title: Escaping a Life of Quiet Desperation: Walking in the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau
author:  Benjamin M Scribner 
description: Benjamin M Scribner was born and raised in New England, and attended Brewster Academy on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. At seventeen he enlisted in the United States Navy, trained as a Torpedo Man, and served ten years at various commands. Following his discharge, and for the next 25 years he earned his living as a long-haul trucker. Soon after September 11 th he reenlisted in the Naval Reserves, was deployed to the Persian Gulf, and served as a Seabee's Equipment Operator. His Naval career ended with a Medical Discharge, subsequent to a year spent at the Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego. He currently divides his time between his mountaintop home in Idaho, and driving his big rig part-time throughout the Northwest and Canada.
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  ![Image](../images/9781481456456.jpg)
  
  
  ![Images](../images/title.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  For the lost boys, and the girls who find them
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Caveat Emptor
  
  
  TRIGGER WARNING FOR SUICIDE, HOMICIDE, assault with a deadly weapon, assault
  with a deadly mind, harm to others, harm to self, disordered eating,
  disordered thinking, disordered feeling, disordered being, body shaming,
  victim shaming, shaming of every kind, dark humor, ill humor, shitty humor,
  maiming, miming, death of teenagers, death of adults, death of authority
  figures, death of inconsequential red shirts. Also sex. But if you need a
  trigger warning for that, you’re reading the wrong book.
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Part I
  
  
  Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
  
  
  —Henry David Thoreau, Walden
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  My dear friend,
  
  
  Sincere apologies for my lack of correspondence, but the journey has been long
  and, as of late, rather fraught.
  
  
  You did admit that this would not be an easy . . . venture, though I must
  confess that I did not expect tha