The Dirtbag Revolution

Tune in and drop out to stop the war machine.

May 22nd, 2025

I used to make peaceful hiking videos. I still have 200gb of videos I shot along the Long Trail and the end of the Appalachian Trail last year that I haven’t released. I thought I’d have time this year to work on those videos. My plan after completing the Appalachian Trail last fall was to head to Southeast Asia where I would work on my book about the Calendar Year Triple Crown and put out a bunch of hiking related videos. Then I’d come back and hike the Pacific Crest Trail for the second time to complete my double-triple-crown.

I remember standing on the summit of Mt. Katahdin last September. It was a beautiful, perfect day. Blue skies and wispy white clouds stretched over hundreds of small lakes that dotted the northern Maine landscape. The leaves had just started to turn and the forest 5,000ft below was flecked with gold and red. The rest of the group had woken up at 3am in order to catch the sunrise from the peak of Mt. Katahdin. I didn’t get out of my sleeping bag until the sun was up. My friends were still at the summit when I arrived, cuddled in their sleeping bags looking sleepy but triumphant. I still hold a small piece of regret for not waking up with them that morning. The pain of that early wakeup would have long faded but the memory of the sunrise and the joy of watching my friends complete their thru-hikes would have stayed with me.

This was my third time to the summit of Katahdin and my third time finishing the Appalachian Trail. This time to add a layer of challenge to make the hike from Georgia to Maine more interesting I attempted to hike the whole trail for under $1,000. I bought cheap gear, mostly from China, and even sewed my own sleeping bag, sweater, and fanny pack(with a lot of help from my mom).

The gear held up surprisingly well. In total it cost $383 and weighed in at 10lbs. Turns out a fancy logo doesn’t actually add hundreds of dollars worth of real world utility to hiking gear.

I got exposed to poison ivy in Georgia, and I think I know exactly where this happened. I needed to poop really badly and normally you’d go off-trail anywhere, except in this section the whole forest floor was covered in poison ivy. I held it for as long as I could and continued down the trail but I could not find anywhere that was free of the green demon ivy and I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Three days later I saw the tell-tale rash developing on my legs. What made it worse is I must’ve gotten oil on my sleeping bag and sleeping pad, because the rash just kept getting worse. By the time I was in Hot Springs, NC(200 trail miles from Georgia) I had some truly horrific looking blisters on my legs.

I took a day off in Hot Springs and thoroughly washed all of my gear with soap and water and took a shower for the first time in a week. It cost $15 to camp and I spent $25 at the Dollar General on resupply and dinner. 4% of my budget, gone! My friend Pyro opted to sleep by the river in Hot Springs where unhoused people liked to camp out because he was truly on a shoestring budget, whereas I was just pretending to be broke for the challenge.

I first met Pyro on the PCT in 2022 and then again in New Zealand when we hiked parts of the Te Araroa together. He’d gone to New Zealand with the intent to work and hike but ended up only hiking and not working at all. After six months in NZ and running low on cash he decided to come back to the US where he’d be able to make better money. But when he heard I was doing this challenge and realized he had about $1,000 left in his bank account he put off getting a job for a few more months. Pyro has the right priorities in life.

Pyro being Pyro in New Zealand

60 cent also joined for the budget AT hike. I met him on the PCT the same time as I met Pyro. 60 cent was 18 and had just graduated high school the week before he set out on trail. One of his resupplies consisted entirely of 60 cent frozen burritos. I met him around mile 400 and he already looked impoverished from his starvation rations. He’d make it almost all the way through the PCT before wildfires forced him off trail. 60 had more money this time around, he’d been working as a welder but he wanted to hike cheap and stretch his funds out and adventure for as long as they’d allow.

With clean clothes and moderately confident that I’d washed away all the poison ivy I left the Laughing Heart Hostel in Hot Springs. On my way out of town I came across a hiker box in-front of the one gear shop in town. Inside were a pair of old, gross, goretex size 13 trail runners. I was ecstatic! You’d have thought I’d found gold in that box, and not a pair of dirty used shoes. I estimated that if I wore these hiker-box shoes I could hike almost half of the trail without needing to buy replacement shoes.

That night I caught up with the rest of the crew at the shelter above Hot Springs after climbing 6,000ft in total elevation for the day and excitedly showed them my loot. “Woah cool find dude!”

We hiked through Damascus, VA where we used the Subway app to take advantage of the BOGO footlong sub sandwich offer. I ate one foot-long that night and saved the other for breakfast and lunch the next day. Around that area we added another young hiker on a budget to our crew and would eventually give him the trail name D.A.R.E.

D.A.R.E. grew up in a conservative Christian household and was aghast when a hiker offered him drugs. Thus, his trail name. Drug awareness resistance and education. That program in school that taught us marijuana was “the gateway drug” and anyone who started smoking pot was bound to become a meth addict. D.A.R.E. taught us drug dealers were always lurking in the shadows just waiting to give you free drugs, because that’s how they get you. Free drugs and then you’re hooked for life. I’m 38 and still not one drug dealer has ever given me free drugs, what gives?

Speaking of drugs and Damascus I found a box of Zyn nicotine pouches in the hiker box in Damascus. I’d gotten addicted to chewing tobacco during the CYTC, using it to stay up late and give me a boost of dopamine when I was feeling bored. Dipping is a huge part of the culture of both the Army and firefighting, two professions where the workers manage their mental health with nicotine and alcohol rather than the therapy they so desperately need.

I’d avoided the temptation while I was in, but the tobacco demon finally caught me during the CYTC. I dipped through the end of the AT, all of the PCT, and most of the CDT. I started dipping to help myself stay awake during the 100 mile wilderness where I covered 100 miles in 48 hours with only a few hours of sleep. I managed to quit in New Mexico. And I was helped along either by my unconscious mind or more mysterious forces.

I’d bought cans of Copenhagen on two separate occasions leaving town in NM but somehow on both occasions the cans fell out of my fanny pack before I’d taken more than a few dips. The second time losing the dip was leaving Pie Town, NM and I was in the wilderness for five days. By the end of those five days of forced withdrawal my cravings were manageable enough that I stayed clean for the rest of the trail and thereafter.

Nicotine is a helluva addiction. Even writing this I’m getting urges to dip. I’d been clean on the AT thus far but I’d felt cravings everyday and had even bought fake, non-nicotine dip at a smoke shop in Franklin, NC in order to fight my cravings. I saw a can of Zyn nicotine pouches in the hiker box in Damascus and the temptation was too much.

It was getting dark and I wanted to feel a little buzz while we walked to camp. It’d been long enough that I’d forgotten what the doses were. “9mg, that’s pretty low.” I thought to myself as I popped two pouches into my mouth. Oh boy. 9mg is not a low dose. 9mg is the highest dose they offer in the Zyn pouches. And I’d taken two of them after not using nicotine for over a year. I almost immediately started to feel light headed. I spit out the packets and then sat down by the side of the trail and started to sweat uncontrollably. I felt like vomiting and passing out at the same time. My breaths came in short gasps. I’ve never had a panic attack or heart attack but I imagine this is what they feel like. Sitting by the side of the trail I legitimately felt like I was in the process of dying. I couldn’t lay down, when I tried I’d get overwhelmed with nausea as my whole world spun around me. I just sat like this, gasping for breath, occasionally sipping water until finally the nicotine was processed out of my system. Standing on shaky legs I slowly walked to where we’d decided to make camp.

The crew in Vermont. Pyro, D.A.R.E., Matcha, 60 Cent and I

“Yeah man, 9mg is a LOT of nicotine! Hah I bet you felt awful.” Those were the comforting words from 60 cent after I told the guys what had happened. I threw the can of Zyn away at the next town and haven’t touched nicotine since. The can of Zyn wouldn’t be the only thing from a hiker box that would poison me.

I’d swapped back to my old shoes in Damascus, tired of wearing the heavy and hot goretex hiker-box shoes. The hike-box shoes had gotten me two hundred miles and all I’d suffered was some minor discomfort, or so I thought. We hiked on into the Grayson Highlands and I started to feel lethargic, and developed a cramp in my left calf. By this point we’d all gotten our trail legs and were easily covering 25 to 30 miles a day. So I knew something was wrong when I needed to stop and take a rest after hiking just five miles.

I set-up my stove and boiled fresh reishi mushrooms I’d harvested earlier that morning. I’d begun to collect reishi and chicken of the woods to supplement my diet, another fun part of the budget challenge was that it forced me to be more creative with my food choices. Reishi is supposed to have healing properties and support the immune system. I boiled the reishi and ate it with a packet of ramen. After that break I managed to limp another 19 miles to Partnership Shelter arriving hours after the boys.

At the shelter I realized that I had a severe infection in my left foot. I’d cut my heel a week earlier and the wound kept getting reopened due to its location. It was clear that the cut was now badly infected and that was the cause of my lethargy and cramping. I would spend a mostly sleepless night in the shelter alternating between shivering and sweating. From my EMT training I knew that an infection with fever were symptoms of possible sepsis and I needed to seek medical treatment immediately.

Luckily, Partnership shelter is only a quarter mile from a road. I limped to the road in the early morning after telling the boys bye, “be good, I’m going to the hospital.” The infection had progressed rapidly overnight and my foot was now swollen and I could barely get my shoe on. I was picked up by a prison guard on her way to start her shift. Marion, VA is home to a large federal prison. She was super nice and dropped me off right at the urgent care.

I’d arrived before they opened and was the first patient in the door. They accepted my ACA subsidised insurance and gave me two rounds of antibiotic shots along with ten days of strong oral antibiotics. Congress just passed a 1,000 page budget reconciliation bill after a 1am meeting, that bill will cut health insurance to more than 8 million people and it’s now moved to the GOP controlled senate which will almost certainly pass the bill. The health insurance situation is bad enough in the US and now it’s going to get even worse. How many people will die because they waited too long to get an infection treated, because they don’t have insurance and are afraid of the medical bills? This “big beautiful bill” as trump calls it is going to kill tens of thousands of Americans.

The day after I went to urgent care the streaking had moved from up into my thigh. I messaged Flyby about it, she’d been working as an EMT, and she told me I should goto the ER right away and be put on IV antibiotics. But, I knew an ER visit likely wouldn’t be covered and would be expensive so I decided to wait one more night. I am lucky that the infection started responding to the antibiotics the next day and the streaking began to go down. If my infection was resistant to the antibiotics or I’d waited a few more days before seeking treatment I very well could have lost my leg or even died. Simple infections were a leading cause of death in people of all ages before the invention of antibiotics.

I spent 10 days off trail recuperating at the home of my good friend Elgixin whom I’d met in New Hampshire in 2016. He’s a retired psychiatrist and has fabulous stories. He’s one of the most genuine and most kind humans I’ve ever met. He met me on trail in 2022 at Partnership shelter with pizza and burgers and we spent a memorable night chatting about consciousness and the nature of reality. I keep telling him that he needs to write a book, too.

I can’t know for sure if it’s the hiker-box shoes that caused my infection, but it makes for a coherent story. My attempt to hike for under $1,000 ended with that infection. I continued to hike after I’d recovered but I didn’t care about the budget anymore. I went through the $1,000 budget by the halfway point of trail and spent $800 in Maine after I gave up all pretense of being on a budget. In the end I spent $2,397.19 and finished the trail in three months. $2,400 for three months of adventure and travel, that’s still pretty good.

Pyro would end up spending a little over $1,000. 60 cent and D.A.R.E. spent around $3,000. We lived like homeless people, were dirty, smelly, exhausted, in constant physical pain, and rarely got to eat non dehydrated food. But it was a damn fine summer and D.A.R.E. described it as the “time of his life.” It was one of my favorite thru-hikes because I was able to spend the entire trail with good friends.

The Dirtbag Revolution is Here

“Yeah, but what can we do about it?” Is the comment I see most frequently on my videos. Followed by “why did you stop making hiking videos.” I’ll answer the second question, and then the first.

I stopped making hiking videos because I watched innocent people get disappeared off the streets by masked men into unmarked vehicles, and then held for months without charge or deported without due process. Some were sent to hellhole foreign prisons on the mere accusation that they were a gang member. These are the actions you’d expect if you lived under a tin-pot dictator in a third-world country. Not in America, land of the free, home of the brave! That’s why I stopped making hiking videos.

I cancelled my plans to come back to the US and hike the PCT because I had my Global Entry revoked by homeland security two weeks after I started speaking out against the regime. I think there’s a good chance I’d be detained or jailed on a trumped up charge. One of my personal friends who is a vocal dissident just this week was pulled aside for further screening at the border after a trip to Europe. They tested his sealed supplements and claimed one showed positive for cocaine. He spent a night in detention and now is awaiting further government lab testing to determine whether he’ll be charged with a crime or not.

He has had his passport and phone confiscated in the meantime. Like with my Global Entry we simply don’t have enough information. Maybe their tests gave a false positive and this is standard protocol. But maybe they’re messing with him because he’s critical of the regime. This only seems outlandish if you think we are living under a normal government. Things like this are absolutely normal under authoritarian governments. We’re still at the stage where they need to make-up reasons for putting you in jail. A fully authoritarian regime will just lock you up and throw away the key without any justification.

Lawyer Helping Migrants Deported From US Arrested in El Salvador. The detention of Ruth Eleonora López, a prominent human rights lawyer and government critic, raises serious concerns about the use of state power to target dissent in El Salvador. Her arrest comes amid an increasingly authoritarian climate under President Nayib Bukele, where civil liberties have been curtailed under a prolonged state of emergency. https://www.newsweek.com/lawyer-representing-deported-us-migrants-ruth-eleonora-lopez-arrested-2074610

So that’s why I’ve stopped making hiking videos. It seems absolutely trivial to talk about thru-hikes and camping trips when so many innocent people are having their lives ruined by these petty little tyrants in charge of our nation.

But maybe there’s a way to bridge the two worlds. Which brings me to the first question - what can we do about it?

I propose that we have a dirtbag revolution.

Quit your jobs, stop paying rent, sell your car, and go live in the woods. Even if only temporarily. Maybe you’ve been wanting to do a thru-hike for all your life. Go do it now! Maybe you’ve wanted to travel through Europe, or Asia, or South America. If I’ve learned one thing with all of my travels it is that there is no perfect time. You just need to do it.

You might say “yeah but our government is turning toward fascism, and they’re going to crash the economy with tariffs, I can’t quit my job now! I can’t leave now!”

I say rubbish to that! This is the perfect time to leave. This might be your last chance to enjoy the fruits of your labor before the country descends into a civil war. This might be the last year that your dollar is worth anything. So go take your long-awaited trip!

I have met literally dozens of older hikers on the trails who were waiting for a spouse, or a best friend to retire so they could both go fulfill their lifelong dream of hiking the trail together only for the person they were waiting on to die. And that was the shock they needed to get up and finally fulfill their dream.

You are not guaranteed anything in this life. These current events should highlight that fact more clearly than ever. You are not guaranteed tomorrow. You are not guaranteed a happy retirement. You are not guaranteed anything. So go live your life while you can!

And you can do it in a way that will help the revolutionary cause! Imagine if a million Americans quit their jobs, stopped paying rent, stopped paying insurance, and went and lived in the woods. Imagine the disruption that would cause to our economy. Now imagine if 10 million did that. 20 million.

Imagine the disruption if people just quit en-masse and stopped contributing to our economy. If people went overseas and lived cheaply, sipping margaritas on the beach in Mexico or Thailand and took their money out of the circulation of the US economy. Imagine!

You can have your cake and eat it too. You can fulfill your lifelong dreams AND play a crucial part in the revolution. Imagine how inspired other Americans would be by the actions of the Dirtbag Revolutionaries. If each of the 10 million people who quit their lives inspired 5 others to go on less severe strikes, or boycotts. That’s real power. That’s real disruption.

Cause the truth is these protests that happen one weekend a month for 3 hours ain’t cutting it. 40 people were murdered during the civil rights movement. Our protests are falling far short of the mark required to make real change.

How to Be a Dirtbag Revolutionary

New Zealand

May 23rd, 2025

“I can’t protest because I need to work.” “I can’t strike because I need to pay rent and buy food.” These are real and valid concerns. I recognize that I am lucky and privileged to have the savings and means to be able to do this kind of work now full time and not worry about an income for a while. I am lucky and privileged to have as much freedom and autonomy as I do, but don’t write me off as just being lucky. I am where I am through deliberate intentional actions that I’ve taken throughout the last twenty years of my life.

I want to share those intentions and strategies with you so that you too can be more free of “the system.” So that you can break free of the fear of being homeless, of the fear of going hungry, of the fear of death. Because that’s the ultimate fear at the end. It’s not truly a fear of running late on rent or not being able to buy groceries. The fear is that if you can’t pay rent or buy groceries then you will die. This is ultimately our one and only fear in life. The fear of annihilation.

Thru-hiking has systematically rid me of most of these most common fears. When you live in the woods long enough you realize that it’s not so bad to live in the woods in a tent. Of course thru-hiking is different from being truly homeless but many thru-hikers adopt a hybrid lifestyle that is somewhere between being a “normal citizen” and being truly “homeless.” These hikers find their lives to be much more fulfilling, and they find that they have the time to pursue their passions and fulfill their dreams. They have the time to live their lives and all they sacrifice are a few creature comforts, they find that what they gain far exceeds the sacrifices that this lifestyle requires.

Going back to Pyro, he spent 2024 hiking in New Zealand and then the Appalachian Trail and had only about $7,000 total of savings when he started. Really nothing at all especially in this age of high inflation, yet he managed to live for almost an entire year on that and with an international trip to top it all off. He’s now working this winter at a ski resort and splitting a house near Durango, CO with 4 other guys including 60 cent. I was considering joining them but decided I’d rather be in sunny Thailand. Pyro’s plan is to save money this winter and then take 4-5 months off to thru-hike the Continental Divide Trail this summer to complete his triple crown. Then when he’s out of money he’ll go back to work.

And Pyro isn’t some rich trust-fund kid. He doesn’t have fancy degrees to fall back on. He’s in his early 20s, has a GED because he left High School early, and he’s just making it work. Just like 60 cent who learned to weld out of high school in order to get a higher paying job, he’s going to hike the CDT this summer as well. Both of these guys will be dropping out of the economy and only spending money on food for 4-5 months this summer. Dirtbag revolutionaries.

These Expenses Keep You a Wage Slave

I’ve been able to travel extensively in the last eight years and I’m not a millionaire. In fact for most of that time I never had more than $10k in my bank account at any one time. In 2016 I hiked the Appalachian Trail. In 2018 I rode a bicycle from Mexico to Canada and then hiked the CDT. In 2019 I lived out of a van and worked in Montana and Colorado on Conservation Corps crews. In 2020 I lived out of a van and fought wildfires out of Idaho. In 2021 I hiked parts of the PCT, the whole Colorado trail, and NM on the CDT. In 2022 I hiked the AT, PCT, and CDT. In 2023 I spent 9 months traveling through SE Asia and saw Thailand, Borneo, Malaysia, and Japan. In 2024 I hiked the south island of New Zealand on the Te Araroa and then thru-hiked the AT for the third time, then I went and spent 3 months in Thailand and a month in Vietnam before coming to Germany.

How can I afford to travel this much? How can Pyro and 60 cent and all the tens of thousands of other thru-hikers take half a year off of work every year or two and go on these trips?

Sleeping in the Woods is Free

While renters had a higher median housing cost as a percentage of income (31.0%) compared to homeowners (21.1% for homeowners with a mortgage and 11.5% for those without a mortgage), 18.8 million homeowners were spending more than 30% of their income on housing costs. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/renter-households-cost-burdened-race.html

And those are median costs. The most I’ve ever earned in one year from a job was my season on the Hotshot crew and that was $38k after taxes. At the time I was living out of my van so I didn’t pay any rent. But if I were renting, I’d have likely split a place with roommates and the last time I did that I was paying $650/month to split a two bedroom apartment. That’s 20% of my post-tax income. If I were trying to have a place to myself I could probably have found a cheap 1br apartment for 1k. It lines right up with the census.gov report, at 31.6% of my post-tax income. And that was my highest paid year.

If we consider 2019 where I worked for Conservation Corps earning first $1,280/month as a crew member with the Montana Conservation Corps and then $2,400/month as a crew leader with the Southwest Conservation Corps that percentage of income looks very different. Part of orientation when you join the Conservation Corps is they take you down to the local social services office and ensure everyone is signed up for SNAP food assistance, because they know their corps members can’t survive on the meager pay.

That year I earned ~$16,000 between my random online income and my work with the conservation corps. I survived and was even able to put savings away because I lived out of my vehicle. If I’d been renting a 1br apartment for $1k/month that would have been a whopping 75% of my income.

The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the US is $1,713. https://www.unbiased.com/discover/banking/average-1-bedroom-apartment-rent

I haven’t paid rent since 2018 so it shocked me to find the above stat. What the fuck! $1,700! How does anyone afford to live? I guess that’s why so many people voted for trump because he’d “be good for the economy.” Well. How’s that turning out for ya folks. Are your eggs cheaper?

Not having to pay rent anymore really opens your horizon. Most people see travel as an expensive luxury. Because hotels are expensive. Restaurants are expensive. But when you sleep in the woods and eat ramen and chips you realize that travel can actually be quite affordable.

I bet you think traveling through New Zealand is expensive. It’s not. Not if you camp. I averaged $1,100/month for the two months we spent hiking in New Zealand. Our biggest expense was food and food is actually cheaper in New Zealand than the US with the dollar’s strong exchange rate(which is weakening by the day thanks to the tariffs). Groceries are also cheap in New Zealand because New Zealand’s primary industry is agriculture and they export food to Asia, Australia, and Europe.

Our routine when we got to town was to buy absolutely beautiful cuts of ribeye steaks($4/lb) and mutton chops($2/lb) from the grocery store and cook them up at the holiday parks. Every town in New Zealand has a holiday park where you can camp for 15-20 NZD($9-$12 USD)/night. They’re often full for those with vehicles but there’s always room for backpackers who walk up. With a tent site you get access to showers, laundry, and a kitchen and grill. So we’d spend a night or two in town and feast on fresh meats and produce and splurge on one or two restaurant meals. All told each town-stop would cost maybe $150-200 and that’s including our resupply. We would buy 5-7 days of food from the grocery store, enough food to last us until our next town.

My favorites were the half kilogram blocks of Whittaker’s chocolate. They came in a plethora of flavors and each half pound block of chocolate only cost $3 USD. My rule of thumb was to buy a half pound chocolate bar for every two days on trail and still never arrived in town with left-over chocolate. This trip I wasn’t on a budget so I bought whatever I wanted and this came out to about 20 NZD per day of trail food, which is $12 USD. $12/day is only $360 per month. Our biggest expenses ended up being the times when we’d splurge on a hotel room, followed by restaurant meals.

Sorry, you can see my accounting training and Chinese heritage coming out when I delve into topics of living cheaply. I hope the numbers aren’t boring you to death. Growing up in China everyone had to live frugally because everyone in China in the 90s was poor. My default assumption growing up and to a large extent to this day when I see something I want is that, “I can’t afford it.” I still have to remind myself to just buy a steak or salmon rather than the cheap cut of chicken or pork because that’s how deeply ingrained it is in my mind that I am poor and I can’t afford the luxury of buying a steak that costs $2-3 more per pound.

I imagine those who have immigrated from poor nations reading this can relate. If you grew up poor you can’t shake that mindset of pinching pennies and frugal living. It’s actually quite sad that one of my primary goals in life has simply been to have enough financial stability that I can just buy whatever I want in the grocery store. Not even at a restaurant. But at the grocery store.

And for a brief period between 2021 and 2024 I achieved that dream. I finally had enough income and savings that I could comfortably buy the groceries that I wanted. I still didn’t go overboard and eat ribeye steaks for every meal as much as I wanted to. But I had enough wiggle room in my finances that I could afford to buy at least one steak every-time I went to the store.

Now, I’m back to pinching pennies because my future is so uncertain and I need to save my money in-case my lines of income from the US get cut-off. Because right now I cannot legally work in Germany, or any other country aside from the US. And I can’t return to the US for fear of being arrested. So it’s back to penny pinching. But that’s okay. I’m used to it.

It’s still sad though. And it makes me feel empathy for all those going hungry all around the world. For the humans starving to death in Gaza. For all the unhoused people going hungry on the sides of the road. When I put down a packet of steaks in the grocery store and instead pick-up a package of chicken I feel a small pang of sadness in my heart. The pang of sadness echoes to my childhood in China, of not being able to have what you wanted. A year before I left China I’d finally learned to ride a bike using one of my friend’s bikes and I begged my parents for a bike. But we couldn’t afford it. I was gifted my first bike by my adopted aunt and uncle shortly after I came over to the US.

My favorite meat is still pork, because Chinese eat a lot of pork, because it’s cheap. Some of my favorite dishes are pork ears, chicken feet, and tripe(intestines). The Chinese have turned these cheap discarded scraps of animals into delicacies. Because they’re cheap.

There is a sadness and a deep pain to not be able to afford the food that you desire. And in that pain I can empathize with the plight of so many hungry people around the world. After all, I'm not going hungry. I go to bed with a full belly every night, so what right do I have to complain and feel sorry for myself? Still, that perspective doesn’t take away the pain I feel. I try to channel that pain into empathy and compassion for the countless millions suffering worse pains daily around the world. It reminds me of a video I saw recently of children and an old man in Gaza lined up outside a food charity. The food charity had run out of food and now the children and the old man were crying. The old man was missing his right leg and all of his teeth and said he hadn’t eaten for three days.

My inconsequential pain echoes their very real suffering and it connects us. And I don’t want to sever that connection. These atrocities all around the world can only happen when we stop empathizing with the pain of other human beings. I hope my writings can impart to you a tiny bit of the pain that I feel, not out of cruelty, but so that we can connect as humans and connect to the pain and suffering faced by all humans around the world.

Wage Slavery

Back to the Dirtbag Revolution. Do you ever stop to think about why you live where you live? Is it the neighborhood? The nature? The people? The culture? If you’re not retired then one of the biggest factors determining where you live is proximity to your job. People can’t simply leave the US or even their conservative city or state because that’s where their job is.

Why do you own your car? To get to your job right? Between rent, a vehicle, gas, and insurance it easily adds up to over $1,500/month. And that’s for someone like me who lives extremely frugally.

A single person household spends an average of $4,641 on monthly expenses.

Housing $2,120 32.9%

Transportation $1,098 17%

Food $832 12.9% https://www.ramseysolutions.com/budgeting/american-average-monthly-expenses

Wow, I was wildly low on my estimate. I guess it’s never really sunk in that I’m poor and have been for my whole life. Likely because I don’t feel poor and my lack of income has been more of an intentional choice than something forced onto me by circumstances. I had an internship in St. Louis in 2012 with a big accounting firm and a job offer with them after the internship ended. I could have taken it and right now I’d be making six figures as a partner in the firm. But that one internship was enough to teach me that I hate spending all day looking at spreadsheets and have no interest in trading away my life and my time for money.

The only times in my life where I haven’t had a roommate(or lived with a partner) are when I lived out of a van for two years from 2019-2021, when I’ve been sleeping in the woods in my single person tent, and more recently when I’ve lived in Asia where I can rent a whole apartment for $300/month.

My point is rent and transportation make up the bulk of your expenses. If you get rid of those two expenses you free yourself from the tyranny of having to constantly work.

I keep using the word “wage slave” because that really is the situation most Americans are in. You work so that you can pay rent. You pay rent so that you can live close to your job. You work so that you can afford a car. You pay for gas, car insurance, and your car payment so that you can have transportation to drive you to work. You do this until your body and your mind are broken.

You take drugs in the morning and get a hit of dopamine from your coffee so that you can have the energy to stare at your computer screen. You take drugs in the afternoon with more coffee so you can pretend to work even though you finished all of your priority tasks in the morning, but you’ll get in trouble with your boss if you leave early. You take drugs at night in the form of alcohol or pills to help you sleep. You binge eat pizza and ice-cream to distract yourself from your existential pain. And then you take drugs like Ozempic to help you lose weight. You take more drugs on the weekends; alcohol, weed, or even something harder to ignore the fact that you’re deeply depressed and have been for years.

One out of every seven people in the US are on prescription antidepressants. It’s not abnormal to be depressed in our society. People who are genuinely happy and fulfilled with their modern life are the exception, not the rule.

I’ve been “out of the rat race” since 2018 and sometimes I wonder if I’m just making up a narrative of how unhappy and discontent “normal” people are with their “normal lives” in order to justify the fact that I’m 38 and don’t own a house, don’t own a car, and haven’t started a family. Then I check in with my friends living normal lives. I check in with people online. And I find my thesis is correct. Most people are unhappy with their modern lives. They are unfulfilled. They use drugs, food, work, and mindless entertainment to escape the very real pain of their lives. “Americans' Satisfaction With Personal Life Near Record Low” according to a Gallup poll from 2024.

I used to have many older viewers who watched my hiking videos because they couldn’t get out anymore. My videos helped them to escape their lives and enjoy some virtual nature. I feel sad that I no longer produce videos that help these people escape into nature. But that sadness is also tempered by anger because these same people have left the most vile comments on my videos because they are as a group diehard trumpers.

Jimmy Cong

In 2022 I met Jimmy Cong in Hot Springs, NC, at the Laughing Heart Hostel, the very same one that I camped at during my 2024 $1k budget hike.

Jimmy’s plan was to hike south from Hot Springs and follow the Appalachian Trail into the Great Smokey Mountains National Park but had gotten lost leaving Hot Springs. He’d given up and turned around and came back to the hostel. It’s tough to get lost on the Appalachian Trail. The trail is marked with iconic white blazes which are white paint markers trail maintainers paint every couple of hundred feet on the trees that line the trail. As long as you see a white blaze you know you’re on the right trail. Other colored blazes denote different trails. You’ll hear the term “blue blaze” often and that means you took a side trail, identified by the blue paint markers. If you see a blue blaze when you hike the Appalachian Trail you know you’ve gone off-trail somewhere and need to back-track.

From Jimmy’s story it sounds like he wandered up a clear-cut section of forest they cut in for a power-line. It sounds really crazy that a person could make this mistake but Jimmy Cong is quite possibly the person with the least amount of common sense that I’ve ever met in real life. And that’s really saying something cause remember, I was Army Infantry and met people who had ASVAB scores in the low 30 percentile.

Jimmy had given himself the trail name Jimmy Cong because he was wearing a big Vietnamese style straw hat. He was really happy to see another Asian hiker and then got even more excited when he learned that I made YouTube videos. He excitedly pulled up his YouTube and showed me all the different outdoor creators he followed. “I’m a physician in a lab out in Los Angeles and I really don’t like my job, but I’m saving up money to buy a house and watching YouTube videos of people hiking is my escape. It’s so cool to meet you, I’ll be sure to watch your videos.”

He asked to hike with me the next day and I tried to dissuade him. “I’m hiking really fast, tomorrow I’m going to hike at least 25 miles. I really don’t think it’s a good idea for you to try to keep up with me.”

“Nah, nah it’s all good I’m a marathon runner. I’ll be fine,” said Jimmy with a big grin. I triple checked with him that he understood that I was going to hike my pace and not wait for him but he could follow if he wanted. So the next day we set out from Hot Springs.

True to his word Jimmy kept up all day. We stopped for a water break and I suggested he eat a snack because I hadn’t seen him eat anything all day. “Well, all I have are these meals.” He pulled out a dehydrated meal from his pack.

“Wait, you don’t have any snacks?” I was incredulous. I didn’t even think to ask him if he had enough food because who would go into the woods without food, right?

“Yeah, I went into the outdoor shop in Hot Springs and the guy told me you just need one of these a day.” Jimmy held out his dehydrated meal for me to inspect.

“Wait, wait, wait. You just have one of these per day? That’s all the food you’re carrying?” I know what happened. The worker at the outdoor store told Jimmy Cong that he needs one dehydrated meal per day for dinner, not even considering the possibility that anyone could be so lacking in common sense that they wouldn’t realize you needed more than one meal per day in the woods. But Jimmy understood the worker to mean that all you needed was one dehydrated meal per day.

These meals only have 800 to 1,000 calories. At minimum you need 4,000 calories per day on trail and for the type of hiking I was doing I ate 5,000 to 6,000 calories per day. On the CYTC every-time I spent a night in town I would drink half a gallon of chocolate milk and eat a pint of ice-cream before bed. I am soooo sorry for any employees who had to clean those toilets.

I gave Jimmy a Cliff bar and told him to eat that. I showed him how to use his water filter, which he’d never used before. Then we hiked on.

I called it that day at 20 miles. Jimmy, true to his word, had kept up but he was in obvious pain. When we set-up at the shelter for the evening I asked him what was in his pack if he only had a few meals because it was very obviously bursting full. He opened his $500 ultralight pack and put on his $1,000 Arc'teryx sweater.

Jimmy Cong with his big bag of crap.

“Well, I have my MacBook Pro, I was going to edit some videos at night. And I have my 360 GoPro.” The list just became more crazy as he kept pulling things out of his pack. “My DJI pocket 2. Here’s my regular GoPro. Oh yeah, my external hard-drive to store all my footage. I have three batteries cause I need them for my computer and cameras.” He pulled out a $700 brand-new trekking pole tent that he’d never set-up before. He pulled out two full sets of Patagonia and Arc'teryx clothes. It was obvious he’d bought all the most expensive things recommended by YouTube hikers but had never actually used any of it.

He didn’t have a lighter, but he’d bought a huge can of fuel that would’ve easily lasted me for a month. I let him borrow my lighter to light his stove so he could cook his dehydrated meal and taught him how he could cold-soak his meals in the future without a stove. I gave him some chips and cookies and other snacks to supplement his meal.

In the morning I woke up to pee and before I could even get my shoes on Jimmy asked with clear anxiety, “are you leaving?”

“No Jimmy Cong, I’m just going to pee.” Exasperation creeping into my voice.

“Oh, okay, good.” He answered, relieved.

I managed to convince Jimmy to stop following me and go back to the hostel in Hot Springs. He was cramping and in clear physical pain from the forced march the day before and didn’t push back on the idea at all. I showed him how to use the map on his phone - he’d never figured that out either and was part of the reason he’d gotten lost the other day. I left him some of my chips and snacks so he’d have something to eat during the day.

As I walked away from the shelter I saw Jimmy standing and staring at his phone, confusion clearly written across his face. “What’s up, Jimmy?”

“Uh, this blue line I’m trying to follow to the water is here but my blue dot isn’t on the blue line.” He waved his phone at me as if I could see it from 50ft away.

“Jimmy. Look around you. There is clearly a trail there, right? Just follow the trail. It doesn’t matter if your blue dot is exactly on the blue line. Just follow the trail.” I told him, failing to hide my irritation.

“Oh, okay. I got it.” Jimmy looked up from his phone. I didn’t believe that he actually got it, but I also didn’t have time to babysit this 42 year old doctor and we were close enough to civilization. There was enough cell service that he’d be okay. And he was carrying two different satellite devices so he would be able to call for help if he needed to. Although I hadn’t remembered to ask if he knew how to use those devices, so maybe not.

“Jimmy there’s a road just three miles back the way we came, if you get lost just hitchhike on that road, okay?”

“Okay, okay.” He gave me a thumbs up. I waved, and left him to his fate.

I’d learn via text that it took Jimmy three days to hike back to the hostel because he was in so much pain after our 20 mile hike. Then over the following months he bombarded me mostly with questions about money and YouTube. “Is it true that for every thousand subscribers you earn $1,000 per year?”

“God no, I wish, Jimmy.” It was clear that Jimmy was unhappy with his life and wanted a way out. “What are your thoughts on bitcoin and crypto, Jack, do you think bitcoin will reach 100k?” “I don’t think about crypto, Jimmy.” I kept encouraging him to take a sabbatical from his job and just go on a thru-hike and told him that the clarity of a hike would help him find a path more aligned with his personality. But he had it in his mind that he couldn’t stop working until he was a multi-millionaire and owned multiple income producing properties.

I’m sure his debt from medical school also weighed on his decisions. I’d joined the Army to get out of school debt free and had consciously never taken on any kind of debt, choosing to drive old cars and just live without. But Jimmy, like millions of others, had bought into the “American dream” lie and now was saddled with decades of debt.

Join the Revolution and Take a Hike

I’m going to give you the same advice that I gave to Jimmy Cong. Take a hike. Backpack through Europe like you’ve always dreamed of. Bikepack across South America. Learn Muay Thai in Thailand. Eat sushi in Japan. Watch the sunrise over Ha Long Bay in Vietnam. Go climb the famed Pinnacles with a direct descendent of the local hunter-gatherer tribe as your guide in Borneo.

Tang ping (Chinese: 躺平; lit. 'lying flat') is a Chinese slang neologism that describes a personal rejection of societal pressures to overwork and over-achieve, such as in the 996 working hour system, which is often regarded as a rat race with ever diminishing returns.[1][2][3][4] Tang ping means choosing to "lie down flat and get over the beatings" by adopting a "low-desire life."

Novelist Liao Zenghu described "lying flat" as a passive-aggressive resistance movement,[5] and The New York Times called it part of a nascent Chinese counterculture.[6] It has also been compared to the Great Resignation, a surge of resignations that began in the West at roughly the same time.[7][8][9] The National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center, an institution affiliated with the Education Ministry of China, listed the word as one of the 10 most popular memes for 2021 in the Chinese Internet. Chinese search engine Sogou also listed the word at the top of its list of most trending memes for 2021.[10]

Those who choose to "lie flat" may lower their professional commitment and economic ambitions, simplify their goals, while still being fiscally productive for their own essential needs, and prioritize psychological health over economic materialism.[11][12]

The phrase "quiet quitting", meaning doing only what one's job demands and nothing more, which became popular in the United States in 2022,[13][14] was thought to be inspired by the tang ping movement.[15] Another newer related phrase is bai lan (Chinese: 摆烂; pinyin: bǎi làn; lit. 'let it rot'), which means "to actively embrace a deteriorating situation, rather than trying to turn it around". Basically, it refers to a voluntary retreat from pursuing certain goals because individuals realize they are simply too difficult to achieve.[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping

Lying flat. Quiet quitting. The great resignation. These are all forms of protest individuals can take on to reject the intolerable conditions of their society. In a society like China where political speech can get you thrown in prison, Tang Ping becomes the only viable option.

“The COVID-19 pandemic set off nearly unprecedented churn in the U.S. labor market. Widespread job losses in the early months of the pandemic gave way to tight labor markets in 2021, driven in part by what’s come to be known as the Great Resignation. The nation’s “quit rate” reached a 20-year high last November.” https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/09/majority-of-workers-who-quit-a-job-in-2021-cite-low-pay-no-opportunities-for-advancement-feeling-disrespected/

My proposal for the Dirtbag Revolution is in the same vein. Quit your jobs and go live your dreams. You can do it cheaply as a dirtbag. If you can save $10,000 you can travel for a whole year in Asia or South America. You can take 6 months to thru-hike from Mexico to Canada. Buy a van and drive it up to Alaska. There’s countless adventures you could take that don’t require a lot of money. You’ll at the same time feel reinvigorated and find a new zeal for life and hurt the war machine by dropping out of the economy for a while.

They can’t tax you if you’re not making money. And if they can’t tax you then your tax dollars aren’t funding genocides.

“But what will I do after?” You’ll figure it out.

That’s the really cool thing about getting out of your comfort zone and traveling like a dirtbag. It forces you to figure things out. We use money to fix so many problems in life. Travel can be frictionless when you have loads of money. But without it you have to couch-surf, stealth-camp, and hitchhike. On my bike trip in 2018 I reached out on reddit and within two hours found a person who let me crash in their spare bedroom in Tacoma. We’re still friends to this day and correspond occasionally online.

For me facing these obstacles on my various adventures has given me a rock-solid foundation of self-confidence. I’ve hitchhiked hundreds of times now and in foreign countries, too. I’ve faced down grizzly bears and rattlesnakes. I’ve drank water from stock-ponds filled with cow poop in Arizona and slept in -20 degree weather on top of 4 feet of fresh snow in Colorado. I’ve survived storms where the flash of lightning illuminated my tent every few seconds and I could hear the crash of trees that had been knocked down by the high winds. I’ve had to fight off sexual harassment from a drunk man who picked me up hitchhiking in Wyoming. I’ve even encountered a possible serial killer and spent a sleepless night cradling a 10lb dumbbell that I was going to use as a weapon in-case he decided to barge into my room.

I’ve overcome all of those obstacles and managed to escape mostly unscathed. These experiences have taught me that we all have a deep reserve of strength and that when it’s needed we will find that strength. It’s taught me that humans are incredibly adaptable and resilient.

This self-belief is how I was able to just pivot and start pursuing citizenship in Germany once the US felt unsafe. It’s a foreign country, with a foreign language, and a foreign culture. Their bureaucracy is a nightmare. But I’ll figure it out. I always have, and I always will.

And you’ll figure it out, too.

Take the Leap of Faith

Cascade Saddle, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. NZ

“Don't be afraid. You're going to make it. It's always going to feel as if you're not. But, that's the fun, you see!” - Alan Watts

It’s been my experience that life truly does conspire to help support me. But only after I’ve taken that initial leap of faith. I do hold a faith. Not in any god or religion. But in life itself.

I don’t believe, I know. I know that we are more than our physical body. I know that life is not chaos and random happenstance. I know that we are inseparable from that which we call god, or creation, or the universe.

I do agree with Alan Watts. You’re going to make it. I’m going to make it. It’s all going to be okay.

And this knowing gives me peace in these turbulent times. I don’t know why this is happening but I know ultimately we’ll all be okay.

There are no words of mine that I can use to give you this same knowing, this same assurance that allows me to go hike across the country and live in Asia without a second thought. There is no story I can tell you that will convince you deep down that you’ll be okay if you quit your job and finally go pursue your dreams.

This knowing can only be experienced. It cannot be taught. All I can do for you is to encourage you to take your leap of faith. Each of you reading has something in your heart that you’ve been too afraid to do. I don’t know what it is, but I know each of you has a deep desire that you’ve covered over because it’s “too unrealistic.” Or you’re afraid of failure. Maybe you’re afraid of what will happen if you do achieve your dream and then are left without anything to strive for.

“People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them, or that they'll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands.”

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.” -The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

You’ve ignored your heart and you’ve ignored your soul because you have a host of very practical, very logical excuses. But you’re slowly dying. You’re slowly shutting down. Your heart, your soul, your very essence is dying everyday that you deny your heart. You know this is true. You might feel resistance as you read my words and that is your soul telling you that I am speaking the truth. At some point your heart will stop speaking to you and you will have died your real death, even before your physical body dies its physical death.

How sad it is the Americans I see who have given up. How sad it is to look into their eyes and not see a spark of life anymore.

“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”

“The thinking mind is what is busy. You have to stay in your heart. You have to be in your heart. Be in your heart. The rest is up to your head where you are doing, doing, doing.”

— Ram Dass

You might say I’m just talking nonsense. That I’m full of useless platitudes. I just am quoting fanciful feel-good quotes from people who got lucky in life.

Maybe. But I think my life is a testament to the power of following your heart. Of taking that leap of faith. Of stepping into the unknown.

What a wonderful, exciting, terrifying, heart-breaking, painful, and joyful ride I’ve had in my first 38 years of life. What a wild story I’ve lived. And I can’t wait to see what the next chapters of my life will bring. I can’t wait to see who I’ll be in old age, if I’m lucky enough to live to old age. And if not, then I can die happy and content any day.

That is the true hallmark of a life well-lived. There has not been a single day since I quit the rat race that I’ve regretted the way I’ve been living. I could’ve died anytime in the last eight years and not regretted a single one of my major choices. How many millionaires and billionaires and powerful politicians can say that? I’ve already packed multiple lifetime’s worth of experience into my short life. Each thru-hike, each adventure is a lifetime on its own. Filled with love, and loss. Laughter, and tears. Joy, and heart-break. I wouldn’t trade a second of my life for all the money and power in the world. I am exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.

This I know, because my heart tells me so. I’ve written 10,000 words in the last two days and produced 4 different videos. Because this is exactly the work I’m supposed to be doing. I am not in conflict with myself or my heart. If your life is full of obstacles and everyday feels like an uphill battle it’s likely because you’re not living in alignment with your heart and soul.

I recognize how new-agey and woo-woo this all sounds but this is my truth. This is my true experience. And the outcome of my life proves the validity of my claims.

I still lose my way from time-to-time. The shock of fascism rising dragged my consciousness back into deep water and I got lost in the story of my life for a short period. But I’m finding my center again and remembering Truth again. This is all part of the wild adventure that I signed up for before I was even born.

I don’t believe in the Buddhist interpretation of life as an inevitable wheel that grinds us all down without our consent. I think we chose to come here. I think after we die, if we come back, it will be our choice. I know there’s a lot that I’d like to come back and accomplish and see.

Wake up to your true nature. Wake up to your soul. Listen to your heart. This is how we change the world. This is how we win against tyrants and tin-pot dictators. We win through a revolution of the heart, through a revolution of the soul.