You see, here I am pushing 53-years of age. I like to say I am as old as a deck of playing cards (typically 52 playing cards) – in a few months will have to add one of the jokers.
Be that as it may, no matter the conditions I face, no matter the trials and tribulations life throws at me – or the rigors of The Great North Woods – it doesn’t matter.
Where youth has strength, age is equipped with endurance. The ability to endure is a great power indeed.
Sunny and well fed or stumbling in the snow and rain with empty stomach and exhausted body, I am here, I am alive doing what I love in the land I have come to know so well.
I completely accept and love the difficulties. The rain and snow, the risks, the rewards. I am happy wherever I am and whatever fate finds me.
We Know How it Must End – It Ends Badly
We know our ultimate fate. From that knowledge there can be great strength.
As Robert Service puts it in his poem The Heart of the Sourdough:
I have clinched and closed with the naked North,
I have learned to defy and defend;
Shoulder to shoulder we have fought it out —
yet the Wild must win in the end.
The wild must win in the end.