Conceived in a Volkswagen van near Burlington, Vermont. Parents on their way to (or from) a rock festival. Newport, perhaps? Details, a little sparse, but here's what I have:

- Born in 1971.

- Mom a blacksmith and sculptor.

- Dad a rascal. A sound technician. Went on the road with Lighthouse and never came back.

- Mom had addiction issues. She never came back.

"Liberating," was how Layla put it the day we walked away from the tree planting camp.

She was lucky, she said, to have been adopted by her grandmother and finished high school before her grandmother died. Layla was majoring in Social Anthropology at Guelph when we met but was considering changing her major to Environmental Science. Or Political Science. There is this page from her High School yearbook that Jill gave to me. That's Layla on the end, her brown hair, long and straight and pools on her shoulder like a waterfall, her eyes staring elsewhere. Then there is this one, the picture that was in the newspaper. Shows her smiling at something beyond the camera. It was taken just before she joined the planting team, by someone in Guelph. Nicole told me I need to get rid of these pictures, that collecting photos and maps and memories were keeping me from moving forward. I need to let it go, Nicole said.

So I put all these papers in this file cabinet and locked them away in the spare bedroom and hardly ever look at them. Nicole's files-household finances, tax returns, birth records-are in Jenny's room. Nicole tells me that someone will be by soon to collect her the rest of her things.

"You only knew her for a few weeks, and that was ages ago," Nicole said one night. "It's not like you two were anything more than friends, right? Did you even get to really know her?"

Most of what I know about Layla was from what she told me the day we walked the long, dusty gravel road towards a fishing lodge on Opasetika Lake. We talked a lot that day. Layla had this thing, the way she moved when she spoke. She would half-raise her hand like she was holding a glass or about to wave and slightly cock her head to the left when she said certain words. It wasn't for emphasis as much as from excitement, like the spirit of the idea took hold of her, and her body responded with a shake, a quiver. Years later I saw a woman with the exact same movements. Nicole and I were on our way into the old Carleton Theatre in Toronto and as we turned towards the box office I saw the back of a woman who had come out of the movie talking to the man she was with. She had the exact same movements as Layla when she gestured to him, the head tilt, the way she leaned into him and placed her hand on his upper arm, like she once did to me. I felt the blood rush through my body, to my face. I stared at the woman, certain it was her. Then she disappeared into the Toronto night. Layla's hair was longer when I knew her, back in Kapuskasing, back when she told me about how she planned to join the Resistance, how her covert mission as a tree-planter was the confirmation she sought, how the North was lost. "The fight needs to move south, to where the hands of the companies and the saws of the foresters haven't yet carved through the land and its people. Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia. My work here is done."

We lay in her tent that morning, told the guys who came for us to go away. Once the crews had left on the old school bus to the plant site, I snuck into the kitchen trailer, grabbed some muffins, bottled water, a loaf of white bread, a few other things, stuffed them into my pack. Layla brought her camera and a blanket. And we started to walk. It was important, she said, that we hide in the bush whenever we heard a vehicle rumbling down the gravel road. A planting company truck would make us get in, try to offer us a ride to Kapuskasing, but would really drive us back to the planting camp, tell us we had no choice, that we would die in the woods otherwise. Then she ran up the road, like a child, looking back and yelling, "Come on, pussy!"

Swarmed by horseflies, we walked down the dirt road. We would just see what happens, where we would end up, the two of us.

"What about India? I hear there is a lake in the North where everyone lives on houseboats." Or, "I can always work as a waitress-don't laugh-I clean up pretty good. Just long enough to get enough money to get to South America."

Then the earth would shake and dust would rise above the tangle of poplar and alder bushes that had, after the last cut, grown to replace the pine forest. We would dart into the bushes and wait as a tandem logging truck would blast past, gravel would rain on us like shrapnel, dust would settle, and we would emerge, coughing, back to the roadway, and the deer flies and horse flies would circle us again. We walked east, away from the camp and the planting, toward the main haul road north to Kapuskasing. Layla said there was a fishing lodge at Opasetika Lake and they might help us, maybe let us work there for a while or give us a ride to the highway. That was as far as our plans went.

You get to know a place by walking it. That's why I'm so knowledgeable about the geography of Northern Ontario. The first-hand experience makes me a good teacher. I describe to the kids the grit of the soil, needles and sticks, how protrusions of metamorphic rock give shape to the hills, have even sung the call of the white-throated sparrow for them. My students can imagine how the moss and blueberry bushes might become a mattress where two travellers, weary and lost, could possibly bed down for the night. The kids in the South have no idea of what that world is like. Everything here is paved and subdivided and settled. What isn't paved is protected.

That night in the North there was no protection. We were huddled together under Layla's blanket, shivering as the evening dampness seeped into our aches, our bodies absorbing the chilling moisture rising from the earth. The mosquitoes, summoned to our respirations, circled, landed, drew from our skin the blood meal for their children. We swatted and scratched.

Just after dark, with Layla asleep beside me ending what had been the most exciting and invigourating day of my life, I began to question the wisdom of our mission. Not our life together-that I didn't question-rather how would I, with no sleep and no food, be able to find the energy to walk for another day? Would Layla's dream of the two of us saving the forests, freeing the oppressed, changing the world, would those ideas be fuel enough? And, what would happen if we didn't reach the fishing camp? What if we were heading down a different path? In a full day of walking we had passed a number of intersecting roads and trails, each time flippantly guessing which one we should follow as if fate was our guide. Each road seeming to take us further into the wild. Awake at night, everything seemed worse. Shivering and swatting, poked by rock and root, I tossed the bleak options through my mind. We would, I concluded, need to find a way out of the forest the next day. We needed help. We could not survive another night in the bush. Layla slept against me like a child.

Dawn on the Canadian Shield and a heavy dew settled on everything. I gathered together some twigs and spruce needles and tried to light a fire but the wood was too wet to keep burning. A cloud of steamy smoke choked Layla awake.

"Put that out. They'll find us."

I did, then sat on the wet moss beside her.

"I don't think we can do this Layla, I can't see us making out of the bush."

She didn't look at me. Her head was down, fingers tracing a line through the moss and dirt as though drawing a map.

"We need to be realistic about this," I said.

The forest was coming alive, the birds awake in song, the sparrow singing again, and behind it, the mosquito's drone. Layla stood and brushed the dirt from her pants. She retied her hair and tightened her bandana to cover most of her head, like a samurai warrior. Layla searched around for her cigarettes and seeing the empty pack of Players, kicked the dirt. I looked out to the road.

"I thought you were stronger than this Donny. Will you give up this easily?"

"I am strong. But I'm smart too. I don't think us starving to death will do much to help the tribes of Ecuador."

"You're a pussy." The words dug deep because she was right. I wanted to tell her we had no water, no food, were lost, my feet blistering, but those complaints seemed insignificant next to Layla, standing proud in judgment.

"There are other ways to make a difference, you know." I stuttered between pauses hanging heavy in the morning mist. Through the trees, the road was turning orange with the light of a new day. "I was thinking about becoming a teacher."

Layla stood in the dark hollow beneath the spruce tree that had been our home for the night, where she slept. She answered, "A school teacher. Right."

"I could show students what is really going on, challenge them to act, to do something good. Think about your high school, there must have been teachers who inspired you, who made a difference."

"A bunch of old bitches and creepy bastards who spent the day planning their retirement investments while we copied notes from the blackboard. Inspiration? Right. They showed me the school system is just as corrupt as the everything else.

I was quiet for a moment, then mumbled, more to myself than Layla, "Well, I'll be different."

Then we heard the distant rumble. A vehicle, not a logging truck, was on our road, coming toward our hiding spot, the first traffic in over twelve hours.

"Hurry Layla. We've got to get a ride." I reached for her hand but she pulled back and sat on the ground. She looked down, sulking.

"Come on, let's go!" She didn't move.

I looked to the road knowing if I didn't act quickly, the truck would pass. It was our last chance to be rescued. Our way out. "Please Layla, let's go."

The truck was loud now. I could hear gravel being thrown into the trees, see the glare of the morning sun on the hood of a charging pickup truck. I looked back to Layla. She was sitting, legs pulled up, arms wrapped below her knees.

I swore then began to push my way through the tangle of alders to the road, emerging just as a white half-ton blew past me. It was unlikely the driver saw me step out of the bush on his passenger's side. I waved my arms and shouted, then realizing the morning dew was keeping the road dust down, I jumped to the centre of the road, flaying my arms, yelling and running after the fading truck in a vain attempt to be noticed. I ran in desperation, I ran in fear of spending another night out here.

As the truck rounded a bend, far ahead, I saw the red glow of a brake light before it disappeared behind trees. I stopped and listened. Between thumps from my heart and the gasps of my breathing, I heard the sound of crunching gravel come to a stop. Then, the lights of the reversing pickup. I ran to towards it, making sure the driver knew I needed help.

Rick Fortin-middle-aged, work shirt, ball cap, lunch cooler on the front seat, the owner of the fishing lodge on Opasetika Lake. He lowered the window and leaned towards me. Panting, I explained how the two of us needed a ride. Anywhere. Town, highway, planting camp.

"Where's your friend?" Rick asked.

I looked back down the road to where Layla should have emerged from the forest, but there was only the wild road. "In the bush a bit, getting our things." I jogged back to where I thought we had spent the night, calling out, "Lay-ay-la"

No answer.

"Come on Layla. We have a ride. The guy from the fishing camp. Let's go!"

Birds whistled, crows laughed.

"Shit, Layla." I entered the bush, crouching my way through the thick underbrush to where the forest opened enough to stand. It wasn't the same place. I walked, keeping what I guessed was the same distance from the road as where we had made our bed. Still no sign of Layla or the place where we slept.

The driver blasted his truck horn. "Hey, are you coming?" A second blast. "I got a lot to do today." A third. "Gotta get going."

"Just one sec." I wished hard, hoping to find Layla squatting behind a bush peeing or doing something that kept her from answering, from being found. But I knew better. I knew I wouldn't find her as long as the truck was there, engine running, the man waiting.

I have thought a lot about my decision. Over the years I have played back this morning in my mind, reconstructing the scene, imagining if there could have been any other possible outcome. I have looked at the scene from above, with a bird's view, where I could see the land below me like a map, imagining I had the power to see Layla running below, to sweep down and scoop her up. Or if the outfitter hadn't been in a hurry. If he had shut off the engine and helped me look for Layla. Or if, say, I told him to never mind, go on without us. Imagine if I stayed? I have invested a lot of time envisioning myself as a stronger person, a confident man. I play through in my mind every scenario and each possible result. If only. Had I. I wish. But I allowed myself to be shaped outside forces. The pressure from an impatient stranger, the weight of time, the heat of my fear, all squeezed and flattened and burned down on me until a decision was made for me. Like granite becoming gneiss, I like to think, I metamorphosed into my new existence. I felt the change happen, remember the exact moment just before I let go, how I gave one last look around in a final attempt to hold on to Layla. I scrambled. Faster, pushing away branches and sticks, a desperate and futile search for a footprint, a track, a sign. Through openings between trees, the sunlight lit the earth, the forest alive with the sounds of the new day.