Home Away from Home
No one looked for him because no one cared, and he wouldn't have it any other way.
Sitting with his back against the cold painted steel of his Sprinter nestled deep in a copse of pine he pondered as the dim orange firelight cast his shadow up and over the high walls of the van and into the needles above, rising like a ghost of his old self to disappear amongst the stars. A thin blue whisp of smoke rose from his parted lips as he took the crudely rolled cigarette from his mouth and flicked the end into the flames. Somewhere in the distance an owl sounded, soft hooting drowned out by the crackling firewood as tiny moths danced about the blaze, occasionally disappearing in a puff of smoke where they'd flown too close and were licked by the flame. He sipped from a can of cheap domestic lager and crossed his legs at the ankle and turned his eyes skyward, watching the stars twinkle against the silken blue-black expanse of space. He thought he saw a shooting star, or perhaps it was a satellite. He didn't know and didn't care for he was far beyond the childish innocence that is wishing.
He'd left behind a life that could have been considered enviable by the destitute but pitiful by the more fortunate. A small apartment in an up-and-coming city. A trivial office job that more than paid the rent but drained soul from body with the monotony of flourescent lighting and water cooler conversation and burnt coffee. A turbulent but long-standing relationship grown stale with a good-enough looking woman whom he claimed to love but grew less and less certain with each unresolved dispute. A little sports coupe that was fun and reliable but rusting at its corners and leaking oil. A meager collection of books and tools and appliances symbolic of the civilized world for which he held such disdain. A family he hadn't called in years.
When the lease was up he told his beloved that they were to go their separate ways, sold most of his belongings, and bought a used van from a grey and balding contractor from a newspaper classified. In it he arranged rudimentary cabinetry, a military-style cot, and a gas camping stove. He never quit his job, simply stopped showing up. He never told his family, just continued his radio silence. Within the space of a few weeks, he simply vanished into the wooded veil of the great Pacific Northwest and lived campsite to campsite. He kept with him few possessions save for the necessities - a handful of ornately-bound classic literature, a six-shot pistol starting to patina along its chromed barrel, a brass pocket compass, and an old Minolta 35mm camera. A thousand dollars or so he had left over. A blue Igloo cooler that was three-quarters full of beer and filled out with a couple cheap cuts of beef. A cast iron frying pan. A pocketknife with a broken lock.
Living in isolation from the world he found comfort in his solitude for he was no longer reliant on love or affection or even a paycheck to get by. Self-reliance and grim determination had taken the place of community and belonging and society. He held on to his cracked and grimy cellphone but it sat in the van's center console, untouched and unused with no new messages and no missed calls. Nobody was looking for him, nobody desparate to get in touch, and that suited him just fine for what had they ever done for him besides hold him to the ever-climbing standards of civilized living?
Was he lonely? Perhaps on one or three shivering and rain-soaked nights confined to the rough canvas cot, but these times were long since passed. Was he afraid? Never, for the only things that had ever given him reason to fear were pains brought forth by man - and woman. The forest provided for him and the forest understood and the forest gave him no cause for concern so long as he kept his wit which was never in short supply. Here, amongst his scarce belongings, he was more content than he had ever been. His loneliness reframed itself as a serene self-determination. Though he possessed few he possessed all, ashe was no longer confined by walls, by lines, by expectations. He had a carpet of pine needles, a ceiling of stars. A faucet of fresh-fallen mountain water and a fireplace wherever he found flat ground. He had the company of the deer, the foxes, the birds.
The world was his home, and to the world along he belonged.