Coming back is a shock - I was out for 10 years (not all in the wilderness, but mostly renting in small towns or camping or living in a van in Asia, Europe, Aus

Coming back is a shock - I was out for 10 years (not all in the wilderness, but mostly renting in small towns or camping or living in a van in Asia, Europe, Australia). I had the misfortune of coming back to the US a month before Trump won the election. I had the double misfortune of my homecoming flight being to Las Vegas for my brother's bachelor party. The fucking darkness. The recessed lighting, the militarized look of the signs and vehicles. I still remember turning on the TV in the hotel room and listening to this horrible shit pour out of the only channels... things I couldn't imagine ten years earlier. It took a couple years before it sank in and the daily shocks started to numb me. And encumber my mind. But I'd been an alkie on the road, and when the pandemic hit all the worst of that came back. Spent most of the last couple years inside a bottle, with no way out. Nowhere to go. Nowhere you can go. Girlfriend likes to drink, but tells me I should sober up. Girlfriend seems like the reason I drink sometimes, but she's not; just the sense of being trapped. When your only outlet is through a screen, or patio outside the bar with a few neighbors, everything narrows down. I know a guy who just got back from ice climbing in Utah and I think, well, fuck it's too late for me to ever do something like that. I really feel trapped. Hey anyway, thank you for sharing this. It does give me some inspiration. You're the kind of person I hope I run into out there, when or if I do get out there again.