But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
-Bible (New Testament)
St Matthew 8:12.
I never fully appreciated the beauty of the outdoors. As a kid, I liked to run and play near the woods by our house, clutching a fallen branch as a machine gun in my own imaginary Vietnam War, snapping my makeshift whip around a tree to swing over a treacherous drop and find the hidden lair of the sacred idol. As an adult, I couldn't be dragged into the woods if you paid me. The thought of sleeping in a bag on the ground was so alien to me, you might as well ask me to sleep on the roof in a garbage bag; it made about the same amount of sense.
Nevertheless, as I sit here in these woods, night begins its rapid takeover of the warm summer day I had survived. I looked around, taking it in. I can smell the grass and the bark on the trees. The air is damp in my nose, humid and soft, pleasant. Insects and small animals are going about their daily tasks, coming out to do their shopping in the animal rush hour. For a moment, I am engulfed in the beauty of nature. Strange that it would hit me now, after all these years. After all the times I had a chance to savor it and didn't, it is now, after going through what I have gone through and seeing what I have seen, that I find this moment, this sliver of my life to take it all in.
You see, I'm almost at the end of my journey, my trek through what used to be the ordinary, boring, run of the mill world. My ordinary life. It used to be about my morning tea, the Tim's run, the bagel. Getting through another day of work. Trying to get home and spend some quality time with my wife and daughter. My commute home from the office in Toronto used to take me about two hours; this time it took me over a week. I have been making my way home, to our farm near Pontypool, Ontario, just north of the Ganaraska Forest. To the place I call home. I am not a religious man, but today I prayed with all my heart and soul. The same as I've prayed each of the 9 days it took for me to get here.
I suppose I should start this tale a little earlier. After all, you won't be able to understand what I'm hoping to find, what I have endured a living, waking hell for, unless I go back to the beginning and tell you how my average, humdrum world was turned on its head. How everyone's world was turned on its head. And why it may never get turned back.
