In the early days of February, just before my senior year, I was prompted by my father to undertake a right of passage as he called it.

I was to be left alone to fend for myself in a section of Tennessee's Cherokee National Forest for three days and two nights.

I was against the trip from the beginning.

Sure, I liked hunting and camping but this was extreme, too extreme for my

tastes, but it was a tradition passed down from father to son in my family for generations.

Who was I to break tradition?

So against my reservations and against the feeling that this was a stupid idea, I packed on my backpack, grabbed my

30-06 bolt-action rifle and climbed into the cab of my dad's pickup. It was a

long drive, broken only by stilted attempts at conversation and the heater going full blast as the tyres rolled past endless concrete.

I was a little ticked off that my dad was basically forcing this on me and our own easy silence

only made the hours feel like days.

We only stopped once at a gas station about 10 miles from our cabin. The stench of unledded and a cheap, convenient store

hamburger will be the last remnants of civilization I'd see for the next three days.

I mechanically swallowed my burger and sloped down the

watery coke filled with too much ice as we turned off the highway and got on

the rural back roads. It was 15 miles of dirt to my dad's cabin that his grandfather had left

him, which would in turn be left to me. It was tradition after all, but I wouldn't be into the luxury of a cabin.

No.

We were parking the truck and my father was driving me up deeper into the woods

on a four-wheeler to a random undisclosed point. I would then have three days to find my way back.

If I succeeded, I'd become a man in my dad's eyes and would also be getting a new swimming pool for the summer.

It was bribery, but I would be going into my senior year in August and having a big pool would cement my popularity.

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