I've decided

That's it. I have decided. I am going into the wild.

Enough of the smoke and soot and choking fumes of the city. Enough of the howling and hullabaloo of a teeming brood of two-legged revellers. Enough of the deafening clangour of the grinding and gnashing metal monstrosities.

I'm off.

Now stop right there. Let us not be hasty. Let us not scurry and scamper around like a crazy mouse.

Do you know who you sound like? You sound like that Ent, Treebeard! Oh, and that makes my heart run off to the wilderness again...

Okay, I got you... you are this harebrained child who has suddenly decided that the civilized world of human beings has nothing more to offer you. Well, let me tell you, you are very much mistaken. Here is your life, and your family, and your work, and you will stay right here. STAY PUT!

Yeah? You think you can make me stay with all that glaring and glowering and glorious speech about the graciousness of the human race? About how what they did was not defiling and desecrating Nature, how some of them are not these greedy little creatures baring their filthy yellow fangs in a leering grin as they go about hunting down poor hapless animals that have done them no harm? Surely, even you cannot justify their vile deeds with that skilled tongue of yours?

Uh, well... you see... uh...

There! Got you! Really, it is such a joy to see you for once bereft of your carefully articulated speech.

Now, who are you admonishing? I am just a part of you, and I am just trying to convince this other, absolutely insane part to see some reason!

Oh yes, you are most certainly a part of me. Just not the part that I shall allow to take over right now. For the mad mad part of me is so much better!

I make plans

Okay, I admit that I have sounded absolutely like a very obdurate and insufferable child who has been beset with a whim to run off and live in the wild. Well, I am not that bad, as you will (hopefully) find out as you continue on this journey with me. And I am not that hasty either. For I have made plans. I have been planning this for a long time now. Secretly, lest that other, disgustingly logical and disquietingly reasonable part of me, start to protest.

I know I ought not to run away. I am indeed engaged in a very important work, one that I am very passionate about. But to pursue that, I need not just stay confined to a grey, urban world.

I also have a family, one that is very close to me. But once again, I can always visit them from time to time. Besides, my parents and my grandmother are very well aware of this streak of madness (if you must call it that) which runs through my addled brain. "Too much fantasy and fairytales", as my Baba would often say, with many a sigh and a dejected nod. Well, who bought me the books?

Not to mention, if I refuse to listen to this inner self of mine, and keep suppressing this desire, then one day it would most likely erupt like an angry volcano and the inferno will overwhelm me anyway.

Plus, maybe I can help the animals and the trees! Maybe, I could help in conserving them and making them flourish! What of that?

There, I believe I have convinced you that I am not a ludicrous lunatic who doesn't realize what's good for her. If I haven't convinced you, read on nevertheless, and you shall soon discover how true this decision would prove for me. And if you are altogether so utterly repelled by my character (already), then by all means, wrinkle your nose and let out a string of curses and pretend that I no longer live (since a dead person is less likely to bother anyone than a living one), but by all means, hold on to your cosy little armchairs and read on, and how I would savour the looks on your dumbfounded faces as you discover how wrong you all have been, at the end of the road!

Now, let the journey begin!

So, I have been thinking, thinking, thinking... where to begin? Should I just drop out of nowhere in the midst of a deep, dark, dense forest full of mighty elm and oak and hickory, and without hardly a ray of light trickling in through the foliage? With snarling, drooling, and ravenous carnivores prowling the forest floor?

Oh no, that won't go down very well at all, especially for such an inexperienced and completely reckless, partly doltish, novice like myself. Baby steps... as somebody very dear to me has been telling me for years now. Baby steps will take me much farther, and possibly not result in my ending up in the breakfast porridge for a particularly vicious jaguar or some such, rather tragic, demise.

So, my best chance would be to begin this self-imposed, solitary life right in the gentle embrace of Nature's arms, in a national park. It's much more accessible to begin with, what with a number of trails and even enthusiastic hikers and adventure-seeking explorers who are often glimpsed in these reserves.

But then again, am I not running away from human settlements? Shouldn't that mean I do not wish to encounter too many nosy humans loitering around for no good business?

Ok, I am in a fix now. What to do?

Why, choose a national park, but one that does not have too many visitors year-round! Doesn't that solve much of this doubtless very complicated problem?

Oh yeah! Wow, you are so intelligent!

I know! And don't you forget, I am that same, apparently very loathed and despised, part of your brain (which, I must say, looks like a dusty, overturned attic) that still has the power to reason and comprehend. Only, I am on your side now. So, you had better listen to me.

Oh! Er, right... thanks!

No problem! So, getting down to business, how about this one right here... what's it called? Wait, let me look up the database.

What? What database? What are you babbling? Makes no sense to me!

Of course it doesn't, you old ninny! I am that part of your brain which is supposed to make sense of things! I do all the thinking while you dose all day long, arousing yourself only when there's a singularly worthless movie with a lot of brainless romances to watch! And the database is where I store all the information that we gather together, so I can look it up when it's needed.

Oh! Alright alright... have it your way, your imperious majesty! But do all that rummaging fast, won't you?

Don't you tell me to hurry up! What do you think are all these junk piles of useless information that I have to sift through to get down to the real important ones? It's your trashcan of movie trivia! One day, I am going to do a serious purging and... hold on! Here it is!

What is it? What is it?

Lake Clark National Park! But of course... it's one of the least visited ones in the States. This one will serve us perfectly, I believe.

Awesome! Let's study more about it. I am looking it up on Wikipedia.

Wow, you're changing, you are! And not entirely for the worse! I do believe you have my charming company to thank, don't you agree?

And I'm off !

(Alaska on foot)