Wilderness Where You Find It
...fore and heard about the rest. But then again, he’s also heard about the jungles of the Congo. Things start off fine enough; park in the garage underneath Gameworks and take the elevator to street level. So far, so good. Things are still looking slightly familiar, but only for so long. Now things are being noticed that just didn’t stand out before. Stores that weren’t evident before, now stand out brighter than the big names from just two blocks away. Types of people that only appear as he strolls past the unattended allies come out looking for any kind of handouts. Some are very kind, understanding of the sense of uneasiness that they bring upon others. Some are more aggressive, looking to force what they have upon anyone, or even to take what someone might have for themselves. Now it’s time to return to the parking garage. Great distances have been traveled and an exact location is hard to come by. There are landmarks, but how they measure up to where Jake wants to be is as confusing as their relation to where he is now. He tries one way, but neither gains nor looses ground. It’s starting to get late. Really odd things he’s never seen before are happening all around. This street looks promising, so he tries it out. Almost immediately, a junky runs up on trying to peddle a little crack. This really throws Jake off, but he treks on, knowing that somewhere up ahead is where he wants to be. He walks, and he walks, and he walks some more, what seems like forever. Finally, a promising bit of information appears. It’s an advertisement of the store across the street from Gameworks, and, lucky for Jake, there’s an address. Thanks to this sign he’s where he wants to be within a matter of minutes. Now if this area wasn’t so foreign to Jake, the round trip would have been as common as walking between classes. The fact that all that he saw in the wilds of Seattle was new and different made this very populated area quite the wilderness. On a different note, let’s look at an area as close to you as home and see all the wild that it has to offer. In this story, we have Steve. Steve is a boy of only ten, yet he has lived at his current residence all his life. He is a very active young boy who loves to play outdoors. His parents have fenced in a nice little spot and called it home so that he may have a place to play. This home of theirs is smack-dab in the middle of the farmlands of Bow, Washington. It’s a pretty common set-up. Lots of his friends have homesteads that have very similar layouts. Life within these fenced in play pens can be predictable to an almost sickening extent. At first glance, one could count off the list of things to do quite easily. A cherry tree with a tree-f...