Having returned from the wilderness without incident I have quickly re assumed my generally distracted existence. While in the wilderness I managed to maintain my eating and sleeping routine almost to the minute. When I think about that I have to admit it seems pretty strange since I obviously had no deadlines to meet, places to be at a certain hour or people to coordinate with. I guess it’s pretty amazing how effectively I’ve been culturally conditioned. It does make me wonder about the nature of free will.

The only tangible remnants of my wilderness experience consist of a few small paintings that are now more real than the rock, water and vegetation they represent. And, as I view them in their balanced, rectangular format it’s clear to me they really haven’t captured the intense sensory experience that inspired them. I guess I’ll keep them anyway for their memory value. When I think about it, maybe there’s no better reason to produce art in the first place.

I’ve been thinking about who would really miss me if I were not to come back from the wilderness. I think there are people who would care but also that there are different degrees of mourning.

For instance you might feel bad at a friend’s disappearance but the loss might be harder to deal with if the deceased were a parent or sibling. If the lost one were a partner or spouse you depended on daily I would guess it may be really hard to take.

I have no spouse or siblings, but I guess there are folks out there who would consider my passing significant.   I don’t anticipate any problems returning from the wilderness provided I keep my canoe upright.  I have no desire to disappear.  The spirit is still willing.

Outside of any eschatological interferences I plan to return.

I’ve been alone in the wilderness now for more than twenty-four hours. Other than the occasional canoe passing by I’ve seen or talked with no one.

Nothing particularly unusual has happened here other than last evening I fell in the lake trying to get into my canoe. I spent considerable time after that rigging up lines to dry things out which they pretty well were by morning.

So, I was thinking about what I miss being in the wilderness and one of the first things that came to mind is music which when I’m not in the wilderness I am usually listening to or is at least playing in the background.

I find it interesting how some musicians’ names seem to fit their profession so well. Take Esa-Pekka Salonen or Luigi Boccherini or Antonine Dvorak. When I say these names out loud I just want to repeat them over and over because they’re so rhythmic sounding (well, maybe not Antonine Dvorak so much).

The composer I’m thinking of now is Aaron Copeland who I guess doesn’t have a particularly rhythmic sounding name but his music seems to suit the wilderness. It seems to me Appalachian Spring would be really good background music for where I presently am. I’m not in Appalachia and it’s not spring but never the less.

I do know the title of that work really doesn’t refer to the season but rather a water source. I found this out only recently. Even so I still am inclined to think of the season when I hear the piece. Also I think of Jody Foster who sang Simple Gifts in an episode of Kung Fu for David Carradine who played Kwai Chang Caine even though he’s Caucasian.

The movie that I think of when I think of Jody Foster is Taxi Driver with Robert DeNiro. In it she plays an adolescent prostitute.

I’m all alone in the wilderness. At least it’s someplace I would call wilderness. I know for a fact no one lives within miles of here and there aren’t any roads within miles of here either.

That’s not to say there aren’t people around. I saw four people just minutes ago but they aren’t within sight now. For all intents and purposes I’m all alone. At least I have been for the last three hours and seventeen minutes which is how long ago I entered the wilderness.

Right now I’m looking out across a lake.

Although it’s been a couple of minutes since I wrote that last sentence I’m still looking across the same lake in so far as I haven’t moved from the spot I was at when I wrote the last sentence. It’s a beautiful scene; the sun sparkling off of the water, the variety of greens in the trees on the far bank, the multi-colored rock outcroppings reaching down into the dark water. It could be a painting.

Of course I know it couldn’t really be a painting because then what I’d be looking at would be some sort of pigment spread on canvas or paper or something rather than the real water and rocks and trees I’m seeing.

That’s not to say if what I was looking at was a painting that the painting wouldn’t be real. It is real in my imagination in so far as I can imagine this scene as a painting.
So I guess there’s no reason to think that the painting I’m imagining of the scene that I’m looking at is any less real than the water, trees and rocks.