A Pilgrimage to Mt. Tam

I read <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/94769/9780143039600" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">the Dharma Bums</a> as an unsure, directionless 20-year-old. The book is Jack Kerouac’s lightly fictionalized account of his relationship with poet <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/94769/9781640094215" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Gary Snyder</a> and their outdoor escapades in the Sierras and throughout the Bay Area. Kerouac’s jubilant and endearingly naïve insights on outdoor adventure as a conduit for a meaningful, spiritually fulfilling life affected me profoundly. I ditched my pursuit of an English degree to study nature and geography. I aspired to join the Dharma Bum “rucksack revolution”: devoting my life to wandering mountains and forests and refusing to “subscribe to the general demand that [we] consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming.” <a href="https://medium.com/runners-life/a-pilgrimage-to-mt-tam-4615344d4333">Click Here</a>