Sometimes fall comes gradually, over the course of several weeks such that one is hardly aware of the looming change. Leaves transition from green to yellow to red to brown as the Sun traces lower and lower arcs across the sky.

But sometimes fall comes on the tail of gusting winds so strong that trees shed their leaves in a single day, and the temperature marks the change of seasons from sunrise to sunset. No matter the velocity, when winter approaches, fall descends upon the Rockies with bold display and vibrant array of all that will soon be buried in snow.

When I was in primary and secondary school, our family heated our home in Columbus, Nebraska with a wood burning stove. My grandfather Raymond would deliver logs from the timber on our farm in Iowa. He drove eight hours round trip, two or three times each year. This was his gift to us, fuel prepared by his own hands in order that we could heat our home at a reduced bill.

My job was to check the stove when I returned from school, as I was usually home before my brother Jae or my parents. I removed the ashes if the fire was out, added wood and stoked the flames. We kept a pot of spiced cider made from unfiltered apple cider, one or two slices of an orange, a tea bag, cinnamon and cloves. The aroma filled the house, from the basement where the stove was held, to the entire upper floor.

I learned that when the stove reached 600 degrees Fahrenheit water droplets no longer boiled away, rather, they bounced around the surface of the stove, retaining their full form. They could even be guided by my blowing on them. After a half dozen, eight, or even ten seconds they absorbed too much heat, the invisible layer which kept them isolated no longer a protective barrier. They stalled and vaporised. I was fascinated by this process, adding salt or sugar to learn if I could increase the time they would survive the tremendous heat. But all I accomplished in my experiments was leaving stains on the matte black stove paint.

Each winter weekend my father would head into the backyard to chop wood. As a boy, I recall him being quite strong, with arms the diameter of the logs he was about to take on. Yet in a recent conversation, my father reminded me that the world looks quite a bit bigger when we are small, our admiration exaggerating further still.

I recall his boots breaking the surface of the hard, icy mid-Western snow. The sound of the axe neatly slicing a log in two was such that I knew, even if turned the other way, if the cut was clean. I stood the logs, one by one on the chopping block, a large diameter stump which received the blade when my father cut through.

For wood too wide for an axe, my father used a sledge hammer to drive a steel spike deep into the grain. The sledge hammer raised overhead drove the spike out the other side. The crack of the wood was a telling sign that the placement of the blade or spike was just right, or if it would jam. We’d stack the split wood on the side of the house or in the garage, carrying an arm full each into the basement to place on the brick flooring which supported the stove.

This past week, here at the Buffalo Peak Ranch, a hint of winter arrived. Nights in the low thirties give way to crisp mornings and afternoons whose warmth is waning. Three evenings last week I maintained the wood burning stove into the night, sleeping on the futon just across from the source of heat. Sometimes I wake in the early AM to stoke the flames, adding three or four more logs, then crawl back into bed.

I am now returned to chopping wood as I was three years prior. Again, I am the one driving the blade into the grain, hoping for the CRACK! and two or three pieces to fall to the sides. As with tending to a garden, repairing furniture, and baking bread, splitting wood with an axe is wonderfully gratifying. It is a workout and a meditation combined, for one must choose the end and the approach at the same time. Avoid the knots! Gage the distance. Focus on the blade arriving to the bottom side and bring it through. A slight twist can provide additional kinetic energy to bring the blade home, or send it glancing, shaving only the bark from the outside.

In just one hour I can prepare ample wood to heat the cabin for a few days. An afternoon of work and I am set for a week. What adds to my reward is this is a renewable resource, if managed properly. Nearly every gram of the mass of wood is sunlight captured, photons from a distant nuclear furnace, stored as fuel. The electromagnetic radiation coupled with water, carbon, and nutrients from the soil is given a second chance to provide warmth, on this planet. The ultimately re-use, recycle.

When we are again made to feel small, insignificant, and vulnerable.

When we take steps forward without looking behind.

When we disconnect with the virtual and reconnect with the physical and lose track of time.

Then we know we have returned to the wilderness of our heart, body, and mind.

Something happened to me in my two years in South Africa, and subsequent past seven months in Phoenix, Arizona—I became accustomed to living in a city. For the first time in my adult life, I was losing a connection to wilderness.

Since I was 16 years of age and went on my first solo backpacking trip in the Superstition wilderness, there has been this place inside of me that remembers what it means to feel at peace, to truly be at home.

That place has for thirty years connected me to wilderness, the last remaining places on this crowded planet which have no power lines overhead, no pipelines underground, no human crafted water ways or walk ways or roads. Places where the otter and beaver, deer and elk, fox and coyote, wolf, bear and mountain lion yet maintain their domain. Places where the birds nest not on man-made structures but in their original, natural habitat.

I often wondered how those who are born and raised in a city, those who venture to national parks as temporary relief but long to return to the concrete do look to the open spaces and natural places that remain. In my time in Cape Town I longed for the time I enjoyed at Sutherland, home of the South African Astronomical Observatory. The land that surrounds the 6,000 foot observatory is open range, criss-crossed by roads and fences, yet vast, mostly untrodden, and incredibly quiet. It was as close to wilderness as I was able to enjoy during my time in South Africa, and a welcomed respite.

Slowly, I gained an appreciation for living in a country where friends were but a phone call away, arriving with a bottle of wine on a moment’s notice. In time, the conditions of the surf determined how I spent my mornings and I grew accustomed to the clockwork of the city, from the train schedule to the hours of the local restaurants and hangouts. There, I built some of the deepest friendships of my life.

Upon my return to Phoenix I longed for those connections, for those walks on the beach and intellectual discussions over home made bread and South African wine. While I grew up investigating the far reaches of the American Southwest, exploring mountain tops and canyons, river ways and caves, the wilderness had, for me, retreated to somewhere, out there, beyond my reach. I no longer believed the wild places existed, for the news, the media, nothing spoke to me of where I could go to be removed from the overwhelming human condition, to be alone with my own challenges and not those of the entire planet.

I was aware of this, and spoke of it to family and friends. I knew I needed to be reminded of what it was to be in a place outside of the human domain. Last week I returned to Buffalo Peak Ranch. For the summer and into the fall, this will be my home once again. It took no more than the hour drive from the nearest town, into the valley where the buffalo do roam, to remember what it means to be free.

No, this is not wilderness, but in a ten minutes drive or thirty minutes run I can be in wilderness again. It’s just over there, on the visible horizon. Once again I am reminded of what it means to be free of the sound of engines, sirens, alarms and talking, talking, talking. Once again, my body is flooded with the embrace of silence and solitude.

Every hour of every day is my own. I wake to the sun on my face. I swim in the cold pond following my workout. I go for long hikes with camera in hand between longer sessions of email and programming. I make time for making food. And sometimes, I just sit and do nothing.

Since my departure from Buffalo Peak Ranch in late November 2013, I have shared the story of my time there with both those familiar to me and those who remain strangers. A few share my passion for solitude, for they have experienced it too. Some nod their heads, knowing, deep inside that time off-line, time alone would bring them insight and joy which cannot be found by any other means. But most are simply horrified, shaken by the very concept of being alone.

To those I ask “Why? What scares you?”

“You mean, without internet?” I nod. “I love my iPhone too much,” laughing, “and could not live without Facebook.”

I wait, as the joke subsides, they continue, “It would be good for me to have that time alone. I know it would be good for me. I just, … I just don’t know if I am ready for that, to be alone … with me.” This final statement is often accompanied by fidgeting, an uneasy glance at empty hands, or reach for the mobile phone again.

I have received this honest response more than a few times now, enough to recognize that it likely sits behind the verbalized and non-verbal fear of being disconnected, of living off-line. To be alone is not the real concern. To be with oneself, that is the real challenge, for in that place, we must face the reality of who we are when no one else is around.

Tonight will be my very last night here at Buffalo Peak Ranch. This place has given me six months of peace, solitude, and healing. I have found what feels like who I truly am for the first time in my adult life. Such comfort with being me. Amazing.

There was a time when the entire planet was like this place, free from noise and congestion. Just fifty years ago we did not have the constant buzz of aircraft overhead. One hundred and we heard only the sound of horses and wooden wheels. Two hundred–just six generations prior–and we were not even to the Industrial Revolution.

Now, there are only a few places remaining on this globe which are free of human clutter. Audible, physical, tangible infiltration of every sense during our entire life, from first breath to last gasp.

We even have cliche terms such as “tune out” to pretend this noise is acceptable. I have failed to find the switch inside which disables the long term detriment to my soul. I now know, I have solid evidence that nothing, no amount of meditation or insulated walls or power vacations will ever replace the healing of nearly two hundred days and nights of perfect, natural silence.

I hope only that I am able to maintain this sense of solitude and peace inside, no matter where I travel. No matter the traffic, the rumble, the sirens, the tension in the density of viral human populations on this planet–I hope I will recall what it meant to watch the sun set and hear those sounds which never ever tire–the wind, the fall of rain, the occasional bugle of the elk and nightly call of the coyotes–the perfection of absolutely nothing.

In this place of solitude, there is no room for blame. There is no one to receive the pointy end of my finger, but me. As my days unfold into weeks, and weeks into the close of four months, two of which I have spent almost entirely alone, I recognize that the challenges of being me do not fully subside.

Instead, my anxieties, my fears, my resentment, contentment, and joy all remain completely present and accounted for. Not a day goes by that I do not experience a mixture of two or more of these.

Yes, alone, they are no longer murky, no longer confused by the complexity of relationship with another human being. I am alone, and in this aloneness, have come to experience all of me in perfect clarity.

I cannot help but consider the old man in the cave, the monk sworn to a monastic life, or the shipwrecked sailor who for years is stranded on what would otherwise be a paradise.

We simultaneously cherish and shutter at the thought of that path, that journey, knowing full well the challenge of working through your own internal, broken stuff is as difficult, perhaps more so, than learning to be with another. Or are they the same?

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Only in publishing this did I rediscover an entry of the same title, on a similar subject, written a year prior. Interesting to revisit and compare my experience of solitude, a year later, both times after having lived at Buffalo Peak Ranch alone.