myth of utopia

My beloved and I hitchhiked through both Europe's huge urban cities and remote mountain regions, without any fixed destination or route in mind. We were escaping our regular lives into newly alluring but precarious modes of existence, always and ever in search of the persistent though elusive idea of freedom.  Along the way we met several individuals who had willingly abandoned their previous hectic modern lives in exchange for the retreat into the deep wilderness. Once students, professional workers, artists, these people sacrificed modern comforts for greater autonomy and freedom. They have turned their backs on modern civilization and its emphasis on consumerism and productivity, choosing instead the slower, if inconvenient, life that paces itself with nature. For my beloved and I, by abandoning the monotonous security and urban life these people became like unpolished jewels whose horizon is endlessly changing with a new and different sun.