Wilderness Pill

Wilderness Pill

As a child, I always assumed I would make an excellent fur trapper. Despite having only gone canoeing a handful of times, I was totally confident that I could traverse the Great Lakes in a birch bark boat surviving on a diet of squirrel and perch. For political reasons, I have mostly given up on my 18h century agrarian dreams. Still, I feel one of the great things about being an American is the ability to say fuck it, pull up stakes, and head Up North (or to the hills or out in the desert) and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist.

Seriously, I love Ed Abbey and Dave Foreman and I truly believe that the one inalienable right endowed upon us by the creator is the right to live life as a recluse. Recently a friend exercised this right. He said fuck it and swallowed the wilderness pill. He quit his job at a major university, sold or gave away most of his possessions, and moved to the Eastern Sierra. Today, he lives in a tiny town surrounded by massive mountains.

As he was leaving town, my friend gave me his acoustic guitar. The strings are rusty from lack of use and they rub your fingers raw when you play it. Still, every time I pick it up I imagine my friend wandering the High Sierra, hiking up to the crest and looking west, and wondering how different it is from what John Muir saw.
 
Order the Wilderness Pill EP from Suburban Sprawl Music.