Prospects of Adventure

Looking. Searching for a way to bring the adventure that was my everyday in Alaska. Tame. The wildness has been taken away. Not from just me but everyone in this part of the country. I have been told it is just perspective, that the mountains of the east coast have all the adventure that anyone could want. I smile, lower my eyes, and nod. How could I explain the feeling of walking through an old growth cedar meadow, brushing my finger tips along the knee high grass among the blackeye susans and forget me nots. A creek runs through this meadow and I know drinking is safe as few have set foot here.
This meadow leads to mountains. Real mountains that reach to meet the sky and if I am lucky enough on this day to reach the top, I can touch it too. I can breath in the scent of wet dirt, evergreens, and hear nothing but my own breath and the wind. I look back to the stream. I know the fish are safe to eat untouched by manufacturing and if I cast my fly I would experience a fight with fish no stocker could ever provide. This fish would earn my respect in this exchange.
I know the feeling of stepping out of my tent in the morning and coming face to face with a brown bear. Both of us at peace in the easy light and both of us go about our day. We both know how harsh this land can be but after you submit, It will provide for us both, man and bear. We share this with the beaver in the pond outside the hunting cabin on the tundra of Western Alaska, the moose and caribou as we share the fields of blue berries, and we all respect the land we inhabit we have learned to submit to only It. It is wild, they are wild, I have touched this wildness.
This person, they are blind to this. Thier ignorance has shielded thier vision from the cage they live in. They are happy with thier multiple accents up 5000 foot peaks during thier day hike, the white fleshed stocked trout ing thier streams, and the ambient noise of a hurried society as the back drop to their wilderness experience.
I feel pitty for this person. I know what they are missing, what they do not understand.
I look for adventure, I was once untamed.