Sam Paul - Why I Committed Suicide

I’ve got a good feeling; God has definitely blessed this journey.

“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”

Wow. I don’t know if my infantile writing skills can properly describe how incredible Yellowstone National Park (YNP) is. I’m not talking about the tourist attractions that everyone has heard of, although I saw those too. We arrived up in Wyoming about two days ago and drove straight into Yellowstone. The park takes up damn near a quarter of the state and I am VERY thankful to whichever forefather had the foresight to preserve this wonderland.

At first I have to admit I was disappointed because we drove and parked in the area around Old Faithful. There were so many fucking tourists around everywhere it might as well been a fire hydrant in the middle of a city with a big sign saying “Geyser Here”. By fucking tourists, I mean all the old RV people and yuppies in their neon jackets and luxury cars out seeing the sights. The people that they built the souvenir shops and the bathrooms and the motels and the power lines and all the fucking parking lots for! The same people and reasons that Mr. All-knowing Forefather Man set aside the land in the first fucking place to protect it from.

We took our own obligatory pictures of course. Sure enough, the damn thing erupted right on time. Go figure. Some skinny park ranger in a snappy green uniform gave a little speech before Old F. went off, shooting it’s spit and steam into the air quite impressively I might add. Thankfully, John S. had a tentative notion of what we should do and before I knew it we were visiting the ranger station and had a remote campsite appointed to us somewhere out in the wilderness. We got out camping gear together and started following a sidewalk that led to a creaky wooden system of docks spanning an incredible field of colorful hot springs. From the slippery planks we could see deep down into perfectly clear pools of water lined with colors in burnt red and sulphuric yellows. There were areas that bubbled clean white mud and areas that looked like they might be fun to sit around in and drink frozen-drinks with scantily clad women. The air was crisp and cool but the ground felt warm, moist, reassuring and alive as if an area of the Earth was talking to us spiritually. Or maybe passing gas.

When we reached the end of the dock there was a path on solid ground leading away in to the forest. Then the most amazing thing happened. We had walked less than a quarter mile and suddenly all the tourists and throngs of people were just…gone. There was nobody around but us. I learned and discovered that most people who visit YNP don’t venture past the roadside attractions to see where the beauty really lives. A lot of things in life are set up to be shallow like that. Seems I had no right to be angry with the tourists after all—they stay where they are designed to stay—preserving the soul of the land. The map says there are five main areas of attraction, by emphasizing and exposing certain places in the park the rest of it can be preserved. What a beautiful fucking paradigm. Cutting off the foot to save the body.

Ansel Adams got rich capturing the raw spiritual energy of places like this. He was paid well by people who never knew they were hypocrites working toward destruction while hanging their black and white scenery in office buildings in a desperate subconscious last line of spiritual self-defense. He captured spectacular images that need no gimmicks or enhancements to be appreciated.

There was a forest fire here about 4 years ago, I remember seeing it burn on the news and hearing about how it was a tragedy, blah blah blah. Most people don’t know that deep forest needs to burn every so often to get rid of the excess dead wood, open the pine cone seeds and let the ecosystem experience a rebirth. The trail we were on led straight through a vast area of trees that now only resemble charred matchsticks poking out of the ground. The area we went though was severely burned and seemed to encompass everything as far as we could see, yet I knew I was only seeing a small fraction of the overall damage. Having the dead birch trees all around us was very surreal and spooky, so we stopped for a minute to smoke a bowl. I noticed then that the floor of the forest was a canvas of new plush green grass and flowers. The contrasts were so interesting that I took a lot of pictures here, including one with John B. and I pretending to eat a HUGE mushroom we found growing out of a burnt stump near where we were resting.

After the trail brought us out of the burnt trees we hiked through an endless area of old growth which seemed all the more beautiful because of the devastation we left behind. I don’t think I can describe to someone who has never seen anything like this, how overwhelming it all is. I got the impression we could walk for years and never find anybody else. It gave me a twinge of a notion about how desperate or hardcore the early pioneers and explorers must have been to try and conquer a whole continent of this land. At one point we were walking by a pond and there was a huge moose standing there nonchalantly, just watching us hike by. It was straight out of National fucking Geographic. In my mind when I think moose I think Bullwinkle or a large cow creature, but this was a giant beast so large it had limbs from trees taking up residence and growing moss in its antlers. Awesome.

After hiking around all day we finally found our site in a valley and set up camp. We drank our water out of a stream nearby then cooked and hungrily devoured some vegetarian chili—pretty good actually—and smoked the biggest fucking hydro hooter I’ve ever smoked. Between that, the hike and the pint of cheap whiskey I brought along, we slept like the dead. That moose could have walked into our camp dancing and singing and I wouldn’t have noticed.

The next day I got up early, drank deeply from the mountain runoff, breathed the fresh clean air, and just like the Pope I took a shit in the woods. It had been a few days thanks to the road food, time constraints and lack of facilities so it felt good to get the rocks out of my belly, be back in touch with my primitive side, get back to nature and all that business. John S. brought this cool soap, Dr. Bron-ner’s 13 in 1, you can use it for soap or toothpaste or laundry detergent, among other things, and it’s all natural so it was ok to use in the (really) cold water to bathe some of the smoke and travel dirt from our bodies.

Eventually we headed back down the trail leading to civilization after we cleaned up all the trash and mess we created. Real campers pack out what they pack in, it would just be a desecration to leave trash or alter the campsite in any way. I was really sore from yesterdays trek and I thought Mike the Viking was going to pass out he was breathing so hard. We really did hike a long ways out in the wilderness. I felt like a conquering hero returning home when we finally were out of the woods and back at the van, all haggard and beat up from some battle. I don’t know, I suppose it’s the way I feel after a long day of manual labor, like I’ve accomplished something. Not necessarily something significant to anyone else in the world, but something.

We were all smellier and gamier than ever, I needed a breath mint for my armpit, if you know what I mean. On the way out of the park there was a back up on the road thanks to a line of cars that had stopped to take pictures of some wildlife, another roadside attraction but this time it just made me smile. I imagined a lonely animal with an insecure ego stepping out of the woods at a certain time everyday and letting people fawn over it. We stopped and had a late breakfast in a great roadside diner with a giant cow skin couch that we had a lady take our picture on. After a quick poor mans shower in the bathroom sink I felt closer to human again.