The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert Page B

Jehovah’s Witnesses, Krishnas in the airports) about God. It was
     always the spirituality of Native Americans, though, that Eustace responded to most fully. He’d had exposure to it through
     the local Native American leaders he’d met at the Scheille Museum and through his study of anthropology. He could fully accept
     the idea that God—indeed, godliness—is to be found in every living being on this planet, and that every thing on this planet
     is a living being. Not only animals, but the trees and the air and even dense stones, all of them ancient and integral.
    And this is where Eustace and his Appalachian Trail partner Frank had an intersection of belief, in their mutual conviction
     that God is to be found only in nature. That, of course, is why they were out there on the trail, the better to find this
     godliness within themselves and the larger world. Nor were they embarrassed to talk about this godliness, night after night.
     Or to take out their handmade Indian pipes in the evenings and smoke and pray, connected with each other through their belief
     that the pipe was the vehicle of prayer and the smoke only the sacred representation of what they were offering up to the
     cosmos. They knew that some might consider the idea of a couple of white guys praying with an Indian pipe to be foolish or
     even offensive, but Eustace and Frank weren’t merely playing Indian—they were there on the brink of their manhood, living
     in the most earnest way they could, facing together every day’s revelations and challenges. And it was this togetherness,
     more than anything, that Eustace cherished about the journey.
    And then, in Pennsylvania, Eustace Conway met a girl.
    Her name was Donna Henry. She was a nineteen-year-old college student from Pittsburgh, and she and Eustace ran into each other
     on the Pennsylvania leg of the Appalachian Trail. Donna was on a weekend hike with her aunt and her cousin, and their little
     journey was going like hell, because the aunt and the cousin were wholly out of shape and they’d overstuffed their backpacks
     with way too much food and gear. So, at the moment of the encounter, Donna Henry wasn’t hiking; she was sitting on the edge
     of the trail, taking a break because her relatives had demanded one. There she sat, trying not to listen to her aunt and her
     cousin bitch about their sore feet and sore legs and sore backs, and along comes Eustace Conway.
    By this point, Eustace had begun to shed whatever possessions he considered useless. As he raced farther south and closer
     toward Georgia, he’d become tired of carrying stuff, so—operating on the old favorite principle of “the more you know, the
     less you need”—he’d slowly rid himself of everything but his sleeping bag, a knife, some rope, and a small cooking pot. He
     even shed some of his clothing. He completed the last thousand miles of his journey wearing nothing but two bandanas knotted
     together to cover his private bits. He didn’t keep so much as a jacket for warmth. As long as he was walking, he wasn’t cold;
     when he wasn’t walking, he was sleeping. When it rained, he wore a garbage bag. When he grew tired of his tedious pace (even
     the pace of a man burning through almost thirty miles a day), he sprinted along the trail at full speed.
    So this was the apparition that loomed before Donna Henry that day on the trail: a lean, brown, bearded, and feral creature,
     stripped nearly bare, wearing sneakers, and tearing through the woods like a coyote. He was skinny, sure, but he rippled with
     muscle. And he had a terrific face. He stopped running when he saw Donna. She said hello. Eustace said hello. Then he let
     fly one of his world-class smiles, and Donna felt her aunt and her cousin and her heavy backpack disappear in the glow of
     that smile, all replaced by the certainty that her life was never going to be the same.
    Now, I have a habit of speculating about the sex life of every single person I meet.