Why the fuck did I decide to move into a tent in West Virginia for 3 months?
***Originally Published May 21st, 2023
The short answer is: to seek discomfort, reconnect with nature, eliminate distractions, reduce my dependence on modern comforts, face new challenges, meet new people, and live rent free.
The longer answer is as follows…
“If I had stepped there with my leg the spirit of the creek would have been unforgiving, unempathetic, and unrelenting”
If you have never experienced the aliveness and spirit of the natural world, adversity is one of the best ways to feel its power. Especially alone.
It was called the Red Creek after (what I assume) the clay riverbottom staining the shallow banks a rusted blood.
I arrived at the tail end of a rainstorm, so waters rushed menacingly along rocks littering the potential paths across. The trail I was backpacking ran straight through and there was no avoiding a crossing.
With my shoes and socks safely strapped to my 35lb pack, and a water level just up to my hips, I grabbed a 4ft branch about half the thickness of my wrist for traversal.
The stick was not just a third point of contact for stability, but a depth checker.
And I had to strike firmly with it else the current pushed me and the stick to the side–along with my teetering pack.
So I went along slamming down my staff and using my bare toes to clutch small purchases and stay firm on slippery surfaces.
I threw my staff down expecting hard pressure to balance off as usual, but instead was pulled forward by the pressure of rushing water.
I had reached under the opening of a rock that appeared larger from above than it really was underwater.
I stumbled but recovered quickly. Then paused to observe my fear.
If I had stepped there with my leg the spirit of the creek would have been unforgiving, unempathetic, and unrelenting.
I say spirit because I fought and survived against a Creek God (a small one, admittedly).
That was the first time I went backpacking alone, and more than anything I felt a sense of self-confidence, power, and assurance.
In this blog post I’m going to try to convince myself–I mean you the reader–why my decision to spend 3 months living out of a tent is more of a spiritual reclamation than a societal escape.
Although as you’ll see, it certainly is that too.
”I started to hate all of it. I didn’t want any of it.”
When I moved into my most recent, unfurnished, apartment, I had to buy a shower curtain so I wouldn’t get water everywhere when I showered.
I also had to buy bleach to clean the bathroom. And of course a toilet bowl cleaner.
Then a swiffer and broom for the floors, a vacuum for the rug, dishes to eat on, then furniture and a TV, how bout a microwave (you can’t LIVE without a microwave), I packed my fridge and pantry, got a couch and two desks, etc.
(I never got around to getting a bed frame though, which I’m proud of)
I only needed this thing because of that other thing. And that thing because of this other thing.
I started to hate all of it. I didn’t want any of it.
But I kind of needed all of it to live–at least I was told I needed it.
A common, sane solution to the over-consumption of many things is to think carefully about what you purchase and what you own.
I’ve heard the following advice a few different places:
Go over every object you own and hold it.
Does it bring you joy?
If it doesn’t, get rid of it.
I had trouble with this though: my broom doesn’t give me joy–I kinda hate sweeping.
But I didn’t want to leave my kitchen unsweeped either.
I’m not just frustrated at having too many nice things, but of having too many things.
So here is my more insane solution.
Eustice Conway: The Last American Man
Eustice grew up alone in the woods and learned from an early age that dreams are meant to be suffered for and achieved. He is rugged, individualistic, ambitious, tireless, idealistic but also practical; he is an adventurer who lives off the land and courts beautiful women he struggles to form lasting and loving relationships with…you get the picture—AMERICAN—but the older kind, still influenced by the land and its native inhabitants, as well as its new and energetic settlers.
Basically my idol.
Elizabeth Gilbert wrote a vulnerable and inspiring biography about this mountain man that for me, above all, speaks to the intensely spiritual and essential nature of…nature.
To Eustice, living in the woods was living in reality.
It was living among the cycle of life and death that governs us all, and actively engaging with it.
He was relentless in this.
He actually collected any roadkill he stumbled upon and utilized as much of its corpse as he could—from the meat down to the bones.
He wanted to treat the life of the animal that had died with utmost respect.
After all, he was going to die one day too.
So will I. So will you.
My modern lifestyle feels not only devoid of nature, but flat-out disrespectful of it.
The food I eat is imported, processed, and modified to resemble something entirely different. And even when I do eat whole foods my hands are hundreds if not thousands of miles from the dirt and the pain that grew it.
I go from my air conditioned house and couch and TV to my air-conditioned car to air-conditioned groceries stores with fully stocked shelves and all I see is pavement and cars and bricks and the few trees that are there are butchered to make room for more roads and it feels like hell sometimes.
This is a spiritual disaster.
I am suffering for it. I don't want to. I don’t feel that I need to.
A beginning?
Now, I can’t live like Eustice.
I don’t know how to break down an animal, build a hut, forage safely, find medicinal herbs, build a fire without flint and steel, sew my own teepee, etc.
But he has inspired me to at least live without TV, advertising, and all the other modern comforts and poisons I have been told are essential (but that 99% of our ancestors never had).
He has inspired me to live in the woods.
I still have a car, and a tent that I did not hand-sew, and a gas stove, and a cooler, and I go to grocery stores; but I feel like I’m a little closer at least.
It’s been two days and so far I’ve
Been woken early as shit by the birds.
Spilled soy sauce all over my food bag in my car and spent an hour cleaning it
Washed myself in the river I’m camping next to
Had a work call from my car in the Walmart parking lot hiding from the rain
Heard some wonderfully pretty West Virginian accents
Sat around the fire with a couple from Columbus, two guys on the tail end of a 2.5 month US road trip, and 3 girls on a post-grad east-coast road trip.
Is it possible to sustain this for a long time? Can I exist with one foot in the human world and one foot out?
Eustice did it for 17 years.
So I want to at least give it a good ol’ try.
Also I don’t have a job and can’t afford rent.
See ya next week,
Andy
