I am a Hiker

By week I am a 3D Designer, but once the weekend arrives, I transform into my true self. I am a hiker. I find that nothing in world makes me nearly  as whole or at peace than when I am out hiking through forests and rolling prairies. For years I have felt a void in my life... I've always felt out of place in modern society... as if born in the wrong time period. I can't relate to many people.. the few that I can relate to, I feel I have little to say to them.. Not because I wish not to speak with them.. but because I feel an unspoken bond of, "You get it. You understand." What greater conversation is there than the one that needs not be spoken, but is simply felt by both persons. So many things are spoken each day.. yet so very little is said. Conversations held thousands of times over.. So much can be said through our bodies and expressions alone. Silence is a blessing. 

Part of the reason I return to nature as often as possible is to experience silence. Let the wind, the creaking of trees, fluttering of long grass, and the song of birds be all that I hear.

Growing up in the south suburbs of Chicago left me feeling isolated and trapped by society.  The only times I really felt content was when I went to the forest preserve in my home town. If only it had been larger. It was my tiny oasis in the desert or society. Since those days I've lived in Minneapolis.. which for the most part made my isolation feel even greater. But now that I am free of college and have work.. I am able to travel on the weekends. It has by far been some of my best experiences in life. It's not often I smile randomly... but when I am away from nature and am sitting in front of a computer for 10 hours a day.. I think.. "I wonder where I will go this weekend?" And I smile, knowing the weekend is always approaching. 

Don't get me wrong.. I don't hate all of society... Not hate.. I think my feelings have already been spoken so perfectly by Lord Byron, "I love not man the less, but Nature more."

I have said enough for the evening. I will try to observe my advice and speak less in this journal and post photos of things in Nature I find beautiful or speaker better than any word that could be spoken.