Not very much an apology.

Quite Honestly:

Have been camping.

Out on an adventure to rediscover the world.

HOLD THAT:
I’m not rediscovering crap. I knew it was there. I hadn’t really discovered it in the first place. I just went to live in a photo for awhile.

But photos are quite unexpectedly exactly as you see them. Add in a few leeches, a torrential down pour, the honeymoon tent from the 1970s, a saucy chipmunk dubbed Roget (that’s French) and a cheeky butterfly labeled Egglatina and perhaps a few good looking lads overseeing a young teenage girls out tripping camp (I don’t know what tank top they could possibly wear the next day) – add this all in and it’s exactly the same photo you saw in the book.

Except it smells better.
Except that it’s all you see – no borders, no gloss.
Except that there isn’t a computer beside the magazine.
Except trees don’t care about the news..especially if they were blown over by that tornado I never saw or cared about. (I lie, I cared, but it was never true until someone recited the news)
Except that you can’t hide in a building that doesn’t exist and so one drinks wine and muses about the possible flight pattern when said tornado does find you.
Except you express rage to a mosquito by insisting he find an appropriately sized water droplet and drown.
Except that you paddle to old native American folk songs otherwise the winds of Lake Louisa will shoot you back to the start point – 2 hours back in time.
Except that life slows down after the second day when you are more worried about lugging your few, but oddly adequate worldly possessions up a rock cliff face than about how someone feels about something you can’t remember what it was anymore.

Paddle, lift, walk and breathe.

I didn’t rediscover anything that I had already experienced. Life has never been that slow or that honest or that fulfilling. Anger has never been so forward, or happiness so pointed. Conversations have never been that fresh. My mind has never been that still. Natural thought. Beautiful dreams. Screw the morning monologue – it is the canoeing monologue that I want back. Two Words: Fully Aware.

So that is where I have been. And I will not apologize for one week of my life being unaware of the weather, the crisis, the wars, the disease, the shooting, the best brand to buy, the sale, or that concert and movie. I’m not sorry I missed it. But maybe I’ll understand it a little bit better.