The last hippie in the Ozarks

Seven or so years ago, I had occasion to be driving from Mountain Home, Arkansas to Eldorado, Arkansas. I decided to take a winding, scenic route that paralleled the White River for the first leg, then went west into the Ozarks and south through the Ouachita National Forest.

While in the mountains, I stopped at general store that seemed to be more or less in the middle of nowhere. It was on the side of a mountain, shaded by a canopy of trees. I don't recall any other buildings nearby, although there may heve been a gas station across and down the road a piece.

The store was clean and plesasant, and the people there friendly.

As I was leaving, a man walked up the shoulder of the road toward the store. He was about my age, perhaps a little older. He had shoulder-length hair held down with a headband and a full beard. He was wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt, cutoffs and sandals. He looked as if he had fallen asleep under a tree in 1969 or 70 and had only awakened perhaps twenty minutes ago.

I invented a back story for the guy as he trudged up the road to the store. He had moved to the area back in the day to join a commune. The commune had long since closed and all its other members had moved on. He was the only one left. Maybe he lived in an old hand-built house back in the woods that had once been occupied by a dozen people.

I also had the thought that I should have been in his place. Not that I should have been like him, but that the ebb and flow of the universe should have led to me being the one living alone in some isolated Ozark cabin, separated from the world, and that guy should have ended up doing, well, whatever.

I suppose this was one of my Cold Mountain moments that just happened to come along before I had ever heard of Cold Mountain.

I'm not sure why I have this nagging feeling that I'm supposed to be separated from society.