I thought I heard another set of footsteps crunching on the misty gravel trail, so I took out one Airpod and turned around.

Nothing.

I put my Airpod back in and kept walking as daylight faded. Summer wasn’t even technically over yet, but tonight I could feel spooky season setting in.

I noticed some big orange mushrooms that had popped up after the rainshowers earlier in the day and crouched down to take a look. They looked velvety-soft, the color of pumpkins, and I had never seen anything like them before.

I reached out and touched one - and a flash of light made my eyes water.

I stumbled to my feet to see - through a hazy veil - someone who looked just like me, walking away through the mist with a small smile on her face.

I called out, but no sound came from my lips.

The water fed off her frenzy. It picked up pace from lazy to sloshing to roaring, til finally it mirrored her inner state and made her feel like the entire world was chaos. A moment of relief as muscle memory worked the paddle for her. She pushed hard off a rock, avoided going sideways down a rushing drop, felt the water swallow her plastic boat over and over again before running off its sides.

The water was carrying her fast - exactly what she needed. She was on an adrenaline rush and she hoped it would take her across multiple state lines before her arms gave out.

She didn’t look back. She didn’t want to. But if she had, she’d have seen the faint leftovers of early-morning city lights behind her. Worse than any bear, she thought. A bear was simple. Or a shark. She understood their motives. Curiosity, hunger, predator instinct. What were the motives of the people she was leaving behind? They changed every damn day. One day, she’d be struggling and would receive a pet on the back, soft words - not because she was loved, but because it made them feel good about themselves. The next day she’d do something that made her so proud - something big and bold and that made things easier for everyone - and she would be talked down to. How do you tell a motive for that? Insecurity? She couldn’t tell. Maybe everything she did was just wrong. It was so much simpler out here, even if more physically perilous. No one could claim that she was kayaking badly - she was staying atop the waves, that was the only measure that counted.

She felt haunted, actively chased. Every time she slowed down, memories of her last night there resurfaced. It was a boy, it was their mutual friends. She couldn’t believe how quickly everything had fallen apart. She had started to have hope, real hope, that if she shared herself freely there was a place where she could belong. A person, a group of people who could see her, who could understand the things she felt and expressed and who shared her tender desire to know them more deeply. Shared her tender curiosity. She had thought it could be everything she wanted.

And then.

She refused to go back there now. She needed to focus. Her hip dully ached. She refused to scan any other part of her body for injuries - safer to just push it to its limits instead. She squinted as the sun broke over the treeline. This is my path now, she told herself. No more can anyone tell me what’s right and wrong for me.

He had always wondered if this day would come. Six years ago, he’d moved off grid into this tiny house to get away from all the restrictions of modern life.

Back then, as he’d made his preparations, he couldn’t believe how excited he was to get away from it all. He hadn’t even felt a bit of nostalgic hesitation. He was over his girlfriend - they saw the world so differently. She had bought in completely to the cookie cutter “normal” life that made him feel so trapped - go to the same job every day, buy a house, pay property tax and health insurance, get married, have 2.1 kids, go to Target once a week for groceries and splurge on entertainment and distraction with the rest of your money.

He was over his job, social media, keeping up with what he was supposed to know about what was happening culturally and trend-wise and halfway across the world. And he had felt so harried and rushed in the middle of a city and world going at breakneck speed, in circles, it often felt like.

So he’d bought the tiny house, bought a plot of land, and taken a leap of faith with his meager savings.

At first, it had been such a huge learning curve he hadn’t even had time to think about whether he was enjoying himself. When the first winter storm came and his firewood got soggy, he felt desperately alone and uncared for.

But gradually - as he got used to and even started to relish his new routine, he had felt himself open in a beautiful way, like a flower blooming. He had found ideas starting to come to mind - realized his own answers to philosophical and moral quandaries he’d been stumped by, like whether or not to go vegetarian - he had started to write stories and notice very small details, like the etchings on a leaf from local bug and animal life, and the tiny details of the ever-moving sky, here just for a moment, darkening, lightening, filling and emptying.

He had written and written. Letters to friends and family, after some time even to friends he had lost touch with - knowing his letters may go to an old address and never reach their intended recipients, but feeling deeply that the magic was in the writing itself. He wrote essays on his life, articles on society, and he even began to submit the best of these for publication, driving an hour to the closest library and using the internet there to upload what he’d written. He began to feel grounded in himself, in who he was, in what he believed, and in his ability to live a simple, full life, light on the land and in harmony with the beauty around him. Nature was particularly moving. He sometimes found himself in tears over the miracle of the living environment he called his “neighborhood”.

So he was surprised, six years on, to have suddenly felt a change.

He felt the solidness of a tree inside himself now - he knew who he was, what he stood for, what brought him joy, and he was fully self reliant - a total change from his earlier self that felt so stuck and confused. He thought that this was the point of life - to know and become yourself fully. But all of a sudden he realized there was something more.

He wanted to go back to it all. To sail the seas of life in community, in society as it exists. He was curious about technology & its advancements, and he was equally curious about what was happening in the world and whether his insights and efforts could make a difference. He realized - he wanted to give of himself. Even more than just through his writing.

What he would do, how he would live, was a big question mark. He knew he would not be in a high rise in the center of a city. Perhaps a small place just outside town, with a big patio. And perhaps he could find a permanent writing job. But even if he weren’t able to create the exact circumstances he wanted, he realized, it would still be worth it - to explore, to be with, to learn, and to see who he was drawn to, who was drawn to him, now that he was so much more fully himself. He wanted to live an adventure - to grow even more than you ever can alone - and to participate in creating the circumstances that shape all our lives.

After a few weeks’ preparation, he put out an ad for the tiny home. A young woman desperate to get out of a bad living situation reached out to him. He called her, and they spoke for several hours. She was willing to do everything it took - all the manual labor, all the planning and sacrificing of conveniences - to experience the glories of that life of solitude and freedom. He drove into the city and dropped the keys into her hand. “No charge,” he said, and drove into the town square to people watch for a few hours.