Your poemreminds me of all the fabulous trips that I have taken through desert, thru mountains, thru oceans, thru jungle. How I look forward to getting back on the open road, especially after reading this.

Simplicity and nature. It would certainly be a healthfully spirited gift. Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue. I've been reading John Muir of late. Your insight here brought a few of his interesting insights back to the forefront. "By forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive, nature accomplishes her beneficent designs - now a rage of fire, now a flood of ice, and again, in the fullness of time, an outburst of organic life. I know that our present bodies were made only to thrive in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found. Between every two pine trees there is a doorway leading to a new way of life.".... It's mysterious, how for some seekers, aging is a kind of process where you at last become what you always should have been. Enjoyed your thoughts. Peace.

Your poem recalled paddling and carrying a canoe over seven days and 100 miles through pristine wilderness where one could drink the water directly from the lakes and rivers without fear of contamination or disease. And the many times I've ventured into the wilderness alone with nature all around me and not even a pack on my back. Nor need for water on a four hour hike. The best medicine there is.

Also from your poem, two anecdotes:

As I drove my grandmother back to Wisconsin from California in 1968 after she flew out on her first two airplane rides at 90 mph on Interstate 80, she told me about taking all summer for her family in a wagon pulled by oxen from Arkansas to North Dakota with her father looking for work. Most nights, they camped in farmer's yards. Almost everyone welcomed strangers and even fed them in those pioneer days. No one born in this or the latter half of the last century had such a vast change of travel in a single lifetime like my grandmother's generation--from oxen pulled wagon to jet plane and fast car.

My uncle, once complaining about taxes on his parent's homestead farm. "You know Ron, last year I made about $3000 and had to fill out forms for the IRS like a corporation!" With his son in his 80s, he planted the farm in trees. Half of the trees have been sold and his son runs a remote control campground and playground on the property.

Ron