Clad in a homemade loin cloth of bandannas

 

    

Just finished this read. Got back from a day at a theme park - and couldn't wait to resume the real fun - reading, sipping, and just basically living the 94 year old dream. While I was fussing about crowds, cold, traffic, lines - I couldn't help but bemoan my lack of resiliency. 

Eustace Conway has resiliency. I think of him bounding down the Appalachian trail clad in a homemade loin cloth of bandannas, bearing little but a knife.

Elizabeth Gilbert (I've been a fan since I read her more famous book Eat, Pray, Love - round about 2009 I think.) She's a masterful writer and I love her candid, warm, humorous nonfiction writing style. Plus she's brilliant. She lays out the facts with just enough detail but cuts through to a psychological depth that your average biographer might miss alltogether.

I am riveted by Eustace Conway's force of personality and his visionary quest to save humanity from an apathetic suburban comatose existence. I'm fascinated by his adventures, romances, and Type A mountain man life on his farm and preserve "Turtle Island." I'm enthralled with the way a man can tirelessly pursue the approval of a distant father who bestows his first kind word on his son when son reaches age 39. There's a clash of being one with nature, the force of a driven visionary who longs for his own wood chinked walk in closet, and awaits the perfect woman who will embody pluck, nurture, and backbreaking labor. I feel for someone who puts so much pressure on himself and others as if driven by some sort of primeval force that cannot be resisted nor restrained. 

There's something about the collision of the seventies with a profoundly American heritage that promoted the concept of a puritanical holy grail pursuit of becoming a "man of destiny" that forged this unique personality. A guy clad in homemade buckskin attends college - exiting his homemade tepee each day to attend class. The dude rides cross country on horseback - coast to coast. I love the description of his mystical relationship with horses. 

I love Liz's interview with horseman CuChullaine O'Reilly - extolling the uniqueness of Eustace who has the three key characteristics of a brilliance endurance rider: "courage, resolve, and romance." He goes on to say that Eustace lacks (at that point - 20+ years ago y'all) his own spiritual journeying which would pull him away from the posturing and showmanship to something really heroic.

Eustace is featured in the 2012 Mountain Men show - I've added it to my list...