More Than a Rock, 2nd Edition

49Living the Life

By a free way of living I mean the difficult process of finding out what your own feeling about the world is, disentangling it from other people’s feelings and ideas. In other words, this wanting to be what may truthfully be called an artist is the last thing in the world to worry about. You either are that thing or you are not.

—Paul Strand

Small storms meandered over the high desert as I made my way down a long unpaved road to a remote desert river. Occasional snow flurries gave way to a patch of blue sky, and whenever a long view presented itself, I stopped to watch as cloud shadows gracefully swept across the wild landscape. I was on my way to a little-known canyon to spend a few days camping in solitude. The plan, such ...