Hostile Natives

What consoles me in the furnace*of my isolation is the notion I that I am not a rebel/malcontent/misanthrope, but a weary traveler passing through hostile territory such as the original prairie schooner captains were when the Apache war cry made them fear the mornings. A case could be made that the difference between the two is naught in the eyes of the Comanche, but to my dreaming mind lost in obscurity and regret, the difference is substantial. The police may raid camp Oggy in the morning and I might be unsettled by the ramifications of this, but is it a slight on my morality, should shame accompany my convictions?
If we examine the oxen owning migrant from Tennessee in 1820, weathering dust and scorn, hunger and deprivation, animals dying in the heat and children withering like poisoned corn...is he much different? I am adrift and lost and wandering and have grey on my chin and white on my chest and my sleep is often interrupted by the owl of my memory questioning my past. Could I have said something different to make change the direction of the dry creek of romance? Probably not, I tell myself, and it's all irrelevant anyway. Marriage would not make me happier, but my misery would be more predictable.

*It's 114 degrees in my van.