The Man Who Lives On His Own Part 1

When it is light, I get up, when it is dark, I go to bed. I have no need of a clock or a watch; my other world was ruled by time; my whole life was running around looking at my watch, but here there are no limit, places to go and people to meet in your allocated hours.

Well, I thought I would write my story, in case someone ever finds this place, not sure anybody will, as I have not been discovered since moving here twenty years ago, but I can hear machinery and logging in the far off distant, so it’s just a matter of time I suppose.

I never really felt I fitted into society, always a bit of a loner growing up, but I made friends, made it through college, got married and had children. I was in a steady, best well-paid job, everything seemed pretty soo good.

I guess it wasn’t until my forties, we started to have these vacations where we would hire a log cabin in these way off places. I used to wake up early every morning as soon the light started to peer through the shutters, and I used to get up and go for long walks on my own. There was something about these walks, being on my own in the wilderness that pushed some button inside of me that I just couldn’t turn off; it was like a drug, I just had to have it. When we used to go back to the city, something was profoundly missing in my life; it wasn’t just the walks, it was something else, my whole being; the way I thought, smelled, tasted, heard, I mean god man, I even shat differently when I was back in the city. I was just a different person, and that person I didn’t like.

Anyway, this went on for about ten years and on my fiftieth birthday, the day after my wife sprung a best and surprise birthday party for me which was fucking horrendous man! All these people I hardly knew and their fat, obnoxious kids, piled into their obscene land yachts talking about how much money they had and what shit they spent it on, just blew a fuse, I had to turn my back on this, so that’s what I did.

I haven’t seen my wife or kids since, you might think, hey man you are some selfish motherfucker deserting your kids like that, but let me tell you there’s not a day go by when I don’t think about them, but I know they’ll be doing alright in their world, I set them all up financially so they don’t really need to worry about money and same for my wife. My only guilt is that they didn’t turn out differently to 99% of everyone else living in the States, but I can’t blame them, they were sucked in like everyone else, luckily for me I escaped.
Well, I’m seventy now, I still feel pretty fit, but sooner or later I will die, and some poor soul will finally come across me, there may not be much left of me, but what there is, if you don’t mind putting it in the ground, I appreciate it. And, no, I haven’t been murdered, there’s no motherfucker around here, I probably just had a heart attack one day chopping wood.

At first it was hard. I have always been quite a fit guy, but nothing can prepare you for a life in the wilderness, chopping down trees and pulling logs, my shoulders and back used to feel like I had been beaten by a baseball bat the next day.