I’m a guy in a Patagonia UV hoodie and I’ve never been indoors

If you’ve ever spent time at your local state park, your local body of water, or your local abandoned granite quarry-turned-climbing haven, then I’m sure you’ve seen me. I probably led a hiking group, a kayaking expedition, or secured a group of middle schoolers on one YMCA-sponsored after school trip. If so, then you saw me in my element because I’m wearing a Patagonia UV hoodie and have never been indoors.

I was born in the crisp fall air to a mushroom-picking father and a Reiki-healing mother. My parents chose to have an outdoor water birth and I was born in a holding tank on an organic farm where my parents spent the year WWOOF-ing.

Shortly after I was born, my parents embarked on a three-year RV trip along the entire Pan-American Highway from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Tierra del Fuego. At fourteen months old, I took my first steps on the summit of Machu Picchu and a year later climbed my first mountain in Patagonia (the region, not the store).

Growing up, I spent my days camping with my family, with my Boy Scout troop, or camping at summer camp. The Montessori school my parents sent me to was in a treehouse that my classmates and I built. This was our kindergarten class project. By ninth grade, we knew how to cut down a ponderosa pine and saw it into lumber using only hand tools.

After high school, I studied environmental science at one of those colleges in California where classes take place outside and all the professors wear dreadlocks. The only “building” was the deanery. And it wasn’t so much a building as a tent yurt.

Since then I have held various jobs. I was a park ranger in Zion, a whitewater rafting instructor on the Snake River, and a logger in West Virginia. Each time I lived in a tent right next to my workplace. I refuse any work that requires a commute of more than twenty steps.

The closest I came to living indoors was when I spent six months on a sailboat while teaching scuba diving in the Keys. But that doesn’t count. Because on a boat a door is called a “hatch”.

I’ve been with a lot of women, but my only long-term relationship is my hot, lifelong affair with Mother Nature. I love myself on the tops of fire towers, behind waterfalls and nowhere else. “Beds” are for gardens and rivers.

My hobbies include abseiling, lead climbing, solo climbing and caving. If there is a stone and a rope, I am there.

I’ve hiked the AT in hard mode: August in Georgia, December in Maine. You haven’t lived until you’ve tackled the Knife Edge Trail at the top of Katahdin when it’s 40 degrees cold.

I don’t go to the doctor because you don’t need medical care if you walk 60,000 steps a day.

I always know where north is, which native plants are edible, and where to find the nearest rock shelter in the event of a storm. Yes, I know what a “thunderstorm” is. Doesn’t everyone do that?

I grow my own weed. I make my own soap. I know the difference between the call of a Carolina wren and the call of a northern mockingbird imitating a Carolina wren.

I have never used a flush toilet.

The sound of the forest is my white noise machine. The only blanket I need is a blanket made of stars. The only pillow I need is moss.

I’ve never been inside. Unless you count my annual trip to Patagonia (in-store, not local) to buy UV hoodies.

Do you really think I’m the type to wear sunscreen?