I left Wiseman and headed North to Gold Creek and the trail off the haul road. I'm almost in the center of the Brooks Range now. I've explored this country for many years, prospecting and digging crystals and gold, and just walking about. I can't relax sitting around, especially when I'm keyed up and burnt out from the road and the music. I need to blow off energy and let the calm of nature slowly seep into my heart and soul and mind. So though it's great to see my friends again when I reach their camp, where there is a warm cabin waiting for me; they understand when I head out up the creek and up the montain, not coming back till after dark.

They head for Fairbanks to shop while I watch the place for them, something I've done before. They can use the break and I can use the solitude. The day after they leave it snows 6 inches, August 22nd, summer in the Brooks Range.

I come to the wildlands to excape the wrongness that fills so much of the world people have made. Just to relax for a while in a place where I feel like I belong. I feel safe and secure in the wildlands, something I seldom feel among people. I have spent much of my life in the wilds and I know the patterns, I fit in, I belong. I a as sensitve and aware as a wild animal, and here I can let my senses expand to their limit, unbound by the painful and irritating dissonance of "civilization". I am not an intruder from man's world invading the wild, I am a wild thing returning to my refuge and sanctuary. Nature may kill me, if I do the wrong thing; but there is no malice, no evil, nothing wrong.

I settle in to unwind a little and recover; like going to someplace quiet to tune an instrument.