alone

Part of the beauty of a cabin out in the middle of the north woods is the isolation. If you're there alone, it can seem like you are the only person in the world. And if you really were, there's not necessarily any way you would know it. That's usually a pretty good feeling, for me at least, but sometimes it can get to feeling a little spooky. Especially if you're sitting inside the cabin late at night and a shovel you left propped up against the wall outside suddenly falls over with a loud clang. It was probably just a skunk or something sniffing around. It probably wasn't a bear. A bear which had lost its fear of humans and liked to break doors off their hinges and ransack kitchens full of food. Probably just a skunk.
But usually it was just a nice feeling. A sort of master of all you survey feeling. A kind of you can do whatever you want feeling. If you want to take your clothes off and take a crude shower with a couple of buckets of water out in front of the cabin, there's no reason why you shouldn't. If you want to sit out in the sun naked, why not?
I took lots of walks, usually down the logging roads, but sometimes I'd find a trail that led off into the forest and follow it. I looked for edible plants and mushrooms, and just enjoyed the scenery, if not the horseflies and mosquitos which would sometimes accompany me. Sometimes I'd drive over to the field on the other side of the lake which was known as the lumber camp. As legend has it, the field once had a lumber camp on it, hence the name. I liked driving on the old logging roads, bouncing along on the uneven earth, with grass and weeds scraping along the bottom of the car. On a hot day, sometimes there would be flies and insects of all description buzzing around the car as I drove slowly down the dirt track. Big horseflies would make tiny audible thuds as they flew into the window glass.
One day I thought I'd walk over to the lumber camp. I could still walk pretty far then, but I would get tired pretty easily and have to take lots of little breaks. It took me a while to walk there, and there are a few little steep hills where the logging road goes down to near swamp level, then back up onto a rise. Those hills were somewhat difficult for me. I was pretty tired when I got to the lumber camp, but I decided I'd walk around the edge of it, and maybe part way down the slope on the other side, and into the pine grove further along the edge of the field. I think my dad and his brothers planted those pines in the fifties. There used to be a tree stand in one of the pines, so I thought I'd see if it was still there. The tree stand was still there. There wasn't much to it to begin with, and what there was of it was pretty dilapidated, so I didn't bother to try to climb it. I realized that I probably wouldn't have been able to climb it even if it had been in good repair.
I was already tired and there was the long walk back to the cabin still, so I decided to head back. When I got to the edge of the pine grove, I saw something which surprised me. Someone had constructed a sort of lean-to structure under one of the pine trees. It was covered in branches that had been broken from the surrounding trees, and it was pretty well camouflaged, so it wouldn't be easy to see from the lumber camp side. There was a little fire pit in front of the lean-to, and it looked like someone had been using it for a while. There was some charcoal from an old fire in the fire pit. None of the broken branches were green, so the lean-to had been made a while ago, but I couldn't tell when it had last been used. It seemed like it could have been a few months ago, or even a few days ago that there had last been a fire in the fire pit.
Suddenly the free and easy feeling of being alone was replaced by a nervous feeling of wondering if I was being watched. I abruptly felt pretty vulnerable. A bunch of things went through my mind, like the loaded shotgun sitting in the corner of the shack and my car sitting in front of the shack with the keys in it. I thought of the night that the shovel had fallen over. I started wondering who in the hell would construct a lean-to by the lumber camp, when the shack was just across the lake. It looked like it was done by someone who knew what they were doing. Was it someone who just really wanted to get back to nature, or was it someone who was trying to hide? Had they left a couple of months ago, or were they watching me right now? I wasn't able to run, and all I had with me was a walking stick, so I felt kind of defenseless.
Walking to the lumber camp now seemed like not such a great idea, and I sort of wished I had driven over. I felt like I should hurry back to the shack, but I was too tired to hurry much, and I figured it probably didn't matter much anyway. I felt a bit apprehensive while walking back, and looked around and listened every time I stopped to take a break. I didn't see or hear anything out of the ordinary, which was good, but not terribly reassuring. As I walked up to the shack, I imagined some grizzly bearded escaped convict sitting in the chair I usually sat in, with my shotgun and car keys on the table in front of him.
He wasn't there though, and everything seemed just as I had left it. Everything except me.
From then on, I slept with the shotgun right next to my bed, and sometimes I took it along if I went on a walk. And if I left it behind, I unloaded it, and hid the shells. I also kept my car keys in my pocket instead of leaving them in the car.