When I was thirteen, I became obsessed with the idea of running away to live in the woods. I may have been influenced by Hatchet, a novel in which a boy my age survived alone in the wilderness, with a hatchet as his only tool. He’d even befriended a hawk. Of course, I would need more than a hatchet, so I made lists: shampoo, conditioner, toothbrush. At first, I considered the expansive forest about 100 miles north, where I attended summer camp every year. It was lush and green, and riddled with trails. Surely, I could survive there! But I wasn’t sure what I would do when I ran out of shampoo, or conditioner. And then there was food to consider. The protagonist in Hatchet had foraged for berries and hunted small animals, but I was less confident.

My next best option was the ravine next to the community center where my sisters and I took swimming lessons. It was forested, with a stream winding through the bottom. I could sneak out to buy food. But how would I get the money? Eventually, with great reluctance, I accepted that I’d better put off my plans. After all, my parents didn’t treat me badly enough to warrant such an endeavor. And I should probably finish high school, in case I needed it later in life. As an alternative, I decided to write a novel about a girl my age who lived in the woods and penned a few paragraphs in a red Mead notebook, but they quickly petered out before she ever left the house.

More than two decades later, I did embark on a three-month journey into the Sierra Nevada mountains, one that was much better planned. I didn’t bring shampoo or conditioner – relying, instead, on a single bottle of all-purpose soap. I pre-packed boxes of food, and had a friend mail them to locations along the trail. And as I spent much of that time in a single ravine, alongside a rushing river, I realized that I was glad that I’d waited to finish high school, and became a writer who actually finished things. That I’d been just wise enough to realize that I couldn’t have everything I wanted, exactly when I wanted it. That my responsibility to others might be more important than where I longed to be – and, perhaps, could one day lead me there.