longer, I would just go back and forth between doubt and certainty. So, I pulled them off the dead tree, brought them back to the campsite, and roasted them over the fire with a stick. They tasted like dirt, but I ate them all.

And I woke up the next morning to the bright sun on my face.

I thought I had seen the light. I was dizzy. My head ached. It was like waking up in the hospital again: objects gaining form, shapeless matter separating out into distinguishable entities. Instead of being surrounded by God's Only Son on one side and my wife on the other, I was surrounded by God's creation, and nothing else. 

I rubbed my eyes and brushed dirt off my back after I sat up, then started to look around. Where was I? I was in the woods, but this section of the woods was no different from any other, only it was not next to my tent. There was no sign of the fire I'd started the night before. There was no pile of things on the ground where I'd left them by my empty hiking bag. There were only trees, leaves, sticks, and rocks. And there was the sun above me, the ball of fire in the sky burning into my retinas. 

When I stood up, I teetered back and forth on either leg until I felt secure enough to take a step. Even then, I stumbled and fell on my knees. My stomach was just nauseous enough to feel uncomfortable, but not enough to induce vomiting and get it all over with. As I leaned over the blanket of leaves on the forest floor, I thought to myself: surely, I did not go far. How could I have gone far if I did not remember?

But, as I stood up again, and dragged my feet around the edges of the small clearing where I woke up, I saw no trace as to how I got there. Even as I waded through the dense brush under the canopy outside the clearing, my camp was nowhere to be found. And neither was the trail. 

I panicked. I started walking faster. It was cold out, but sweat leaked and trickled down my pale forehead. I heard my breath blowing between my lips. My heart beat in my chest as if a fist were banging on the interior of my ribcage, as if someone was trapped inside, screaming for help. In my state of panic, I did not notice all the peaceful things that still surrounded me - the wind, the trees, the birds, and the squirrels. None of it was peaceful to me any longer. None of it could be. One without any peace inside cannot absorb peace from outside.

And I still found no trail as I increased my radius around the clearing. I had come here, lost within myself. Now, I was a lost self who was also lost physically, lost in the wilderness with no food and no shelter. When I finally realized how lost I was, I returned to the clearing. I sat on a rock and propped my head up on my fist like the statue of the thinker, though I was not thinking. I could not think. All I could do was worry, which is not really thinking as much as it is an impediment to thought. 

Yesterday, my concern was I would not find what I was looking for, and return home disappointed, that Mackenzie was right, and I would have no choice but to live in my unknowing forever. Today, I feared I would end up more lost than I was to begin with. I was worried I'd be lost forever, barred from the precious, ordinary things I was too abstracted to appreciate: the roof above my head, the food on my table, my boss who believed in me, my wife - my sweet, sweet wife - who loved me unconditionally and allowed me to go into the woods looking for something she thought I couldn’t find. 

Why had I been so ungrateful? Could I have not been content? I did not know who I was. I did not know how to be authentic. But at least I had a world in which to play pretend, a role in a play for my unknown self to perform. And I was good at it too. I left it all for this, for nothing.

And I sat there griping for hours until my stomach growled again. It was the same signal that led me to folly the night before. But what was I to do now? I had no trail to return to. I had no knife with which to hunt. It was just me, a stranger.

I was thirsty too. I felt like someone had stuffed cotton balls in my mouth. The back of my throat felt like a toad's skin, dry and bumpy and coarse. And my tongue was swollen, filling up my mouth as if I had a heavy chunk of steak between my gums. Water had to be the first priority. Water, then food. Perhaps water would even help me find food. Food needed water too.

So, I set out to find water, hoping I would also stumble upon my campsite and my things. I committed to walking in a straight line in a random direction, only veering for impossible obstacles like steep cliffs or dense brush or trees. I stopped when I arrived at a ditch. It was a dry ditch, a four-foot-deep divot matted with dirt and leaves. Dry as it was, water was the only thing that could've formed it. So, I followed it. Sure enough, the further I walked, the more my boots sunk into the bed, the ground moist. Soon, I heard the sound of water running. I stopped and listened, located the sound, climbed out of the ditch, and followed it. I came upon a cliff overlooking a shallow pond. By my side, a narrow stream spilled over the cliff's edge, crashing into the pond below me, producing constant ripples on the surface of the otherwise clear water. 

I found water. But that was not all I found.

There, scooping water in the palm of his hand was a man. His hair was long, and an untamed beard shrouded his face. He held his cupped hands up to his face and drank. The water poured out of the corners of his mouth and filtered through the coarse hairs on his chin. Some of it leaked onto his bare, hair-carpeted chest. He was wearing nothing. Nothing but a skirt of cloth wrapped around his waist. And even that cloth was matted with mud, blood, and no telling what else, the parts left unstained, a faded yellow. 

What had I found? A primitive man? An animal in human form? 

I stood atop the cliff and stared, wondering if I should even dare to speak. He could kill me, I thought. He could kill me and eat me, and no one would ever know. I'd be dead and gone, lost and never found. But what was my alternative? Die alone looking for food I had no idea how to catch? I was desperate. So, I called out to him.

"Hello?" I shouted.

His face emerged from the palm of his hand.

And that's when I knew. The face looked familiar, but not too familiar. I'd never seen that face exactly, but only a reflection of that face. It was my own. That man out there in the pond was me. And I had found what I was looking for, what I initially set out to find. But now, I was still lost in one way, but not the other. Strangely, I had forgotten all about being lost within when I became lost outside. Now, I was reminded. Now, I was found. 

And that brings me to the present moment, as I stand here and look at myself from a distance like I've never done before. Here I am, my clean-shaven, civilized, purified self, looking at myself as beast, as animal, as wild thing untouched by reason or thought or consciousness, pure instinct self. And I, the one abstracted, lost in thought, taken away from body, observe him from high above, like an angel looking down on Earth from heaven. 

And he stares back at me and blinks, as if, again, I am an angel appearing to him; he, again, an animal, which lacks the wits to perceive me. He says nothing in return.

"Hello?" I say again. He is like a deer in a pair of high-beam headlights. He is completely still, frozen like a statue. 

When I move my feet, they kick the leaves, and a stick snaps in half beneath my heel. The noise causes him to flinch. I can see he is about to run away.

"Wait!" I yell.

He stops. 

"Let me come to you," I say.

I follow the edge of the cliff until I find a place where I can climb down. It is where the cliff ceases to be a cliff and becomes a steep hill instead. I crawl down backward, so as not to slip and fall on my face. I hold onto the trunks of young trees to control my descent. And I emerge from the woods at the edge of the pond. 

He is there waiting for me, still squatting as if he is an ape, his fists buried in the soft, silver-brown silt that borders the water. 

He is on high alert as I approach him. He tenses up the closer I become.

I hold out my hand to him.

He reaches for me and places his fingers in my palm. Dirt is caked in the crevices between his fingers. His long nails are yellow-brown.

As soon as his skin and mine meet, I am in the past again.

I am back home, sitting in my leather recliner in my living room. It is before the crash. I know it is because the grass outside is bright green. The fan is turning above my head and I'm wearing shorts. It's summer, and I'm reading a book. I am also thinking about my life. I am thinking about what's next. I am thinking about what to make of myself, and I am trying to plan everything out, to live perfectly. Why? Because though I don't recognize the tension yet, it is budding within me. I am uncomfortable in the present, so I am living in the future. I am reading a book about choosing my career path, about being financially savvy, about building a life for myself in which I am fully satisfied, a heaven on Earth. It is not a book about how to be a man in the world. Rather, it is about being an angel and constructing a world for an angel. 

And I live in this memory like it is the present moment, but some part of me is aware that it is not. I am just an observer, yet stuck in my own body in some moment previous in time. I am aware of all my feelings and thoughts, but I am not the one making the decisions here. The decisions have already been made by me - the me of the past. 

I hear boots stomping down the stairs.

I look up from my book and see myself. It is like the self that I have just rediscovered - bearded with long hair. He is wearing my hiking bag and has on cargo pants. I know where he is going. He is going to the woods.

And the goodbye I give him is bitter. It is a bitter goodbye because it is silent. We both know why he is leaving. He is leaving because I have banished him. I have chosen to live in the past and future. I have chosen to transcend the Earth, forget all the worldly things, and become pure reason, to ignore the part of me that is not cognitive, and cast him away. I don't think twice about it, as our eyes meet, and he opens the front door. I return to my book and forget about him when he leaves. 

Yet, here we are now, together again. Together again at last, after my folly and his banishment became my terror and his starvation. We are together again, here in the woods, lost but also found, a single, complete man: body and soul composite. 

It is in this moment that I know why I've been drawn here. I knew all along what I was looking for. I knew all along I would find myself. I just didn’t know in what way. 

We do not stay there and let ourself die.

We now have a reason to live, a reason and way. To live as man. As man and not angel. Not beast. Goodbye analytical prison. Goodbye theoretical identity. Goodbye long-term plans and schedules and lists and self-help. I need you no longer, for I am something else now. I am me. I am now. I am man.

Tomorrow, we - I - will find our way home. I will find the campsite and pack up my things and get in my car and drive to my house. And I will live there with my wife who loves me, and I will love her until the last of my days. It will be extraordinary, and it will be ordinary. It will be both, and it will be mine, my life, my every day. 

But that is tomorrow. I am now.

I make a fire. I catch a fish in the pond, wading in the water with a sharp stick in my hand. I skin it and roast it and eat it, using wood and rocks and teeth. And I sleep by the fire with a full stomach as the sun goes down above my head. I sleep under the cosmos, knowing the stars are there in space and I am here in place, in present time, a thing created with a soul and body in creation. And, for the first time since the day my bodily-beastly-instinct self left my rational-angelic-conscious self sitting in my chair, trying to plan the rest of my life like one plans a vacation, I smile and I lay on the soft leaves under my back.

I am imperfect here, yet I am complete.

---

L.W. Blakely is a writer in Birmingham, Alabama. He is the author of The Wayfarer, a newsletter where he publishes literary fiction, criticism, and musings. Learn more about L.W. and The Wayfarer on the About page, or (if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read) consider subscribing and sharing his work.