- Jul 7, 2019
- 2 min read

Wilder-ness

The fourth of July is a day when people in The West celebrate our independence. Independence is the kind of freedom where you do something because you want to, not because someone else wants you to do it. An example of independence is like when Mom leaves you alone in the car while she’s in the bathroom, and you pull the package of beef jerky out of the snack bag and decide to eat the whole thing all by yourself rather than having it as a treat later.

reviews, it was hard to know how wild we would need to be in this wilder-ness because they let anyone use the internet, even numbskulls. The reviews from the numbskulls who had taken a hike on the wild side before us said that either the trail was hard to find, or that the trail wasn’t that hard to find, or that it wasn’t really a trail at all but more of a “track” (whatever that means…). “It means that we will walk wild over the land, and navigate by dead reckoning,” Mom explained. “Or, I guess not ‘dead reckoning’ because that means that you don’t use a map or landmarks. But it sounds cool, so if anyone asks then we’ll tell them that’s how we found our way around.” The person who said that the track-which-was-not-a-trail was hard to find might have been the kind of numbskull who couldn’t find a trail unless it had arrows pointing which way to go every quarter mile. Then again, the person who said that the track was easy to find might have been a real wilder-ness badass who could find their way around by real dead reckoning and other navigating skills that Mom and I don’t have. When dealing with people on the internet, though, it is always safe to assume that everyone is a numbskull. So Mom predicted that it would probably be easy to find the track-not-a-trail and we would be fine.