In the men’s group that I belong to, we are starting to tell our ‘stories’. That is, we are beginning to tell each other about our pasts, the things that happened and more importantly how they impacted us. Some of the things that are being dredged up, I had totally forgotten about, until one of the other guys mentions something and then suddenly the memories come flooding back to life. Some things I’ve pushed far back into the closet and have never cared to disect. I find them to uncomfortable to want to dwell on.
34 years ago, when I was 13 (gads that’s like back when dirt was invented) I read a book titled “My Side of the Mountain“. It’s the story of a young boy who runs away from home and heads to the Catskill Mountains in NY. There, he learns to live off of the wilderness surviving through incredible adversity both by nature and by his fellow man. To say that the book altered my life would be an over exaggeration, but not an out and out lie. It did change my way of viewing things, most importantly it began a change in how I viewed myself. Other books came along to strengthen and in there own way modify this new “Life” hypothesis that was percolating in my young addled mind. Books like Call of the Wild and White Fang fueled in me a desire to get away from the world and return to nature. The Outsiders allowed me a venue where I could easily place myself into the position of the protagonist. I felt Pony Boy’s bitter pain and battled along side him against the injustice of being an outcast because of social clicks. While Lord of the Flies confirmed my understanding of the depravity of man. It was something that I still couldn’t put into such a simple term, but I saw it all around me and wanted to have nothing to do with. But, all the time, not understanding that what I really wanted to escape from was myself.
With no mentor in my life. No, mature soul to cast my questions and doubts on. I found myself becoming more and more depressed about my life and about my personal shortcomings. In looking at the characters in these books I saw in them a little of myself, with all my unsureness and yet I desired their ability to navigate through the mire of their situations and come out on top. The one thing that, I saw, was that they were all involved in an adventure that they had no control over. Each protagonist found himself thrown out of his normal life into a perilous setting requiring all of the cunning and skills his young mind could devise. That was what I desired. To be put into a situation that would push me to my limits, test all of my resourcefulness and in the end leave me (and everyone I knew) with the knowledge that I had overcome all the obstacles and won. I wanted something larger than the life I was currently living.
And with these disillusioned strands of fiction twisted throughout the thought processes of my mind I began my adventure. Not like the lead characters in these fictional novels, for there would be no plane crash leaving me stranded and no evil persona torturing my every waking moment. No, if there was to be an adventure I’d have to create it and with that in mind I started planning on running away from home. And planning was where all the fun lay. I’d plan for every detail, because I was going to go live off the land. I got into backpacking and bow hunting. I had all kinds of equipment for dealing with winter weather. I had tested, practiced, written contingency plans and mapped the area that I had planned on traveling to. All the while not paying any attention to my school work, because I wasn’t planning on being around for much longer. It was usually at about this time that of the ol’report card was due to come out and I had to face the consequences of all my screwing around. I had to either leave, or face the reality of my grades. Being the complete idiot that I was at the time, I left.
I actually wound up running away from home a number of times over the next few years, with the culmination being the theft of a neighbors car at ripe young age of 15. The fact that I survived that little episode and didn’t wind up going to jail is a testimony to God’s grace and the loving concern of the neighbor I’d stolen the car from – Thanks Blix I still owe you for being such a cool guy.
So what am I after in writing this out? Maybe to help me flesh this part of myself out better. More so for the guys that I’m meeting with to better understand what a whack job I was, and about some of the garbage that I still haul around with me. In some ways I’m still that teenage kid. I still question myself and am unsure of my decisions more often than I’d like to admit. I still question how others view me, in a more than healthy manner. And so I overcompensate by being a more forceful personality than I’d really like to be.
As for adventures… well at almost 46 the type of adventure that I’m after isn’t quite the same as it once was. I’m no longer out to prove to anyone anything, not even myself. The adventure that I’m trying to focus on now is the one that Christ has set before me. My adventure right now is the one that I’m having with my son, as we get to know each other far more than my Dad and I ever have. Seeing him grow into a godly man and helping him along the way is a better adventure than I’ve ever hoped for.
Ah well, enough nazel gazing for one evening. And now you know more about me than you really ever cared to know.
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