Just walking

   The forests were his sanctuary, his peace, and the only place on earth where the voices and defining noise didn’t exist. He had no worldly possessions, not anymore. He had rid himself of everything the day he walked away. Nature and his skills would provide him with what mattered, nothing more.

   He walked the walk of a man trying never to get anywhere but his mind needed for him to walk, just walk, and so he did. From the first light of day until the sunset he stepped lightly and without a sound except when an occasional fallen branch met the soul of his boot causing him to stop abruptly listening but only hearing the birds frightened right alongside him.

   He came back a different man someone he didn’t know or understand — someone who couldn’t fit in anymore although he tried so very hard to do so. His family prayed for him, wept for him, and tried to understand why he just walked away one day. It was the last time they would ever see him.

   The forest to him was like a dream where he was the only person invited in to roam and become as one with all it could offer him. He lost track of time as months turned to years as he kept walking and trying to silence the voices and the noises that buried themselves into his very soul.

   No one understood how he survived the harsh winters and the relentless rain and storms, and no one except me ever looked for him. He was a memory to those he left behind — a story at the supper table shedding tears onto food. I tried to find him spending weekends walking deep into the forest looking for signs he had passed through one way or another, but my efforts became less and less as time past and eventually I made peace with myself and let him go.

   I think about him often and wonder if he's still out there waiting to find himself or giving in to the realization he is who he became and will never walk out of the trees that protect him from his life he can't forget. I pray he is free from the pain, and he has become one with the silence.

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