It is in vain to dream of a wilderness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brain and bowels, the primitive vigour of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. -- Henry David Thoreau

Iwatched a young woman with no legs wheel herself down the aisle. Just as she was about to pass me, she glanced over her shoulder and changed direction, all in one motion.

She stopped her wheelchair at the other side of the table I sat behind. We were at eye level, separated only by some books.

She picked one up from the table and asked me, "Did you write this?"

"Yes," I answered.

"What's it about?" She asked. I said. "It's about the wilderness."

She cut me off before I could go on: "I've never been in the woods. I probably wouldn't like this book."

I replied by saying, "You know, for me the books that I've enjoyed the most were ones that took me to a place that I had never been and showed me a world I knew nothing about. This book can do that for you. It will take you to the woods."

Without hesitation, she smiled and said, "I'll take one."

I thanked her and said, "Would you like me to sign it?"

"Yes, please," she answered.

Above my signature I wrote these words, as I often have: "We walk a fine line between inside and outside the wild."

She left with her book on her lap and I never saw her again.

Although our visit was short and our words few, I kept wondering about what she had told me. She said she had never been to the woods.

A wheelchair is a wilderness of its own. So is life. Even your mind is a wilderness. But people prefer to keep within self-imposed limits. They won't go down just any road or off it. Their thoughts are confined to wheelchairs. They think about the same things every day. Their spirit has been bent and broken by the civilized world.

The wilderness does not begin somewhere beyond the treeline. Just look out your window. That spider web across the top corner is a wilderness. So is your front lawn to the worms that live beneath it and the robins that hunt there. Your neighbourhood is a wilderness for cats that prey on birds and mice. Some Kingston streets are hunting grounds for fishers and coyotes that prowl at night for cats and dogs.

Many people fear the woods and the strange sounds, dark shadows and hidden dangers inside them. The woods feel like home to me, but there are many wild places I'd be afraid to go to. I'd never set foot in a crack house or want to spend time in prison. There are whole countries I wouldn't go anywhere near -- Afghanistan, for one.

But the wilderness is not just a place. The wilderness is anything you cannot control.

Do you honestly believe that you can control anything at all in this world?

We think we can control our emotions by our ability to reason, but we still have crack houses and prisons and places like Afghanistan. We're no different than wild animals driven by hunger and instinct.

Uncertainty is the beauty of life. It's the only thing you can be certain of other than death.

Death is another wilderness we have no control over. Once you get there you can never leave.

I hope the woman in the wheelchair discovers something in that book besides the woods. I hope she finds that some part of her is still connected to the natural world inside the woods.

I should have signed her book differently that day.

I should have written: We are the wilderness.

L. W. Oakley is a Kingston freelance writer and author of Inside The Wild, which is available at www.gsph.com.