Thirteen Moons

Robert Johnson's Thirteen Moons is an engaging and humorous chronicle of a year the author spent living in a tipi in the rugged wilderness of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Northern California from May 1984 through May 1985. Styled chronologically like a journal, his narrative account, spiced with levity and an easy-going, self-deprecating manner, is filled with high adventure, philosophical musing, encounters with eccentric goldminers, marijuana growers, a dog named Bob, obsessed fishermen, an FBI hippie, and an extremely large rattlesnake, as well as vivid descriptions of the natural history of the region. Like Kerouac's Dharma Bums, Abbey's Desert Solitaire, and Thoreau's Walden, Johnson's odyssey combines a love for nature and solitude with a commitment to understanding his place in the world: "I removed the last of my possessions -- my snowshoes, mask, and snorkel, my pancake griddle and vegetable seeds, my gold pan and bow saw and books on Zen and Plato, my manual typewriter and fishing pole...and stuffed them into my bulging backpack...Not only would it be my first attempt at dragging my tipi poles down the three miles of arduous, switch-backing trail, but it would be my official move-in date -- Day One of my proposed year in the wilderness". A poignant and spiritual quest by a young man testing himself in the wilderness, putting his faith in providence, and managing the revelations of self-knowledge and survival with down-to-earth pluck and skill.