the Adventure Lifestyle magazine

co lu mn: blueprint Price sold Shots and started taking trips. Wherever , e. te e. n he went, he'd talk to people, observe their lives and create journals which he photocopied and sent to a subscriber list that grew to about 200 people. Often his ex-wife and kids would accompany him, but she drew the line when he decid­ ed to walk across Oregon. "Around that time, I saw a Simple ad for these real­ 5 , , ly cool little boots, " Price says. "I needed a new pair of hiking boots but didn't have the money, so I wrote a letter to Eric Meyer saying that if he gave me the boots I'd mention it in Moonlight Chronicles. A few months later he called. He want- ed to make the Chronicles into his catalog and give them away." Dan Price, the poor-artist-with-a-cult-following, sud­ denly became corporate Dan, working for the man. (And if you believe that one, he's got the state of Oregon to sell you.) Other than a Simple logo on the back cover, Moonlight Chronicles are sti ll just a man, his pen and his observations. After spending a few hours with the guy, his :' idea of "destination-less travel" becomes a mantra for your future as well. Price's observational style is evident both through to go up to town to use the pay phone. I can call my kids at night," he says. And he final- Iy built a little studio where he can work more efficiently than sitting on a stool outside the teepee. Before teepee I ife, Price had put his life savings into Shots, the pho­ tography magazine he ran for 10 years-five of them while on his little piece of land (he reportedly had a photocopier hardwired to an underground power line). He spent many evenings writing letters to an old friend in Kentucky, illustrating them in a drawing style developed, in part, over six months studyi�g line dra'0'in9s in a college libra�y (everythir:g from Da Vinci to R Crumb). But the biggest Intluence on hiS style IS the work of his five-year-ola son. "I was putting all this energy into those letters. So I began to think 'gee, why don't I make this into a magazine and give it to people instead of putting all that energy into sending stuff out in the maiL'" his work and through the way he walks down the street, eyes loping from the storefront to the pedestrian, to the metal gate, to the fire hydrant he draws on my notepad when we stop for a burrito. He likes creating these lSO-page booklets for people to read, but he's less interested in forwarding a life philosophy than in just finding a way to contfnue doing what he does. "I'm doing this thing that's inside me and just happens to be this really oddball, weird thing where whatever I'm looking at, I draw-a salt shaker, a lamppost. " he explains as we sit at the corner of Haight and Ashbury. Price opens his book and he begins to draw. "People write me letters thanking me, saying, 'Now I look at the world in a different way. I've slowed down, and I appreciate things, and I'm not just buzzing through life as fast as possible.'" 1

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