Your trip starts with a 13 hour drive. Passing through small towns and industrial areas that have long since seen their best days, we find ourselves heading north away from the city lights. The journey’s vehicle is nothing more than a large, maroon, gas-gulping truck that has tires that complain because they’ve been touching the pavement below far longer than they were ever meant to. Dozing in and out of sleep in the passenger seat you vaguely remember passing over a large bridge high above a body of water below. The early morning sun you remember from the beginning of your journey has now turned into a mixture of burning reds and oranges on the low horizon line. Further north you travel until large towns become small ones, and paved roads turn to gravel. The dust from the road fogs up the windshield and even though you haven’t even left the vehicle, you still feel more and more aware that you are further from the comforts of home as you have ever been. As the evening turns to dusk you arrive in front of small lodge, one that was probably built by someone with a lot of patience and an affinity for deer. The lodge itself is nothing short of something straight out of a Robert Frost poem. As your truck squeals to a final halt, you stumble out and stretch the muscles in your legs that no longer remember how to function. Hobbling your way to the door you walk up the stairs of a large wrap-around porch made from local trees. After checking in with the bearded innkeeper you wearily fall into a bed which is nothing more than a cotton-filled mattress on metal springs. Since you have been sleeping all day you find it hard to fall asleep and you find that your mind is slowly filling with ideas and visions of the day ahead. The wilderness is often a mystery to city folk like us, and the idea of being immersed in an endless forest with no other human being within miles of you comes as quite the environmental shock. The most difficult part to comprehend is that everything that you need to eat, sleep, and survive is all tightly packed and placed heavily on your shoulders. The wilderness ahead seems frightening, but often in life the most frightening things are often the most exiting and the most fulfilling. Asleep in your bed you dream of calm blue lakes, large rocky cliffs and a camp-site that’s only designated as such by small iron fire-grate. The following morning you wake and gather up your gear in a large army green bag. The fog outside further perpetuates your curiosity towards the unknown wilderness ahead.
Uncle Hysteria 