John Williams’ house is made of

More than 40 years ago, John Williams gave away all of his belongings and went off to the mountains to live the way people lived 100 years ago. For food he traps wild animals, fishes in the rivers, and plants whatever he can. John lives in a cabin he made by hand, out of trees he chopped down with an ax. Though he has no relatives that he knows of, he does have a deer he raised from a fawn. The deer lives in the house in the winter and goes with John when he goes into the forest mountains and John has not been out of the mountains during the entire forty years. One day last year I hiked in to see how John lives. It was like going back in time. There were no roads, no stores, no noise, no pollution, not even a post office.
      Most notable of all, there were no people and that’s just the way John Williams wants to keep his part of the world without people. But there is a paradox in his story. John is an educated man. He has books and nobody knows how he got them. Mostly he reads about his world, the forest, the animals, the plants, and the mountains. He has seen airplanes flying overhead but does not want to know about them. For him, electricity’s lightning. John Williams is 85 years old and has not had a sick day in his life. He attributes his long life to the fact that he has nothing to do with people and in order that he might enjoy many more years of health, happiness, and solitude. I will not tell you where his kingdom lies. There is no room there for you or me.