I am human; an amalgamation of admirable and disappointing traits with simple drives, but complex actions. My vices have patterns, my virtues are inconsistent. I am you and everyone else, just at a different angle, at a different time, brewed in different circumstances with different choices made.

All my life I've had this fear that I'll be hit by a bus one day and be lying in the gutter, the last of life leaking from me, thinking, Dang. I never found out how the stars were formed. Or how old the Earth is. I've been here all my life in the most advanced civilization in the world, and I still don't know what makes my muscles work. How far away is Mars, anyway? Are whales really horses that returned to the sea long ago? And why wasn't I paying attention when that big, brightly painted bus came barreling down the road? Where was my mind when I needed it most?

Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and you lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still here.

So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for awhile and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space.

Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards.

There are two things I wont tolerate. Whining, and the words "I can't". Suck it up, keep on marching, and find a way.