Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert (2002)

Since I loved Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love so much, I wanted to read more by her and picked this up at our library. This is actually a non-fiction book about Eustace Conway, a real, still living man, a few years younger than me. I get the sense that Gilbert too was in love with this man, but was able to maintain a friendship over the years and step back enough to write about him. This guy could hunt as a child, and decided that the thing to do was to live off the land - which he has been doing all his life and continues to do so. He also wanted to change the world by educating kids about his life style, in speeches around the country and in the camp he has built on a thousand acres in North Carolina. Oh, I could imagine being enthralled by him in my back to the land days, though I am not sure I would ever want to live off of things I have killed, nor would I ever want to work as hard as he did and expected those around him to work. I didn't understand his two big trips around the country on horses. The first, he rode on the back of a horse from the Atlantic to the Pacific with his brother and a friend in record time. They did not stop to enjoy the people and beauty around them, but plowed on as if in a race to see how far humans and animals could be pushed. His other trip was in a horse drawn cart around the Midwest - also at a numbing pace. He has driven all the women who fell in love with him away, by being so demanding and inflexible in his lifestyle. Fascinating man, fascinating story, though sort of sad in the end.