TOMAHAWK...HE REALLY HAS BEEN EVERYWHERE, MAN

So I "met" this feller online over the weekend. I wrote to him just because I was seeking permission to use one of his photographs in a book. Well, we got to talking, and I got to looking over his blog and I wound up spending a couple of hours doing so Saturday and Sunday.

Tomahawk really has been everywhere, man, with the possible exception of Mars. He's a real deal survival expert (more Ron Hood and Les Stroud than Bear Grylls and Dave Canterbury), Army veteran, world traveler, military contractor...you name it. If he says, "Been there, done that" he probably actually has.

His is the kind of life so many of us wish we could lead, a life of adventure and freedom, no ties that bind, just "Go Walkabout" when the desire arises. Something I danced around the edges of and might have actually tried 25 years ago. But, if we had the chance, none of us, including myself these days, would actually leave our comfort zone to do so. As Gerry Spence once said, "Faced with the pain of freedom, man begs for his shackles."

So I'm linking to Tomahawks site HERE for ya'll. You'll find great survival/bushcraft tips, some of that obscure military history I'm so fond of, travel to exotic places, and rants much more coherent than my own. His writing reminds me of Edward Abbey and I can't help but like a man who quoted my favorite poem, one of the few I have actually memorized, by Robert Service, the "Bard of the North".

The Men Who Don't Fit In

Robert W. Service

There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: "Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in.

Scouts Out, Tom.

Fade out whistling "Garry Owen".