Swallowing the city again has been difficult.
Strange how adapting one way is easy, but returning is always so hard.
Unrolling the tent, gathering firewood, getting over the annoyance that in North American camping appears to be some form of vacationing sport, the running water, bags of firewood on sale, campsites with electricity and showers.
I got over it quickly, with my first sighting of a Blue Jay, the first squeky chattering of a chipmunk with half a tail.
The smell of the trees, and wet earth.
I learned to smile at the people invading my forest, driving their cars up and down the dirt paths to their neatly arranged campsites, then driving back to buy wood, driving up again and back and up and back.
By Saturday afternoon I had disappeared into the forest, slipping along marshy paths, sinking into sodden ground, utterly at peace with the flies and mosquitoes and buzzing beasts.
David had a harder time with the insect world, but we had uber bug-spray to help with that.
I scorched my back so badly attempting to swim across the lake that I can't lean back in my chair. It feels worse every day, too... But maybe that's because it simply didn't bother me when there were no chairs to lean in.
I remembered so many constellations, sang with David as he strummed his guitar late into the night.
I juggled, I swam, I hiked, I read by the flicker of a lantern. I played with fire. Endless fires. Early morning wood hunts, asking a passing hiker what time it was, finding out that I was awake at seven o'clock and hunting down kindling while David slept.
Breakfast out of tin cups, tea and coffee and oatmeal, the kettle whistling away over the hearth.
Roasted red peppers for dinner, corn was out of season but anything tastes good with the black stripes of a grill marking it as edible.
Bursting into tears late Sunday night, strange lights in the sky as morning was approaching, head in my hands and my back turned to David so he couldn't see how desperate I was to stay.
Away from job hunts and resume updates, away from cars and busses and concrete.
There wasn't any concrete.
There wasn't any plastic, except for the hot dog package.
There wasn't any disapproving looks, any worrying about what to say, how to make someone laugh.
There wasn't any rush, any bustle, the green sheen of money shining behind everyone's eyes. No smog or smoke, only water. Miles of cold, cold, clean water.
I swam for miles, shoulders straining, abs achining, chest heaving. I swam until I had to stretch out on my back and tread water to catch my breath. I swam until I couldn't see people anymore, towels, picnic baskets, cars parked, driven the handful of kilometers from the campsite to the beach.
I swam until it was just the black of the water, and the smears of perfect pine tree green.
And then on Monday I packed my tools away and climbed into the car, unable to speak.
I sat, peering mournfully out the window as David pushed slowly east, slowly back to Quebec, back to Montreal.
The first houses we saw had my heart crying to climb into one, small and innofensive, white and blue and so far from cocksure or excessive.
The first diners, the first town, was miles away, the first signs of life were quiet and peaceful and utterly lacking in designer outfits.
But the road got bigger and wider and filthier, brimming with smoke-belching mechanical monsters, racing past each other, crushing each other, threatening.
Highrise complexes blew by, filled with cravat-wearing drones, never bothering to look out windows.
Daisy-filled fields gave way to neatly manicured highway.
I closed my eyes and sang songs in my head and admonished myself for being melodramatic.
But it was hard, so hard, when the familiar buildings on St-John's and De Sources whizzed by, I knew it was over and somewhere inside I was screaming to escape, leap from the car window, somehow avoid coming back to this...
This madness, this race to beat everyone else down, the pressure to drink enough, be cool enough, always have just the right thing to say, survival skills all wrong, such a far cry from what they ought to be.
I don't feel like it anymore. There's no room in my head.
I hate this city. I love it for the freedom, the fringe, the incredible sexual openness, but I hate it all the same.
It's time to move, if only to escape my heart collapsing.
I'm going to go look up that "volunteer in third-world countries for geeks" web site I found a couple of years ago.
A straw hut in Africa, a laptop, and people willing to learn to use machines without letting them take everything over.
I couldn't sleep last night, wondering if it was the right thing to do, disturb their lives with an influx of american culture.
But maybe they can handle it, maybe they can stand up to the brainwashing.
And maybe I can help.
In the meantime, I'm checking my e-mail, updating my resume, sending it to headhunters, biting my tongue, gnashing my teeth.
But I can't stop dreaming.