“Blood of a Young Wolf” – Buck 65

Walking the woods or paddling a canoe or wading a stream have always been ruminatory activities for you. Times to turn things over in your mind. To find new angles, new perspectives. The steady rhythmic motions of walking or paddling or casting, always lent itself easy to the clearing away of mental detritus. A necessity in order to untangle the knottier issues occupying your thoughts and often times the real impetus for getting out there.

But lately you’ve been going for a different reason.

As an escape from all of that.

An escape from the fear mongers and neo-fascists. The twitter trolls and post-truthers. The robber barons and land grabbers. The overly offended and the utterly cruel. The science deniers and outright assholes. The misogynists and xenophobes. The excessively naive and the plain hard-hearted. An escape from a world where dignity and class, decency and honour are ever receding.

You used to come out to ponder these things, now only to shut them out.

For a little while anyways.

Because you can always find solace in solitude, and strength in silence.