It is raining outside. The drip-clatter-drip of water falling from the eaves. The coolness of summer-night. The breeze musty yet fresh.

Inside, the lights are on. Computer fan hum. Basketball fans cheer from the television. Gurgling of a fish tank.

I look toward the window and see longing reflected in my eyes. Longing to be out there. Longing to be among trees. Longing to lie listening to damp earth beneath my body. Longing to touch the wet wind. Longing to trade the world of ninety degree corners for the upward curve of pine trunks supporting empty air.

I am homesick.

I turn from the window and contemplate the monitor in front of me. Phosphor dots glow back. I reach out to touch it momentarily. Flat, room temperature glass greets me. No depth. So many of our inventions are flat, two-dimensional. Ideas as well as objects. We spend so much time trying to simplify things, reduce them to small, understandable pieces of the whole, when it is the intricacy and juxtapositions that make life beautiful.

I tip my head back. Scrunching a little, I rest my head on the back of my chair. My nostrils twitch, seeking the phantom scents of the outdoors in the house's sterile interior. The ceiling is a textured continent of sharp ridge lines and sweeping valleys. No houses, no people, no trace of man mars its surface. A lonely continent.

Why don't I return to the woods now? Why did I ever leave them? Humans don't live in the woods.