On The Run

When I was about 7 or 8 I read a book about a boy who ran away from home and lived in the woods in a hollow tree.  The book was all about how he taught himself to survive in the wilderness and ever since then I had been fascinated with the idea of running away, living on my own, discovering for myself the tricks I needed to survive.

I should have stayed in cub scouts, and then joined the boy scouts.  I remember really liking my first year but I quit because my brother, David, quit.  He was a webelos, the last cub scout rank before joining the boy scouts and he didn't want to go on, I never learned why.  Anyway, I was completely unprepared for the real prospect of living on my own in the wilderness.  I didn't know how.

The truth of the matter is that the American wilderness is completely changed from the frontier I was raised to expect.  There's too many people now, too many cities, and the land between is crisscrossed by roads.  Even the most barren patch of wilderness is owned by somebody.  You can't go off and live in the woods anymore, you'd be trespassing..  So much for my romantic notion of striking off on my own.