Today I am an unemployed writer living as a recluse in the great Northwoods.

It has always been my belief that you can judge the compatibility of two people by the rhythm of their paddle stroke.

Their minds told them this life was not their own. This life was not the one designed for this body and soul. The truth of existence was a happiness separated from the easy happy life. There was music in the forest. There was clean air where nobody could hear him breathe.

The contemplative man always lives alone. Regardless of who may reside in his home, his is a solitary world.

This was going to be difficult, because he enjoyed women, but all the ones he has known seemed to be sent as secret assassins on a mission to destroy his pride and ability.

The trees show definitions of themselves subtly like the face of a man.

I walked slowly to enjoy this freedom, and when I came out of the mountains, I saw the sky over the prairie, and I thought that if heaven was real, I hoped it was a place I never had to go, for this earth was greater than any paradise.

...returning to nature has been a dream present in the minds of every generation since mankind first left nature.

When I returned to camp, they walked behind me on the trail, and we spoke not a word about getting skunked today, but rather talked about the days we returned with a stringer full of fish, and how we filleted them and the left the guts out for bears and eagles, and how those fish tasted fresh when we fried them over a fire.

The mountains knew the definition of freedom. They provided a place where he could find his mind.