In this personal monologue, Sachin Patel reflects on the lack of a formal rite of passage for boys transitioning into manhood in modern society. He recounts how he created an annual father‑son tradition of backcountry portaging in Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, timed around his son’s birthday. Over three days they canoe, hike, camp, sleep in hammocks, cook over fire, and deliberately disconnect from everyday life. Patel describes a progressive awakening: the first day engages the body, the second the mind, and the third the soul, suggesting that extended immersion in nature and community activates dormant parts of a person that the “matrix” of modern life keeps dormant. He emphasizes the profound, almost spiritual impact of this wilderness experience and its role in shaping a young man’s identity.
Chapters
One of the things that my son and I do every year now, because one thing that I feel is missing in our society is for men, you know, young boys turning into men to have a rite of passage. And we're, we're missing that, right? And I didn't have, I don't think I had that rite of passage formally from my parents, or certainly not my father. And I would assume, you know, everyone's doing their best, right? With whatever was handed down to them. And so I made it a tradition now that every summer around my son's birthday, we go in the backcountry. We do something called portaging, and portaging is where you canoe, hike, and camp. And we go to a very sacred land called Algonquin Provincial Park here in Ontario, and we spend 3 days like so connected with each other, disconnected from the rest of the world, and to just see the stars, to sleep in a hammock, to just be grounded and to be held by, by nature is, is such a powerful thing. When you're there and you're canoeing back to, you know, back to base camp, and then you have to drive off and, and go back, come back into the matrix. It's like, I don't wanna come back. And it's really powerful because, and I think that there's something to be said about how long people spend in nature. What am I doing here? So your body arrives, but The next day your mind kind of comprehends, okay, this is what we're doing. And then I feel like on day 3 is when our soul arrives. And that's right. I feel like there's an activation of like parts of us that are asleep in this traditional kind of matrix world that we live in. And when we spend time in nature and in community and, you know, you've gotta cook with a fire and so on and so forth, there's just a part of us that wakes up that we may have, for some people have never met that version of ourselves. It's just flipping those switches that have always been there, but we didn't have the right, you know, environment to, to activate that part of us.
