Outlive The Bastards
In the August 2014 issue of Blue Water Sailing, I published an article called “You’ll Outlive The Bastards.”
The article is about a recent sailing/ski trip on Mount Baker and in the San Juan Islands, and the title is a tribute to this quote from Edward Abbey (1927—1989):
…get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the 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 much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards.
EDWARD ABBEY
Abbey was a passionate, crotchety environmentalist who wrote about the American west, and I think he’d be grumpy with me if I didn’t cite my sources properly. So: read the full version of his speech about outliving the bastards in a 1976 issue of High Country News.
