For Paul Brookes’ Wildness challenge.

Haibun for peace

I have never camped, never encountered wilderness, never had friends who would have wanted to find it. Never felt the urge, or dared, to get so far from other people, but only for a while. How could I face the return? Like ringing the crabby old one’s doorbell and running away.
Where walking into a passage grave feels like going home, back to the womb of human civilisation, a reverent, silent experience, walking into a wild place is an intrusion. Eyes watch. Ears listen. Nothing shows itself, not while we are there. Not until we go away.
People say, but surely you’d love to visit the Serengeti, the Amazon, the endless lakes of Finland, to stand on the roof of the world, look up from the bottom of the ocean? The answer is, no, I wouldn’t. I would rather time flowed over…