People like Dugout Dick fascinate me. After coming home from WW2’s Pacific theater this gentleman basically lived on his own, with only the occasional guest, in spartan-like living arrangements carved out of Idaho’s Salmon River bank for sixty years. This past week I returned from a week long backpacking trip to Tennessee’s Smokey Mountains in which I too lived in reduced living conditions, a two man tent. One week was enough, Nature +1, Ben 0. The reason for this post is that I admire Dugout Dick as a robust life from a different time, almost mythic, like Paul Bunyan, for Dugout D figured out how to make yogurt from within his cave; this, in my book, qualifies as a semi mythic feat. I also appreciate how he enjoyed his simple existence of endlessly quoting the Bible from his little hole in the wall, and how, despite these simple ways ended up in a National Geographic, a book or two, and a couple words dedicated on TRM…
Man in Cave – Manchild in Tent
On May - 31 - 2010
