I'm glad that you've had a wilderness experience, Matt. I'm sure that the meeting of those creeks was a beautiful place to be. I, too, went off into the woods to search for the truth. I had fallen into a horrible condemnation thinking I had lost my salvation prior to joining the Fam and, within a week of joining the Fam, found it too much, too fast, to come to terms with the condemnation issue, plus come to terms with the fact that my wife and two kids didn't join with me. I was really going through it. I ended up taking off into the bush to try and deal with it all. I wondered around out there as a bit of a vagabond eating locusts and wild honey; just kidding - I ate lots and lots and lots of wild edible greens and berries, a few slugs, a turtle, frogs, trout, etc....I came to terms with the condmenation by memorizing a whole pile of verses about God's mercy enduring forever and decided, too, while out there, that I would serve the Lord, wife and kids or no. I rejoined the Fam in the fall of that year. I had been out in the woods for three months. I had to re-address the wife and kids issue years later and am on good terms with them now.

Yes, the north is a beautiful place but I prefer the south, the warm sunny south. It was bitterly cold today. I had to get an order of firewood out of the bush: the back tire on the truck was flat, the thermostat stuck (perhaps the antifreeze was insufficient causing it to stick) and the wind chill was vicious. Working in the woods after getting everything back on line was a pleasure though - always is. The sun set in as much of an orange, firery glow as it had risen, but temperatures and windchills remained bitterly inhuman.