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My quads were burning, and running out of strength. The light was fading, and I was deep in shadows at the bottom of a 500-foot canyon. The water was ice cold, and yearning to fell me like a wrestling competitor as I plodded one precarious step at a time through it. I had wanted this. I had hiked for hours by myself into the deepest part of The Narrows, at Zion national park, in Utah. You see: I live in Los Angeles, where everything is consumer-ready, everyone is fake-nice, and if you have to be on foot for more than 10 paces between your car and the inside of a building, you're really roughing it. Well, I wanted to really rough it. I had been on the road in the expansive American Southwest for days, pleasantly wandering hour-to-hour wherever impulse suggested. And so it was with great predictability (in other words: procrastination) that I turned my wheels into the visitor center at 2pm at Zion National park- well past the time any sensible person ought to head out into the vast expanse, given the winter day's early turn to night. But this is what I wanted, I thought to myself, as I began the trudge up through the river flowing against me every step. The slowing frequency of other exiting hikers I passed only reaffirmed that I was getting closer to what I sought: total, and utter peace. No technology, no man-made anything, and not another human in sight, much less for miles. I've long been the type to go it alone, to set out on a path different from everyone else, because, well- it's different. I chose a nontraditional career, and choose to live only day by day, much to the detriment of a consistent and comfortable financial and romantic life, and much to the worry of my mother. But it is this constant unknown and adventure which has made me feel continually alive in a world where everything has been rendered so easy and app-y, and immediate, which for me feels stifled and prepackaged. So I buck the trend, head in the opposite way, to find what I have been missing. But what if I didn't find it? I turned the corner around a massive sandstone column now fully bathed in shadow as the temperature of the air started falling closer to the temperature of the mountain water passing all around me. Ahead I could see only rock, and water, and way above, sky. I was finally the only animate object in this place. I stood still, accompanied only by the sound of rushing waist-deep water caressing past my waterproof pants. I had no steadying walking stick as all the other hikers had. I had not remotely any cell reception, were it even turned on. If anything happened to me here- a slip, a bad step and broken bone- it'd be days before help might happen across me. No one knew I was here, wherever here was, at that. Here was nowhere, and yet, everywhere- a random spot, but a universal place where stripped of our modern lives and worries, we are essential, fragile, and human. The same essence, fragility and humanness that is with us always, if not buried by the temptations and gratification of the modern age. Must we venture to the places beyond, to be so reminded of that? Absolutely. Set forth.