A Walk with the King (Excerpts)

Gabriel Heilig

Gabriel Heilig is a poet, editor, and speechwriter to federal and corporate executives. He and his wife recently developed a multimedia CD for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that will help 70,000 young people trained each year by Job Corps to be hired by businesses across the United States. A former Vietnam-era conscientious objector, he is the founder of Action Resumes, the only resume service with an office in the Pentagon. “A Walk with the King” first appeared in Wingspan: Journal of the Male Spirit, Spring, 1990, and later in the book, Wingspan: Inside the Men’s Movement (St. Martin’s Press, 1992).

Fincastle, Virginia, October 1989. Southeastern Regional Men's Conference. Silent hour. Time to encounter the void.

I walk up an old trail by myself. In five minutes I’m gone from the group of over a hundred men. I'm looking for a treehouse I was told about: some temporary north-star to orient the rowboat 'of my life.

As the trail leads me on, I feel my uncomfortableness with the forest’s silence, my anxiety at having no map, no agenda. Yet I’m also beginning to feel at ease with the silence, and hush of the woods. It smells good. The privacy is refreshing. For a suburban kid like myself, who grew up without much in the way of city street smarts or country wisdom, trails into the woods hold a sense of foreignness and fear. I keep expecting something to happen, something I won’t be able to handle.

Soon I find myself calling out. At first, the usual self-announcements. Banal stuff. My hellos to the trees. But as I do it a few more times, I begin to feel more comfortable with the sound of my own voice in the woods.

I begin shouting. I’m alone in that there are no other people, yet the woods are alive. I feel an ancient part of myself begin to reawaken. The hunter, reentering his forest kingdom. I start getting into it. I shout more.

Before long I’m bellowing. "I’M THE KING OF THIS FOREST." Wow! Where did that come from?

No one’s telling me to shut up, so I shout it out again. "I’M THE KING OF THIS FOREST.”

I listen to the echo of my own voice thundering unrestrained through the woods. Its tone has enough authority that I believe these words myself. I don’t know where this king’s been hiding, but he sounds real. My body feels fantastic as his presence rumbles through me.

I try it again — I’m into it now. No doubt about it: Kings definitely have more fun. I spot a sign: "Treehouse this way.” I head off the trail, bellowing out every few yards. This king... I like him . . .

I’m not a large-bodied man, yet standing on that ridge, about to descend toward the lodge, suddenly I feel like Paul Bunyan. There’s a flowing extension across my shoulders and a spacious warm feeling around my body. I feel like Ulysses home from the wine-dark seas or a hunter back from the hunt. ^

I feel GOOD.

I stride into the hall where dinner’s already being served. Suddenly, I feel an animal wildness filling me. Suddenly, this gathering of men and the work of the past few days seem tame and forced, like we’re trying too hard, trying to get underneath opr trying. Yet for this brief moment. I’ve gotten beneath it. I feel filled with something primed: animal, ancient and unmistakably male.

I make my way to the food tables. I don’t want any silverware. I just want the food—and I don’t want to be nice about it, either. I grab a plate, pile some food on it and sit down. The man next to me tries not to look too startled as I bury my face straight down into the chow.

I munch away happily, like a famished horse. Who cares what I look like? I’ve been waiting forty-six years to feel like this, unthinking of what others think of me . . .

Thinking back on my walk with the king, I know that for a moment’s brilliant grace I released myself, initiating myself somehow on my own male ground. Some buried part of me rose up and claimed me. The tone in my voice touched it. My words carried it out of me, bucket by bucket, feeling by feeling. And the woods held me in it, a spacious container.

Whatever did it, whoever was down there waiting for me—God bless you, you furious old soliloquizing bull-king sergeant-major. You can sign me up.