When Life Fit Inside a Barrel and a Dry Bag

It has been one week since I returned from a wilderness journey that changed me in ways I’m still trying to understand. For several days, everything I needed fit into a blue barrel and a green dry bag—shelter, clothes, food, and a few humble essentials. The rest came from the land: wisdom from the water, courage from the trees, and truth from silence.

Out there, far from electricity and pavement, life becomes beautifully simple. You wake with the sun and sleep with the stars. You feel the cold wind on your face before the day begins, and you’re reminded—deep in your bones—what it means to be alive.

I miss it already.

I miss watching light dance on the water while morning mist slowly rises. I miss the sacred quiet, broken only by the call of a loon or the crackle of a fire. I miss travelling by canoe, where each stroke requires presence. I miss feeling small, not in a diminishing way, but in a way that connects you to something vastly greater than yourself.

In the wilderness, there are no distractions. Nature has a way of stripping away the noise, the rush, the false urgency of modern life. There, on the land, I remembered who I am without titles, without expectations. Just human. Just alive. Just part of the earth.

Nature did her work—perfectly, as always.

She challenged me with wind, cold, storms, and exhaustion. She tested my patience, my strength, and my trust. But she also realigned me. Softened me. Brought me back to gratitude. Back to simplicity. Back to belonging.

I returned carrying no souvenirs but a heart full of reverence and a deep longing to protect what is wild—outside and within us.

Even now, as I sit here surrounded by walls and screens, I carry that world with me. I remember that trails can be hallways, light isn’t always needed, and water is a wise friend with many stories to tell. And I know this: I will go back again. Because the wilderness doesn’t just call—it welcomes you home.