110 ... Gabriel Morrisbe an extremely important aspect of the healing process, and yet my
sleep patterns were totally out of balance. Some nights I barely slept
at all, unable to relax amidst my constant inner conflict. I needed to
find a lifestyle that would provide the balance to help me deal with
all this on a daily basis, but I wasn’t sure what would be the best situ-
ation for my rather unique and difficult circumstances.
I still had the option of going back to Ananda at the end of the sum-
mer. I held on to this as a potential life raft, anticipating that Ananda
would be somewhere I could find genuine balance and centeredness,
somewhere I might be able to meet many of my spiritual as well as
worldly needs—yoga, good sleep, good food, like-minded company,
as well as a routine schedule to help provide some structure to my
life. All this swirled through my head as I said goodbye to my friend
Erik and continued on my journey into the unknown that lay ahead.
After standing for hours alongside the road at the far end of the
small town of Haines, I finally got a ride from a local, about twenty
miles north, where I found myself in the middle of the Alaskan wil-
derness. Aside from the small highway, there were no other signs
of civilization. A small creek flowed nearby, and a few eagles flew
overhead. The silence, though welcome, was also unsettling in its
intensity.
A few hours later, as I was beginning to feel as if I might be the last
person left on the planet (a common hitchhiker’s paranoia—no one’s
coming down the road because everybody in the world has mysteri-
ously vanished), I was finally picked up by another local, who took
me as far as the Canadian border. I went smoothly through inspec-
tions, walked across the border, and then stood just inside Canada
for the rest of the day, without getting another ride. As evening de-
scended and daylight waned, I hiked into the nearby woods and set
up my tent. I crawled into my sleeping bag feeling lost and depressed,
and slept erratically through the night.
The next morning, I got up early and was back on the road. After
a few more hours, I was blessed with a ride from a man going all
the way to Wasilla, just north of Anchorage, more than five hundred