1. You're skin's healed up from the scourge of bug bites: You've been sitting in your office all week, and your skin shows it: paler, smoother, the scrapes, burns, and bites have healed up. Now you wonder why you miss them so much. Something's urging you to get back out there. There was something about the pain that made you feel so much more human.
2. You've plundered your favourite fast food joint--now what? You've eaten out at all your favourite city joints, and enjoyed the spoils of your favourite big-chain grocery stores--but last night, as you were laying in bed, something hit you: a craving for Weber's hamburgers like a fever! Last week you couldn't look at another Weber's burger, but now...
3. You crave Weber's in the sickest way: You lay in bed thinking about it: "The burgers were sure good--pretty cheap too.... The process is so smooth... I love the passenger trains you can sit in--oh and the ice cream place is so good... The giant Muskoka chairs are a nice touch... Mmmm, extra pickles..."
4. You've put weight back on: Sitting around your office all week, eating at your favourite fast food places, and staring at your children languishing on the couch staring at the T.V. make you wonder why you're still in town. You want to get back out on that lake, exhausting yourself on the paddle boards, paddle boats, chasing your kids around, swimming against the tide, and carrying fire wood around.
5. Making fires in the kettle bbq in your back yard no longer cut it: Yes, you miss the primordial act of making fire that you loved doing so much out in the wild, and find your BBQ totally lacklustre. Time to get back out there and light up some wood and roast up some marshmallows with flames licking the heavens.
6. You're roasting marshmallows over your stovetop: Can't get that craving out of your system for those caramelized marshmallows that only the fire pit can give. Maybe you're firing up your charcoal BBQ to get that woodsy taste. Follow your bliss--right back up North!
7. It's taken several showers, brands of shampoo, and gobs of conditioner to get your hair back to normal: All that lake water, mosquito spray, and lack of adequate shower facilities have rendered you like a castaway on Survivor--and getting yourself back to 'normal' took longer and more than expected. But now you feel like a million bucks--almost too clean. You miss the sticky hair and stubbled legs and the smell of insect repellent rather than deodorant. And the swimming pool is all full of chemicals and hurt your eyes when you swim in it. You yearn to plunge back in that lake, and shed the facade of city life. You want to feel human again.
8. You realized more about yourself: Being up north and roughing it made you realize things about yourself you hadn't before: you enjoy windsurfing, paddling on surf boards, catching bass out the side of a paddle boat, frying fish over a fire, chopping wood and carrying water and all that good stuff that makes us human. You realize that as much as you love 'civilization', there is a different side of you that comes alive when you're out there; a more human side--a side you miss when you're in the city. You want that part of you back. It's calling you back to the great Canadian north; back to cottage country; back to Webers and Lake Simcoe or Couchiching; back to pulling big fish off your line and cooking them up over open fire; back to not showering for 5 days because, well, you've got the lake to bathe in; back to bugs, and skunks, and racoons, and the call of coyotes; back to resplendent sunrises and magnificent sunsets; back to nature and the call of the wild.
Do it. Get your things packed, get in the car, and get back up there--
What are you waiting for?
Do it. Get your things packed, get in the car, and get back up there--
What are you waiting for?
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