September 12

Awoke off the side of a forest road today, before the sun had perched above the hilltops, sky bleached white. Traveled through more patchwork of clearcuts nearly made myself sick on blueberries. Trick is to snatch them gently, dont "pick" them but just keep walking with the berry in between your fingertips, it will detach itself from the stem.

At one point today, I truly felt like a bear or somekind of mammal, I guess all this time alone is transforming me into a creature. While stopped to gather a big handful of berries, consumed in the task of identifying the ripest and tastiest, a fighter jet came screeching above me. The sound was instantaneously penetrating, ripping through the atmosphere. It shattered my world. It occured to me: here I am, a bearded man, almost five months deep into the wilderness, eating from a berry bush, my possessions strapped to the curve of my spine, alone for days on end; and there he is, the pilot, plugged into his pressurized cockpit, meters and gauges, oxygen fed to him from a mask, encased in machinery, propelled at inhuman speeds across the sky. We are worlds apart, the pilot and I. Neither of us would understand the other, the gulf seperating us is too wide. For that moment, I felt like a black bear in awe of human inventions; the sheer power of an engine, the violent fury of combusting fuel. The screech of the jet had broken my trance, left me feeling strangely far away from the all too human world.

(Take it and then pump. Want to break now? No, hike two more miles, earn it. Youve got to hike when youre tired, when youre weak.)