Traveling the National Parks: Field Notes on Finding Yourself 005

July 2021,

It’s been a while since I’ve written here. Here goes.

This month I decided to pack up my things and hike the National Parks. As many as I could in one really jam-packed trip before stopping off in Los Angeles to record new music. I drove up the California coast on highway 101, which I guess is pretty famous, and then down the California inlands. Yosemite, Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon National Park, plus Big Sur as a bonus. I didn’t make it to Joshua Tree but now it’s on my bucket list. The world still has a lot of beauty preserved for us to witness (and participate in by leaving as little of a trace when we leave this earth as possible).

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I’ve traveled roughly 6,574 miles in the last month and I’m not tired. I didn’t take much more than my There’s More To Life hat (which is now adorned with a pin from the Yosemite’s gift shop), some simple hiking gear, and my laptop which has all of the songs I’m working on & beats I’m writing to. Didn’t even unpack my suitcase after flying home from southern California to NYC; instead I took it directly to PA where I ended up recording music in the woods with 16 talented musicians who were strangers on the internet and I now call my friends.

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The last 12 months have been particularly challenging for me. Covid aside, it’s been a rough patch in my life & in my twenties. My roaring twenties haven’t been quite as loud as I always hoped they’d be. But I’m getting loud in the new songs, new videos, and ideas I have for the ways I’m going to go about releasing the new music. I sincerely believe it’s never the wrong time for anyone in life to make a comeback. Wrote a lot about The Great Adventure on my last album, as a concept of something we expect to have in our lives. I don’t think we stumble upon it so much as create it, so I’m working hard to do that these days - in music and life. My new music is going to talk about some real honest, gritty and straight from the heart shit - I hope you are ready to get deep.

All photos taken on my $25 ebay film camera.

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Live while you can. MUSIC ON THE WAY.


Take care of yourself,
Dylan