gunwithoutmusic | 01. Quest for Fire

1,262 words. Approximate reading time: 6 minutes, 18 seconds. Audio version here.

After a quarter of a mile through the oak canopy, we emerge into a large open area, with tall, thin pines sparsely dotting the ground and waist-high grass threatening to choke off what’s left of the trail, returning it to a time before our brethren thought to cut a path.

I feel a single raindrop land on my arm. For a second, I worry. That’s so like me. We’re prepared for rain, but we also have four miles left, and the last thing I want to do is hike four miles in wet socks and boots. Still, worrying never made anything change, so I let the rain come. It does so in the form of a light mist, which, as it turns out, is quite welcome. It’s a hot day and we’ve been walking for hours, passing through multiple ecosystems, each one vastly different from the next, each one its own little world.

We move like invaders, but these worlds welcome us like old friends. The rain never strengthens past a light mist, the sun remains in the sky and shines down on us, and I feel refreshed and loved by the world around me. We stop for a moment here, just over the halfway point of our hike. I drop my pack to the ground and raise my arms to the sky, saluting the sun and feeling the stretch in my shoulders, that good pain that reminds me how exhilarated I’ll feel after all of this.

I shake my head in a futile attempt to release the combination of rain water and sweat that is soaking my hair, and I can feel my hair moving when I do so. It’s a bizarre feeling, something that seems insignificant, but leads me to reflect on where I’ve come from and where I am.

My hair’s never been this long before. I haven’t had it cut in over six months, at first because we weren’t allowed to get haircuts, but now because I like seeing the growth. I like seeing the outward change that reflects the inside. I like the way it curls up in the back and can never quite lay flat on the sides. I like the way it makes my balding less obvious. But it still shocks me when I shake my head and feel my hair moving.

I’m thirty-five years old, with the spectre of thirty-six looming just around the bend of the new year, and the thought crosses my mind that I’m not quite sure when exactly “mid-life” starts, and whether or not I’m in the midst of a “crisis” right now. I feel as though I’ve lived long enough for my regrets to finally outweigh my dreams, and isn’t that what a mid-life crisis is born from? If someone had told me a year ago that I would find myself miles deep into the state forest with my two best friends, saluting the sun and relishing the feeling of the rain in my shaggy hair, I’d laugh and say, “Sure, now pass me those cookies.”

But here I am.

This isn’t our first hike, and it won’t be our last. Our weekends have changed from spending all of our time on the couch playing video games to being outdoors, pushing our bodies to their limits and somehow finding the energy to go further. We soak in the sun, the rain, the trees, the flowers, the wildlife, everything we can, and pray that it will hold us for six more days, until we can find ourselves back home again, among the pines and the oaks and the palms. Something has changed in our lives. An invisible catalyst is pushing us out here; every weekend we all feel the pull, we all feel the need to get back to this place where we can feel both completely alone and part of something bigger at the same time.
All three of us are here searching for something.

We’re all on our own quests; the location may be the same, but the reason is different. I can’t speak to the reasons that my friends find themselves out in the forest. I don’t know what the call of the wild said to them when it spoke. As for me, though, I’m on a quest for fire. I’m tired of living my life with regrets. I’m tired of feeling old. I’m tired of feeling disconnected from the world around me. I’m tired of feeling tired.

These moments, where I can feel that good pain coursing through my muscles, where I can feel the cool rain soothing my burning skin, where I can know I am close to my limit, but have no choice but to push myself further, are the moments that remind me of who I am, or maybe who I should be. Out here, I’m able to forget about my regrets and my dreams, my past and my future, and just… be. There’s no greater feeling for me than just existing, just being here now.

I used to think that I would love to go back in time, back into my teenage body, but with all of the knowledge I’d acquired over the years since I was just a chubby nerd in high school. Back then, all I wanted to do was create. I wanted to paint, I wanted to write music, I wanted to be a poet, to be an actor, to give myself to the world and find love in return. I always felt like I could have been more than I became, if only things had gone a little bit differently. If only I had tried just a little bit harder. If only I had allowed myself to.

As an adult, I loved the thought of being able to do things over, do things differently, do things better. I loved the thought of being able to take the raw talent that I had back then and just add in a little bit of drive. But there’s no going back to that place. There’s no undoing the actions I took, or the actions I didn’t. For a long time, I lived my life with that philosophy, and allowed it to keep me down. I let my fire be extinguished by the fact that my past formed my present, which forms my future, and I resigned myself to a life without art, without nature, without love. And what is life without love?

I can’t ever go back, but I want that fire in my belly again. I want my dreams to outweigh my regrets again. I want to be bright-eyed and naive; I want to believe that I can do anything. That’s why I’m out here. I want to believe. Every time I find myself out here, in a strange mix of solitude and company, cradled by the tall grass and the pine trees, I find inspiration. I find my ability to create again. I remind myself that I might not be able to get rid of my regrets, but I can stop creating new ones and I can start creating dreams again. I can get that fire back.

I will find it.

The rain has stopped, and our break stops with it. I grab a bottle of water from my pack, then I slide the straps back over my shoulders. We’ve still got four miles to go. We’ve still got more worlds to see and be welcomed to. I still have dreams to create. As we wind our way through the sea of tall grass and back into another oak canopy, I feel a spark form in my belly, and a smile form on my face.