This seems like a good spot for this. And no, I don't usually take a GPS, at least not here in NJ. No cell phone either.
"Contact with the outside world, has given me human distemper."
This quote has been ascribed to Noah John Rondeau, the fabled hermit and self-appointed Mayor of Cold River City.
Rondeau understood that when a man goes into the wilderness he may well be on his own, but he's never actually alone. A man always brings along with him a unique piece of his past, and in that regard, Rondeau was very comfortable in his own skin.
When man takes to the woods, he is not actually escaping civilization, he is striving to recapture a piece of his past. We have become so conditioned to our ordinary, organized existence in a civilized, orderly society, that we've forgotten how to act and react when we are cut loose in a natural world.
Mankind has existed is a natural state for nearly 99 percent of our existence. Yet when campers claim they go to the woods to "get away from it all," they don't realize the journey is actually an attempt to return to a more familiar place and time. The purpose of the journey is not to escape, it is actually reclamation.
We don't go to the woods to lose, we go to find and recover. It often seems to be an intangible notion until we consider the fact that mankind has existed in a "civilized manner" for less than 1 percent of the time we have lived on this planet.
It is an undeniable fact that nature is in our nature, and we are simply one of the more refined animals (although the jury may still be out on that theory.)
Wilderness travel provides humans with an opportunity to realize that nature remain a key component of their being, and that is good for them and not against them. The benefits of nature should no longer be a foreign notion.
Humans should be able to slip into the natural world comfortably and easily, like a well-worn moccasin. They can return to a time when their lives depended on a comprehensive knowledge of the natural world.
But it often seems we have lost that way and there are now far too many artificial elements blocking our way along the route along that old familiar path.
The path to camp leads through our soul, and the sooner we come to recognize that fact, the easier it will be to return, time and again, to sharpen our skills, restore our senses and rekindle the natural fire that continues to burn deep inside all of us.
