It stands alone, like an obelisk. like the Washington Monument straight and strong, unwavering, it’s purpose clear. It knows what it must be and become, where it’s come from. The blood of a thousands reeks in its nose, the ideals of generations float in its memory like pages torn from a book that float free on a warm wind of conscience. It tastes the open mountain trails and fresh clean air. In the minds of teenagers it grows like a forest fire at a thousand degrees centigrade, burns in their minds and hearts to become something, someone, to be independent. They have their own battles and wars with authority, their own war of independence on the way to ‘becoming’. Through the desolation of shopping malls and underage drinking parties and riding in fast cars with the smell of burning rubber in their noses they think they are beginning to know it all, they know how the world operates, but like turning an oil tanker round in the Panama canal it’ll take a while to work that one out of them.

Is it all it’s cracked up to be? Leaving home, paying rent, getting a job, are your really free – no you just tether yourself to the chains that society demands to fill your place. Your keel gathers the barnacles of debt and obligation as you trawl through this sea looking for another who wants to lose their independence with you and you both become dependent on each other. All your clear mountain stream blue sky wilderness dreams are clamped down with nappies and schooling and mortgages and before you know it you are independent in an aged home……