We were traveling along the Alcan through the Canadian Rockies and suddenly Pamela said "I have to ..." She put in John Denver's CD and went to the song "Rocky Mtn High". I think we played it five or six times. As I listen to the words I realized that it was describing me, except that it would be "born in the spring of his 67th birthday..." instead of 27th. "returning to a home where he'd never been." According to Annie, the song was self-descriptive for John Denver. I know it describes me and my first encounter with the Rockies and wilderness, and probably describes the great number of us who experience life in the mountain wilderness and never want to leave. It's why I now have a Montana driver's license and why 7 or 8 out of ten locals we meet up here came to visit and now call this home. I'm definitely home. Yes, I'm often many, many miles from help but I feel so alive, I'd rather die in the wilderness than spend what time I have left cooped up in a city or away from the wilderness and nature. There is absolutely nothing phoney about life in the wilderness. Life, in fact, is very tough for many of the people living in the wilds. Pamela and I recently read an autobiography about a man who spent his entire life off the grid in the wilderness above the 65th parallel. His one statement says a lot. He said that the worst thing that could happen to anyone was to feel so defeated that they would go to a city and take a whiteman's job. Nothing was worse than that. I guess I should be thankful that being hundreds of miles from the nearests city isn't for everyone. Otherwise we'd have an influx of people and we'd become like the eastern US - an overcrowded megaopolis. Even in the hills of Kentucky, Alabama or Arkansas you can't get away. After having my own 'Rocky Mtn High' I must admit to feeling clausterphobic when I get east of the Mississippi. When I got a pop-up trailer in 2012 I wrote a slogan above the door ... "Don't stop living before you die." I wrote it in Irish so people would have to ask me what it said. So many people really stop living when they have a mortgage, two or more cars, two or more children, a college loan and credit card debt. Whether or not you are a mountain wilderness recluse like me, don't let anyone or anything keep you from living life. Don't believe the capitalist who want you to think you have to work until you're half dead so that you can buy, buy, buy. That is so much BS that their eyes are brown. No matter what a good life means to you, don't let anyone tell you that you can't have it.
Don't stop living before you die. And if you're not living now, START.
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