This Wild blog is a repository of thoughts and dreams and tactics and celebrations and mournings -- all related to wild places on our planet. When I was a young boy in high school, when asked what I wanted to do when I grow up, I often replied, "I want to be a hermit and live in a cave." Only half-jesting, I was speaking from the experiences I was having at that time of backpacking and hiking into the wilderness a couple of times each month, with Troop 974 - 'The Trekingest Scout Troop in San Diego County.' How prophetic, as I find myself now working in the field of public lands protection (The Escondido Creek Conservancy), having devoted the past 30 years of my life to public lands advocacy in a volunteer capacity. All towards the goal of finding that cave to live in. Join me in this journey as I find that cave in that wilderness, where my soul can be free of the fetters of our over-mechanized and often cruel society. I am looking for my inner-cave.