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They had made a habit of cutting his stories short. In the evenings, as we sat on the open roof of the house-boat and he told me stories of his life, as the light grew pale over the dim forest and , their booming calls took on an other-worldly quality. They jumped into his tales, like great Golden Retrievers barking for attention. And it often worked. He would pause, listen. His eyes wandering past the still lake into a place only he could see. The silence grew saturated. How long had it been? Time could be a deceiving thing in the tropics. I slapped at the mosquitos until the forest had turned a menacing black and his cigarette's orange tip ebbed into the twilight. I had been on the road for months. A journey which had started with the promise of opening my life, had began to turn stale and parched. I found myself entangled in the old routine; wake up, find something to eat, look up the buses to the next city, village, mountain range. Was it not all the same? I arrived at the house-boat alone and full of questions. Was it really a kayaking guide they wanted me to be? But I couldn't even swim! Fine, I thought to myself. Let the old man show me the ropes. This was nothing but another temporary halt in a journey I no longer remembered the reason for. With his sun-burnt, sinewy limbs, the old man could have been a yoga instructor; or a beer-stained conspiracy-theorist in a tragic foreign bar. But he said deep down he was a fisherman - fisherman/surfer, he corrected himself- , and I believed him. When I met him though, he was the lodge's jack-of-all-trades; mustard fishing shirt; a packet of local cigarettes in the breast pocket; callused hands and a sharp mind seemingly on the run. In the evenings, after the guests had left, he liked to sit alone and read on the roof. I thought of him as aloof and distant at first. But then he saw me reading Paul Theroux's The Old Patagonian Express one day and invited me to join him. It soon turned into our routine. Daylight hours were for taking guests out and fixing things and patching up the kayaks. But the evenings were a time for conversations and cheap wine and his many stories. It was in the course of those conversations which I came to see in spite of his loosely-held-together appearance, his views on human conditions were firm and deliberate. He had seen the Hippy trail come and go, experienced the effects of mass tourism on many of his old hang-outs. He knew of how globalization and trading systems could wreck or build communities. He had lived through many of his beliefs, experienced his lessons. He had travelled far and long, and had let the world change him. Sleeping and surfing on the wild beaches of Northern Australia, diving with amateur TV crews off Pacific islands, fishing in the Hawaiian seas; a life lived fluidly and free. A life which I suppose, before I met him, I had set out to emulate. That evening, after the guests had left, we took to the roof. The lake reflected the fading light. It was a still world. He told me he had not lived at home in forty-something years, and I thought; was this where I was heading too? 'Forty-odd years, and I missed the old girl almost every day of it.' 'My mum must be in her nineties now. Still lives in that old house by the sea. Same town, same everything else, she tells me. Except for Lia, the old Retriever. She died when I was somewhere in the forest. I didn't find out for months. They couldn't reach me. 'You miss her?' His hand runs through his long, greying hair. He blinks a few times. Short, sharp movements. 'I do. I found myself on the road way too young, and not even the old girl could keep me at home.' But then the howls came again and as our silence grew, I imagined him finally leaving this steaming forest and the road, and going home.