And I drive out of town like I’m leaving danger behind. I’m aware of the streets but never really see them. I feel a mix of fear, fear that my heartbeats are running low, and excitement that they’re not. With my radio gone, no one could interrupt me as I discover the full presence of nature. It’s like I have escaped from my old self, and with every passing mile I can’t be caught. Miles back I was tense and tight, I could have shut up shop there had I a trigger to pull. Some miles to stop me blowin’ my frickin’ head off. It was too much of a change tho’ and I had to turn off the road. Time to stretch and settle myself. I was having a quiet moment on an empty road waiting.

The States can feel big if you let it and distance can be a friend. You might think I’m running into the arms of friendly strangers who know nothing of me; you might think that. I’ve run off and become another me. I’ve heard of guys like that in every state who are checking out big time every day. Everything they’ve loved is lost and so are they. No one knows why. No one knows how the seed of their destruction entered their head. It’s a closed case every time. An official finger is pointed at their enemy: drugs, drugs and uselessness. But that ain’t true. In my neck of the woods in downtown upstate, it’s like drowning in a swollen river, a torrent, and it’s slapping against the hopeless people, the helpless, like dogs on a war-torn street. Once Ben said that being alive was not possible elsewhere in the heavens, and like it was no way possible here in the states: can’t breathe anywhere. It’s all been a big fuck-up and not all natural, just bad, really bad. We’re living in a Wild West show where all the people get gunned down on Main Street. It’s a killer experience and everyone gets in on the act.

It could be said that those people who mess up in stupid things feel they’re against the ropes, just hangin’ on, and anything offered them to pull their asses back in the game is grabbed. I’ve seen them and sometimes thought I was lookin’ in a mirror. It’s a sad story watching their grip on their lives slipping away. Funny how those words bring the faces of people I used to know to this mountain.

Driving on an empty road getting deeper into the shade, and even tho’ Ben warned me not to get too comfortable in that landscape and that nothing was all sweetness and light, I was feeling free, and enjoying every bend I negotiated. I pulled into a space between big fat trees with a circumference I could never hug. I sat quietly as the sun dipped. This was it. A chance to fine tune myself in a forest refuge for adventurers from the city. But today and tomorrow would be quiet. I had brought no mountain gear in my last minute rush to flee, all I thought I needed was in my head. I sat a good while before picking up my door key.

When I lost Ben it took ages for him to disappear from my side, it never really hit me that he could leave. I thought I might never have a buddy again. I can still hear his voice clearly whenever I want to. I still hear his views and theories from yesterday. And while I’m up here walking in mountain-high nature, I remember Ben talking about how he believed nature was a web-like force wrapped around the earth, a kind of spider’s web. It wasn’t physical, not something that could be seen, it was like an emotional hum above the earth, in space. It’s fucking amazing! Everything’s emotional, he’d shout. We all come from that. Life on the land, the sea and us, we come from that hum! It was quite an idea to me. All the planets, he’d say, have their own kind of humming spider web, all different and life-forming. Ben was talking with another theory, another angle of how we got here. And death, man, only in death does the world become the size of an atom. That’s our destination – atom size. The world inflates for life and deflates for non-life. Can you imagine that kind of talk and all that beer we drank back then? It’s easy to live that time again. Today I still have beer, but man, I miss him.

Now up here in this nature world I’ve come to, I wonder if a guy can live without a buddy? It sure would be a lonely existence. Ben thought that buddies were there to keep us strong and then taken away to weaken us. Women had hurt Ben, I knew, cut into him like the sharpest blade. I knew but couldn’t say. We didn’t share our feelings in that way. Not in a way I could help. We had our wounds, sure, but we’d pretend and cover them up, just let them lie hidden. Ben was a sensitive guy who could walk into emotional distress from a mile off. I’m thinking of him now, looking at him, hearing him. It’s tough getting through the days, and Ben, maybe he fled from his hurt to the army. To find a new identity surrounded by buddies and leave the land of his birth for something new. To be strong instead of weak, head held high instead of bowed. Hogan, I hear him call, us men, we’re being weakened, so keep your buddy close.

The altitude up here is enough to have an effect for a couple of days while the mountain air slips through the trees. Sleep is more restful and past deeds that stir on the mind play less. I wander up a steep pathway, a climb to check out the heart, its rate and strength. I’m alone. The land levels off and there’s water in sight, a pool created for wildlife. A protection zone for the animals. I’m surprised as I look across it that some people think in that way - animal care. I’m suddenly jerked away by two gunshots in quick succession. There is an immediate great squawking disturbance in the trees as everything alive there takes flight and fades into the distance. Then a stillness. As I crouch and peer through tall water reeds, I see a guy in black waders holding the remains of a fish. He calls out excitedly to his buddy somewhere with the sound of joy. I take this sight in then move on, keeping my head down as I backtrack.

This is my US, a small pocket, sure, but one that is deep and true. There’s something not right, not normal, in my town and I guess in towns all over the country. It feels we’re at boiling point. The doc doesn’t see it and he thinks I don’t either. In his office, an elevator ride from the street, we’re just two guys out to exploit the world in the ways we can. Good Americans! But we’re just treading water from day one. I could stay awhile up here, from sun-up to sundown, I could stay…but wherever we are, someone wrote, wherever we are it’s never where we want to be, and we’ll never know where we really are till we’re there. Yeah, I could stay and let this place smooth me out a bit, take my inner tangles away. If I were programmed that way.

I head back down the track. I feel danger and see nothing. I’m hurrying, struggling to make my way. There’s a mountain peak before me shaped like a spire. It looks cutting sharp, like it’s piercing the sky. Soon I’ll be up there, I think to myself. One day I’ll break away and find my footsteps. Maybe I’ll meet up with Ben again. That’s the way it is. Maybe…. I could meet with my baby whose name I never got to know. I look at the sky as the wind picks up.

I can’t help but feel I got myself on a good direction, after all the shit I’ve done to keep me solvent. Did I do harm? I guess all those years of self-doubt and examination were never going to leave. The doc had no real sense of who I was; I wasn’t him nor he me. It was too late for him to see that, so most times we were on a loop with each other till we found an exit. I should have taken my troubles to nature instead, to smell the forest and taste the air. Things are clearer now, I’m picking up my bag here like the last time, I won’t be comin’ back. I’ve got a new road ahead, a place to find myself and recognise who I am. My sins will hold to me, but that’s ok, I’ll be stronger soon to bear them. I’m driving slowly back listening to nothing. It’s like I’m gone.