I hope this blog post finds you well

When I was first diagnosed with #The Park, I wasn't given very much information. My neurologist diagnosed me, said I could get a hole drilled in my head, told me to watch a YouTube video about it and sent me on my way. That was the most he ever spoke to me in a year of seeing him.

When I finally got a neurologist who isn't a chump, I got all sorts of information about support groups, Parkinson's boxing, charity walks, and the problem with constipation. But there's one thing they didn't talk about: socks.

You see, Parkinson's can cause some muscle stiffness or rigidity. For me, it's on the right side of my body. My leg doesn't really bend right. I was never very flexible before, but now, especially in the morning when my meds haven't kicked in, I'm very, very stiff along the right side of my body. That means that putting on socks can be challenging. There are some mornings when putting on my socks takes me longer than every other aspect of getting dressed.

So I did what any honest, red-blooded American consumer would do: I bought something on Amazon that looked like it might help. I bought a sock machine. Not really a machine, it's more just a plastic thing with a rope attached to it. It helps you yank on socks. I'm not sure if I'm using it correctly, but whatever, it helps.

Puttin’ on the Socks

With most of my socks, it's pretty good, depending on the quality of the sock. It's definitely reduced the amount of time I spend getting dressed in the morning and reduces the fear I have that eventually I'm going to fall over trying to hop into my socks and be left dead to be devoured by my cats. Not Duffy. Duffy would never. He doesn't have enough front teeth left. But the lil goblin? The lil goblin will devour me like he devours lizards and frogs and anything else he can catch on the non-party patio.

I went into the tube today. My new neurologist wanted me to get an MRI to see if there was anything wrong(er) with my brain. She said it probably should have been done a year ago when I was first diagnosed. But my old neurologist was a chump, I've been waiting and worrying the last couple weeks about my date with the tube.

Everyone I know told me to be worried about the tube. They asked if I'm claustrophobic. I'm not claustrophobic, I don't think. But I do feel anxious in weird situations. For instance, when I can't fidget and move around, I get very uncomfortable and feel pressed on and trapped. Like when I'm standing in a line for concessions at a movie theater and I can't go anywhere because I'm in a line and I need to get my popcorn, but there's a group of like three people in front of me and they're ordering each transaction separately. So like each one's getting a popcorn and a Coke, and a popcorn and a Coke, and a popcorn and a Coke. When they could just do it all in one transaction, and Venmo or Cash App each other later. You're holding up the line! I want my treats, so I can't leave, and I feel what I think claustrophobia must feel like. Even though I'm not actually in an enclosed space, it feels like I am because the line is an arbitrary space which I cannot leave because I want my treats.

And one time I went to a fancy man salon (Sports Clips) and they gave me a hot towel treatment at the end. When the lady put the towel around my face, I felt like I was trapped. It was awful. I hated it. I was squirming. It was like being waterboarded, but gently with a hot towel. And so that was my big worry. That my head would be in the tube and that they would put something so close to my face that I'd feel the way I do when I have a hot towel on my face. That I would panic and freak out and have to squeeze the little ball that calls the nurse to shut it down. But I was a big boy and didn't freak out at all.

They put me in the tube. They put some earplugs in me. They put padding alongside my head so I couldn't really move my head, which was good because it stopped me from fidgeting and made my head feel supported. Like I was being cradled in someone's arms. It was comforting. Relaxing. The low, rhythmic whirring of the machine was like a chill vibes rave. I wanted to get a pacifier and start shuffling. But then the noise started.

No one ever told me is how loud it was. And the earplugs weren't very good. Had I known how loud it was going to be, I could have brought my earplugs that I wear when I go to a soccer game and I have to sit close to the fan section, the supporter section, whatever they call it, where it's just people yelling and banging drums and playing various windpipe instruments for 90 minutes straight. I think those earplugs would have done better.

But after 10 minutes it was all over. My appointment was at 9 o'clock. I was out by 9:17. The results were in by 9:37. The doctor who examined my MRI said my brain is “unremarkable.” Cutting. I feel attacked. I'm glad the tube didn't reveal anything bad, but they could have said something nice about my brain. Maybe that I have a nice lobe. Or a robust ganglia or something. I don't know. Unremarkable? How dare you. Could an unremarkable brain draw a clock, identify a camel, a score a 29/30 on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment? I don't think so. Put some respect on my brain, doc.

Step 1

Make sure you order the generic brands. Name brand drugs are too memorable. Miraplex, Lexapro. Those are easy to remember. Corporate names. You need to get Promexapol. You need to get Askillogram. You need to get words that even your premium AI voice transcription service can't decipher.

Step 2

Order from Amazon Pharmacy. Yes, Amazon is evil. But man, is their pharmacy good. You don't have to stand in line. You don't have to abide by the ridiculous hours of the local pharmacy. Who goes to the grocery store after 9 a.m.? That's insane. You have to go between 6 and 7. Everyone knows this. But the pharmacies do not abide by these rules. And they should be punished for it. Enter Amazon. Where I live, right now we're in the middle of a tropical storm. Roads are flooded. Schools are closed. Trees are falling down. But I still got my meds today. I guess exploitative capitalism works, once in a while.

Step 3

Keep your pills in a drawer. Duffy likes it when you open the drawer because he gets to rub his face on it. So you have to open the drawer for him when you take your pills in the morning and in the evening. Do not keep your pills in the medicine cabinet. Duffy can't jump up on the counter because of his leg surgeries, so he can't rub his face on the medicine cabinet. To open the medicine cabinet is to taunt Duffy with his own infirmity. That's mean. So keep them in a drawer, which means you can't read the side of the label. Which wouldn't help anyway, because see Step 1.

Step 4

Get silly with it. Come up with goofy euphemisms for your ailments. Do you have major depressive disorder? Then that's the SADS. Do you have tremors? Those are the SHAKES. Do you have a neurological disorder that causes rigidity in one side of your body? That's the STIFFS. Alliteration makes it even more fun. We're having a good time. We're laughing. Then you write those words on the top of your pill bottles. So instead of saying, “Oh, I have to take my escilitogram because I can't cope with the stress of my existence,” you say, “Oh, time to take my pill for the SADS.” It's fun. You get a chuckle to yourself instead of thinking about how your drugs only mask the symptoms and really your body and mind are still deteriorating with no hope of ever getting better.

Step 5

When traveling, just take all your pills and dump them in one bottle. You'll figure it out. Just try to guess which is the pill you're supposed to take once a day that keeps you up all night and which is the pill you're supposed to take three times a day that makes you dizzy if you don't take it with food. Take it with food. You're on vacation. You're diseased. Who cares? Have fun. Get the cup at Disney that lets you refill your soda and just drink soda. Enjoy life while you still can. As long as you take the right number of pills, The meds will work themselves out eventually.

The Weather Channel is in Savannah. They're broadcasting from a spot that I used to drive past every day before my office moved from the touristy side of town to the industrial side of town. They're here because of the storm, Tropical Storm or Hurricane Debbie, which is coming into town and bringing a lot of rain. I've been through storms before, in middle school when I lived in Georgia, and more recently in Hawai'i and here in coastal Georgia. I mean, when I was in college, I went to Outback Steakhouse during Hurricane Floyd. (In all fairness, at this time, the Outback Steakhouse was one of the few restaurants that gave free refills on drinks (one of the others being Ruby Tuesday.) Combined with the free bread that they give you, the Outback right outside Rutgers University, was always crowded with college students looking just to sit there, eat bread, and drink soda. But during the hurricane, they couldn't close until the state officially declared a state of emergency. So we went there, drank our soda, ate our bread, and watched the water rise on the freeway next to the restaurant until we felt that we had to leave because we weren't sure if we could make it in my roommate's little Nissan.)

So in my past, I've never really treated storms seriously. I've never really prepped, or at least not seriously prepped. I'll buy water. During the first hurricane warning in Hawai'i, I got some plastic sheeting in case I had to cover the windows. And the reason I don't take storms seriously is because every time there's a storm warning where I've lived, it's never been as bad as they said it would be. (Except for Hurricane Floyd, which flooded my basement with four feet of water, destroyed all my old Nintendo and Commodore 64 stuff, and ruined the homes of many of my co-workers. But I was nine floors up in an apartment, drinking Mountain Dew and playing video games. So I wasn't really aware of the danger of the situation until I tried to drive home to see my parents and found the roads impassible due to the flooding.)

But this time is different. Or at least it feels different. I've started to prep more seriously. I have a go bag ready. Even though the flooding has already started, and I doubt my car would make it very far. (Although I think that electric cars are better at driving in standing water than gas cars, or at least there's less chance of them being damaged from being underwater, or something like that. I don't know much about cars.)

So I sort of have a plan. If I have to evacuate, I've got stuff ready for me and the boys. I'm ready to drive inland, find the nearest Hampton Inn, and demand they honor my Hilton diamond status. But I have a feeling I won't be going anywhere for a couple of days.

The rain is really coming down. The roads were already flooded on my way home from work. And even though the school district has already canceled the next two days, I'm pretty sure we might be out for longer than that. Many of the schools here are quite old, and I doubt that they will fare well in a storm of this magnitude. I expect a lot of flooding. I expect the party patio to be underwater by the end of tonight. I hope that my new non-party patio TV survives.

I filled up a five-gallon jug of water. Now I have five gallons of room-temperature Brita water, ready in case something goes wrong. I have a good supply of staple foods: beef fried rice, wheat thins AND triscuits, mild cheddar cheese, and meatballs.

What concerns me is my soda supply. I have 4 liters of full-strength soda, which will not last me two days. I might have to rob a store to replenish my soda supply. But I'll cross that bridge when the time comes. A man's got to do what a man's got to do to survive.

I don't expect there to be any real damage to my home, at least nothing major, but it feels like it's going to be worse than expected, which is the opposite of how it normally goes. It feels like there's going to be a longer time out of school than just the two days that we've been given so far. It feels like my backyard is going to be underwater for a good long while. Hopefully, that will be the worst of the damage. My house is on the top of a little hill, so my front yard slopes down away from the house, as does my backyard. So my house should be fairly well protected.

I've got the movie dungeon upstairs to escape flooding if I need to. But still... Maybe I've been watching too much of the Weather Channel. Maybe my new meds are making me paranoid. I don't know. I just feel weird about this one. I feel that I have to prepare more than I have done so far. I want to go down to my garage, set up sawhorses, and put everything up off the ground. Even though I know that the driveway slopes down, so it will take a lot of water for my garage to flood. But like I said, this one feels different. This feels like the first real storm I've been in in a while. But I've made it through every other one. I don't see why I won't make it through this one. I just hope it doesn't end up being as bad as I think it will. I don't have enough soda to survive an extended stay indoors. You can never underestimate how much soda you need. You always need more. Precious soda, giver of life.

I'm entering a new phase of my life, a phase where I must be better than what I was before. And I've taken my first steps toward that today because I have made a stunning discovery, something that has escaped me until now, even though it's so obvious. I've figured out that I can put my e-reader inside my agenda cover and carry them all together in one hand.

Yes, that's right. My daily planner, a tiny notebook, a Kobo e-reader, a pen and normally a Leatherman Croc multi-tool (although I don't bring that with me when I travel because I'm afraid the people at the airport will throw it away when I go through security) all in one compact package.

Today, when I went to the beach, I had my phone in my pocket and my agenda in my hand. That's all I needed. I had my book. I filled out my agenda for the next few days, did some brainstorming for a couple of projects I have to work on next week, and then read some more of my book. There was never any risk of losing anything (like the time I left my Kindle behind in the seat pocket of a flight from Seattle to Salt Lake City) because they all fit inside each other perfectly, as if that's how they were meant to be.

All this time it's escaped me. All this time I've been missing out. I could have been enjoying life to the fullest. But now I will. Now I will be something better. Now I will be what I am capable of. A man with a planner, a pen, a tiny notebook, an e-reader, and a multi-tool with him at all times, yet still unburdened, nimble, and mobile. And if I combine it with my fanny pack or my tiny messenger bag, I will be unstoppable. An efficient, getting things done, force to be reckoned with. This is what will get me through the rest of my life. This is the new me.

Wordsworth, Thoreau, Jason Voorhees: these are just a few of the esteemed luminaries who enjoy a good walk around the lake. I like to count myself among their company, as I too enjoy a lakeside stroll. Recently, I've been camping around lakes, so I haven't taken many walks down to the neighborhood lake. But it was nice out this morning, so I took a walk down to the lake. What I found there shocked me.

My lake is dying. Just look at it. Even with recent rains, the water level is so low, there's not even enough to support the dock. There are no ducks, geese, or those white birds with long beaks that stand at the edge of the water. What happened? In a word, Capitalism.

On the far side of the lake, a new warehouse is being built. My neighborhood is not far from the Port of Savannah, so I am surrounded on all sides by warehouses and distribution centers. I am in a nexus of the stuff-industrial complex. Walmart, FedEx, Amazon, Target, even Ikea all have facilities within 10 minutes from my house. But never have they come so close.

They are in the process of clearing and levelling the future warehouse site. In doing so, they have cut off the little waterway that fed the neighborhood lake and blocked off the easier path around the lake. My lake is being starved to death. And for whom? Who benefits from this? For me, I benefit.

I get my pills from Amazon. I saved $30 on deliveries last month thanks to Walmart+. FedEx delivers many of my tiny keyboard components. And most of the furniture in my house is either from my grandma or from Ikea. I am a shameless consumer. I am a stuff addict. I don't drink, smoke, or do drugs. I spend $300 at Amazon on a Monday morning so I can install a TV on the non-party patio on Wednesday.

I would like to go paddleboarding tomorrow morning, but I cannot paddle on a dying lake. Not when I am the one responsible. So instead, I will wash my house, using the power washer I ordered from Home Depot. I will scour the vinyl siding of my home with my own hypocrisy.

I bought a Mickey Brownie at lunch. I chose the brownie because I wanted something I could take with me, rather than a Mickey ice cream bar which would have melted on the way back. I really wanted a Mickey ice cream sandwich or the Mickey  ice cream Klondike bar type thing on a stick. But I got the brownie. And let me tell you, it wasn't much of a brownie.

The presentation is nice. It looks like the iconic Mickey face. It's got enticing sprinkles, making me think it's going to be like a Cosmic Brownie. I'm a huge fan of the Cosmic Brownie, as we all should be. The Cosmic Brownie is a great treat. Now, I know Cosmic Brownies, I've eaten Cosmic Brownies, I own a Fuddrucker's with Cosmic Brownies. And this, sir, is no Cosmic Brownie.

The brownie itself is aggressively bland. Soft, but not necessarily moist, even though it was warm when I got it. The taste is nothing fancy. Nothing particularly amazing about it. I'm not  the baker that I once was, but I'm pretty sure I could make a brownie that tastes just as good as this.

And then the sprinkles. The sprinkles were infuriating. Completely flavorless. I guess they add a little bit of texture, but every time you crunch a sprinkle and it has no taste at all, no flavor whatsoever, it makes you wonder, why? Why are there even sprinkles here? Why tempt me with the crunch of a sprinkle without the flavor of a sprinkle? I want candy on my brownie. Candy on my brownie, damn it! Instead, nothing. Empty. Devoid of flavor. A disappointment all around. If Mickey Mouse were alive today, he'd drop dead when he found out his image was being stamped on something this uniconic.

On a scale of one to five tiny heads of Guy Fieri, I give the Mickey Brownie one tiny head of Guy Fieri, purely for presentation. It's a good-looking brownie. Very Instagramable. But I am too ugly for Instagram. (I have the type of Instagram where my mom is always the first to like every photo.) I just want a brownie that tastes good.

Remember blogrolls from back in the early 2000s? Those little columns in your sidebar listing all the blogs you followed, from your Internet friends in Baltimore, Boston, and Oakland to the Norwegian dude with unparalleled knowledge of caffeinated beverages. Blogrolls were a window into your soul, showcasing your interests, political leanings, and your allies and haters. But blogrolls died an ignoble death, replaced by Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter.

Now, Facebook is a place for old people to complain about schools forcing kids to piss in litter boxes, and Twitter is overrun with spam—AI spam, crypto spam, self-publishing spam, and horny posting spam links to the spicy 🌶 site. Gone are the days of the guy eating beans while watching Cars 2 or the monkey in a jacket at a department store, or the runaway llamas. Social media will never experience moments like that again.

So how do we get our information now? Are we supposed to read newspapers? Watch local television? Talk to people and learn about the world by engaging with it? Nuts to that! We want information shot into our faces, like a drink from Mr. Firehose on the Stanley Spadowski show. Enter RSS. The blogroll's back, baby, and it's back in a big way.

I need to get drenched by the news hose, so I've spent most of the day fiddling with RSS servers, flip-flopping between FreshRSS and Miniflux. FreshRSS is more full-featured, but Miniflux's simplicity and ease of quickly sharing to Pocket on Android has won me over. For now, anyways. Here's my current RSS workflow that gets me my article fix:

1. Subscribe to RSS Feeds: I subscribe to feeds in Miniflux— news sources like the New York Times and NPR, sports blogs, culture magazines, etc. Anything that seems interesting and that has an RSS feed gets added. Most of them I never actually read anything from, but I stay subscribed until the feed breaks or stops getting updated.

2. Notifications Off: I keep notifications turned off. I will decide when I get drenched by the news hose.

3. Scroll and Save: I scroll through headlines on my phone, usually while I'm scarfing a bagel for breakfast. If I see a headline or blurb that interests me, I save it to my Pocket account.

4. Read on E-reader: Pocket sends it to my e-reader, ready for me to read at my leisure. (Although I usually don't actually get off my phone to read on my e-reader, the potential is there for me to be able to read without the distraction.)

Today was one of the days when I actually spent some time reading instead of scrolling. And thanks to my RSS feeds, I've read about the effectiveness of read-alouds for older children, Willie Mays, Rat Boys, and even a poem about Trans Pikachu. I also saved an article on how to handle my sexy nemesis—a deeply concerning issue that I need to read about before it's too late.

Whether I'm at the dentist's office, waiting in the Chipoltlane, or sitting alone in the woods, I can read RSS feeds, or at least skim headlines and save to read later. I am never without my precious articles. The news hose is constantly spraying. The world is at my fingertips, largely free of ads and spam and paywalls. This is the future, and it is also the past. It's the way forward and the way back.

I am alone. The high schoolers who were camping across the way from me abandoned camp early. They were complaining that it was hot, that there was nothing to do, that they had no signal, that they were bored, so they packed up their dad's truck, and left a day early. Every campsite is marked with the last name of person staying there and the length of stay. They arrived yesterday were supposed to leave tomorrow, just as I am, but they are cowards, they are fools, they are weak. And now they are gone.

I am alone in the tent camping part of the state park. There are only three tent campsites. They are off a mountain biking trail that connects to the woodpecker trail and the beaver trail on opposite end of the park. It's isolated. Other than the other tent campsites, you can't really see anything through the woods. Sometimes you can hear the engine of an old motorhome rumble by up on the RV loop. But other than that, it's just me, the deer, the birds, and this asshole yellow jacket that's stuck inside my gazebo. He can't get out. He doesn't understand the door is wide open. Why do you keep flying the other way, stupid? How can these creatures have existed for millions of years and not be able to escape a gazebo with the door open? But I digress.

Now I'm alone. And the kids leaving got me wondering: why am I still here? Why am I here in the first place? Why did I come out to the middle of Georgia on days when it's supposed to be 96 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, 60-70% humidity? Why did I come and choose to sleep outside, under the stars, surrounded by bugs and lizards and asshole yellow jackets, who are, again, still stuck in my gazebo? Why did I do this?

I know why I did this. It's embarrassing. I'm trying to prove myself. I want to prove that I can do fun things. I can be adventurous. That I can make good use of a DSLR camera. And so months ago, on a petty whim, I bought a tent. I bought a gazebo. I bought a folding army cot, a sleeping pad, a sleeping bag, and a little mallet with a hook at the end to pull out tent pegs that I don't really need because I just use my foot. But whatever, at least now I've got a mallet to protect myself Old Boy style.

I bought all this stuff and now I've got to use it. We have four day work weeks in the summer so I figured I'll use those to go camping. Friday through Sunday. This is my first week. It's the first time I've been camping in probably 30 years. I have no experience doing this. I have no wilderness skills, no survival skills. I have a Leatherman and a cool little EDC flashlight. Other than that, I'm helpless as a babe in the woods. (Not that I'm saying that I'm a babe, but I kind of am. I'm kind of hot stuff. And I'm in the woods.)

But here I am, alone. Sitting in the woods. And reader, let me tell you something: I am having the time of my life.

This is super relaxing. I'm recording this on a voice recorder that's not connected to the internet. The service out here is spotty.  When I walk up towards the front of the park I get a few bars. But other than that, nothing. I'm cut off from the world. I'm isolated. I'm writing. I'm reading. I'm walking through the forest, tripping over roots. Seeing alligators. Seeing turtles. Scaring beavers and deer. This trip has been rejuvenating. 

It's something that I've already started trying to figure out how I can do it better. I need to pack better, for one thing. Too many bags. I need a little side table which I've already ordered. I need a fly swatter or something to kill these bugs that get inside my gazebo and won't get out. I don't want to kill you, Yellow Jacket, you deserve to live just as much as I do, but seriously, I want to sit in my chair inside the gazebo and drink a Coca-Cola Classic. That's what I'm here to do.

But really, what this has shown me is that I can disconnect, I can be on my own, I can thrive on my own. It's one of the things I worry about having Parkinson's. I fear that there will come a time when I won't be able to live on my own, where I'll be in a home, having someone feed me pudding. Not yet, though, even though my hand is shaking uncontrollably as I hold this voice recorder and I almost fell flat on my face walking across the boardwalk today on the woodpecker trail.

I've  still got it. I can survive a weekend in the woods, or sort of in the woods, in a state park version of the woods. I can rough it. I can camp. I can use my not-so-fancy-anymore DSLR camera to take mediocre pictures. I can write. I'm working on a photo essay of my little adventures like I used to do back in the day.

As much as I like to be by myself, I've had trouble being alone the last few years. I had some personal issues I needed to deal with, then medical issues, now personal issues again. But this camping thing, I'm digging it.

Next week I go up further north, up to a campsite that's on the banks of a lake, or maybe it's a river. I don't know, some sort of water. better chance of getting devoured by an alligator. Then the week after that, it's a solo trip to Disney World before going to a conference in Orlando.

Next week, it will be four years since I moved to Georgia. Things did not go as planned, at least not for me. But four years later, I'm finally doing the things I'd planned on doing when I first moved here. For the next three weeks, I'm going to truly enjoy life. Hopefully, the good vibes will continue after three weeks. Or I'll lose my house and have to start everything over again. One or the other.

#1000WordsOfSummer

It seems like only three years ago I was able to walk in the woods with ease. In fact, it was three years ago. I walked in the woods all the time. Then things started getting harder, I started getting  slower, and walking through the woods became more tiring. I thought that I was getting old, that I was getting fat, that my knee was acting up on me, but it wasn't any of those things. It was #ThePark showing its signs.

Now, I very rarely walk in the woods. It's hard for me to negotiate the trails. I have to keep a close eye on where I step. One of the fun parts of walking through the woods is looking around and seeing what's in the woods. But now I have to watch my step to avoid roots and sticks and branches and rocks and other things that my foot could clip as I'm Frankenstein clomping through the woods. Yet here I am, 13 months after being diagnosed, in the woods at a state park, scaring deer and trying to get mauled by an alligator.

I haven't seen an alligator, and I'm already exhausted after barely making it halfway around the lake. I probably should have gone hiking before I set up my tent, my gazebo, my cot, and chased a bee out of the gazebo. I should have drank more water instead of just drinking coke.

That's all I've had today. Just a coke. And yes, I know you're saying, but Shawn, isn't coke nature's water? And yes, yes it is. But sometimes when it's really hot outside, you need regular water to amplify the power of the coke. The life-giving energy of Coca-Cola Classic. I've had my coke. I've had my water chaser. Now I'm wandering through the woods, hoping I'm going in the right direction.

Hills. Why are there hills? This is supposed to be the low country. Low as in no hills. And here I am, walking up a hill. Exhausted. Wondering how long it is until I get to the  other side of the lake. That's kind of the biggest challenge of walking with Parkinson's. It's not that I'm always clumsy. Sometimes I'm clumsy, when I'm not paying attention. I don't always trip over cords or seams in the carpet or sticks or roots or stuff like that. But the thing is, when I get tired, like I am right now, I slow down even more. And my walk goes from a steady clomp to a plod. It's a cumbersome lumbering. I'm endlessly plodding through the woods, feeling like George O'Brien in Sunrise.

There are benches throughout the trail, always at the top of the hill. But I know if I sit down, I'll have a hard time getting back up again. So onward I plod, hoping that my slip-on Skechers with soles made of Goodyear tires or something like that will give me the traction I need to finish this accursed hike around the lake.

Why am I doing this? To get the attention of someone who probably doesn't even think about me anymore? To prove that I am still healthy? Out of boredom and a desire to be alone and just read and write? I don't know. I hiked the entire Beaver Trail and I barely caught a glimpse of a beaver. A fleeing beaver, running away to its little beaver hideaway as it heard me arrive. No beaver for your boy today, only exhaustion and pain. As it always will be.

#1000WordsOfSummer