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8. LOVE YOURSELF
Like you’re the only you there is.
CHAPTER 9:
LOINCLOTH MAN
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are
not.
—André Gide; French author, Nobel Prize winner, fearless self-
explorer
Every May I go backpacking through the desert wilderness areas of southeast
Utah with two longtime friends of mine. It’s one of the most magnificent and
bizarre places I’ve ever been: giant, jagged, obscenely pink ridges of rock jut
out of the ground like huge slabs of raw meat; white, yellow, and purple towers
of sandstone stretch and twist into sculptures made of taffy; deep cracks in the
earth’s surface form cathedral-like slot canyons whose walls, smoothed over
from flash floods and sandstorms, change colors from moment to moment as
the sun’s rays shift through the narrow opening high above.
It’s like the moon. Only cooler.
We merrily trip through this alternate universe, picking up colorful rocks,
climbing around on boulders and arguing over which eagle or snake or
mountain goat should be awarded Creature of the Day. Because my friends are
such excellent navigators, we go deep into the wilderness areas, where there
are no trails and even fewer people. In the sixteen years we’ve been hiking out
there, we could practically count the people we’ve bumped into while
backpacking on one hand. Which was why I was so surprised, and dubious,
when my friend Tom, who’d gone ahead to find us a place to set up camp for
the night, reported that he’d seen someone. “I just met this really wild guy,” he
said when I caught up with him. “He was wearing nothing but a loincloth and a
headband. He was holding a spear, too. Said he’d been living in the canyon for
thirteen years.”
“Was he riding a magic dragon?”
“I’m serious.”
“So where is he?”
“He went off to check his squirrel trap. But he could come back.”
“Mmmm hmmmm.”
Tom is a lousy liar, and wherever he was taking this joke, he wasn’t getting
to the punch line fast enough, so I put down my pack and started assembling
my tent, only half listening to him. A few minutes into it, as I was bending
over to hammer in one of my stakes, I looked through my legs and saw a pair
of tanned feet in homemade sandals, strong, naked legs, and a dead squirrel
dangling by its tail from a fist. I stood up, spun around, and there he was,
Loincloth Man.
What Tom did not mention was that Loincloth Man was totally hot—he was
somewhere in his late thirties, had a ripped, lean, savagely tan bod and shaggy
brown hair with a matching beard. He fit the part perfectly—Modern Day
Tarzan, Slayer of Buffalo and Ladies Alike. Which, stunning as he was,
instantly made him a little bit suspect in my mind. That and the fact that his
loincloth was impeccably tailored and appeared to be made out of soft Italian
leather, not some ratty canyon rabbit. Would you mind handing that to me so I
can have a closer look at it, please? His whole deal was just a little too cliché.
Couldn’t he have just worn shorts? And was he really gonna eat that squirrel?
Still, we gathered around him like a baby pig at the state fair, awestruck by our
luck. This time there was no argument; we had clearly found our Creature of
the Day.
He was real friendly and answered all of our questions at a slow, deliberate
pace, explaining that this and several of the neighboring canyon systems were
where he made his home. He told us very matter-of-factly that he found
modern society unnecessarily complicated and misguided, so much so that he
preferred to live on only what nature provided him, storing his grain in the
winter and sleeping in a cave. The thing that struck me more than the fact that
he cut his hair with a sharp rock and probably wasn’t wearing any undies, was
that he was totally unapologetic. There we all were, shifting around, feeling
suddenly ridiculous in our expensive hiking boots and UV-protective clothing,
while he described how it took him weeks to whittle the bow and arrow he
used to kill the deer whose hides now serve as his bedspread.
“Good for him,” I thought as I watched him walk away, swinging his
squirrel like a purse. He wasn’t worrying about what he should be doing or
what he was missing out on or what some chick from L.A. thought of his fancy
crotch pelt. He was just happy being true to himself, in the moment, in the
middle of nowhere.
I wanna be like loincloth man.
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