“I grew up doing this.” I wave a hand at the woods. “My dad was in Vietnam, and came back having trouble being indoors. Mom left, and left me with him, and since he always wanted to be out in the woods, the woods is basically where I grew up. Once, when I was, oh, fourteen, fifteen, Dad packed us some big old bags and our rifles and told me to say goodbye to the house for a while. And he meant it. We drove up to Montana near the Yellowstone, out there where it’s real wild, and spent a good six months living like Jeremiah Johnson.” I laugh. “Minus the fights with natives, obviously.”

She eyes me incredulously. “Really?”

“Oh yeah. It was the only place he was at peace. And I didn’t have anywhere else to go and no one else to go to, so I went with him.” I sigh. “He taught me woodworking. If he wasn’t in the woods, he was in his shop out back, working the lathe and the saw. He made furniture. Tables, chairs, bookcases, bureaus. I could make a bookshelf before I could shave.”

“Wow.” She gestures behind us, where the cabins would be. “So, that’s not really even roughing it for you.”

I cackle. “I mean, those cabins are really well finished. So no. But in comparison to how I grew up? Sometimes, we wouldn’t even bring tents. We’d make shelter out of branches and moss and shit. Find a cave. Sleep in the hollow of a fallen tree.”

“My husband and I went camping once, like with a tent. It was terrible and we hated it and we never did it again.”

I hold another branch out of the way as we top the rise. “It’s not for everyone. But it can be fun. I don’t think I’d do any survivalist camping anymore, but being way, way out there, where there ain’t anybody for fuckin’ miles, and everything you need to survive is on your back? Makes you feel…confident, I guess. Comfortable in your skin, because you’re this little fragile ol’ thing in a great big world that’s been here before us and will be here after us, and suddenly your dumb little idiosyncrasies and the shit you’re self-conscious about…it all just doesn’t matter as much. Getting to the next campsite, making the next kill so you can eat, that’s all that matters.” I wave in the direction of the cabins. “And I guess living in the cabin is a version of that. Lessens the intensity of focus. Lets you sort of…just live with yourself, in a way you can’t in the city, doing the day-to-day grind. But maybe that’s just me. And I’m still figuring it out as I go along myself.”