The Man in the Wilderness

There was once a group of people who lived in a village in the middle of a wilderness. As the number of people in the village increased, men and women of the community worked together to clear out more space to breathe.

In the middle of the village, the women would plant flowers. On the outskirts of the village, men would pave roadways. And on the frontier, adventurous young boys would leave the village and enter the thick of the wilderness, clearing trees and undergrowth to make new spaces for their grandchildren.

Jonathan was a frontiersboy who spent all of his days in the woodlands outside the village. While the other young boys his age spent their days slashing and burning the great oak trees on the borderlands of the village, he made long, narrow pathways that stretched deeper and deeper into the darkness of the forest.

Every morning when he awoke, he drank a cup of coffee and ate a banana. After breakfast, he kissed his mother on the lips and told her that he would return at the setting of the sun. Then he grabbed a machete and ventured onto the path he had made, which each day stretched farther into the woods.

As the path grew longer, so did his days. It became more and more difficult for the boy to walk the length of his path, clear more bushes, and return the long way home before the sun set. So he awoke earlier, before his mother awakened, took his coffee and banana with him, and worked until the sun set. When he returned home, his mother was already sleeping in her bed, and he kissed her on the forehead.

Eventually, the boy asked himself why he spent so much time walking along the path, and as the light from the full moon shone down upon him as he slashed his pathway deeper and deeper into the jungle, he decided to lay his head down upon a rock to rest a while.

In the morning birds awakened him, and he felt the dew on his clothing. He had slept through the night. No matter, he thought. This accident had given him an opportunity to make even more progress on his path. Getting an early start, he was able to drive more deeply into the wasteland than he had ever traveled before.

He continued in the same manner for days, weeks, and years, until he reached finally reached his destination on the outskirts of oblivion. The only person who ever missed him was his mother, who wondered where her son had gone, and why he had never returned.

Centuries later, the great-great-great-grandchildren of the village found the remains of a solitary man as they were burning the stumps of oak trees.  The skeleton rested just a few hundred feet from the outskirts of their village. The skull lay on a rock, and there was a rusted machete nearby.