Brian's Return

On June 3, Brian Robeson drifts in his canoe on a lake in the Canadian woods and feels a sense of peace for the first time in a while. He expertly keeps insects away by building a small smoky fire inside of a coffee can. As he floats, he tunes in to the sights and sounds of nature that surround him: a beaver slapping the water, a deer moving through the trees, a frog jumping, and a hawk screeching overhead. He thinks of the hawk as a hunter, but he differentiates between the hawk’s need to hunt for survival and the choice of many humans to hunt for sport. Brian reflects on the past two years of his life. He missed the woods deeply and tried to take interest in hunting and fishing television shows and magazines, but he found that every source he looked to was wrong. Even the magazines that interviewed him after his wilderness survival experience understood his story incorrectly; they said he conquered nature, but Brian knows he didn’t. Instead, nature became a part of him, and he learned a valuable lesson: “Man proposes, nature disposes” (4).